Latest / Specialty Matcha Podcast / Interview with Per Oscar Brekell

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Interview with Per Oscar Brekell · Specialty Matcha Podcast

• 0:06
  Hello and welcome to the Specialty Matcha Podcast.
• 0:08
  My name is Ryan, This is Micahosongjun, who also goes by
• 0:11
  Sam and we're the cofounders of Sanka Matcha Products.
• 0:14
  Hello. Hello.
• 0:15
  Yeah, we launched this podcast to discuss our learning journey
• 0:17
  in Matcha, share startup stories and interview experts.
• 0:20
  And today we have Oscar Breckel joining us to this podcast.
• 0:24
  Welcome, Oscar. Thank you for having me.
• 0:25
  Awesome. Awesome.
• 0:26
  Yeah. So Oscar is a author of a number
• 0:30
  of very famous book related to Japanese tea and Japanese tea
• 0:33
  ceremony. So before we dive into this
• 0:36
  podcast, Oscar, can you share us a little bit about, you know,
• 0:38
  yourself, your personal background and your
• 0:40
  professional? Back absolutely.
• 0:42
  So I fell in love with Japanese tea when I was in high school,
• 0:44
  so it's more than 20 years ago now and then I started drinking
• 0:48
  not only sencha and giaporo and Cabo tea and those kind of teas
• 0:51
  but actually matcha 2 so way before the matcha boom happened.
• 0:55
  And I can tell you this was a quite lonely endeavor at the
• 0:58
  time because none of my friends basically were interested in
• 1:02
  green tea, be it Chinese green tea or Japanese green tea,
• 1:04
  whatever. And I grew up in southern
• 1:06
  Sweden, so, and Sweden is essentially a coffee country.
• 1:09
  So that made the whole business of, you know, drinking green tea
• 1:13
  even lonelier. But I carried on for a couple of
• 1:16
  years and then eventually I traveled to Japan.
• 1:19
  I fell in love even more with Japanese tea.
• 1:21
  And somewhere along the way, I decided I got this weird idea
• 1:25
  because, you know, people become some of the years or baristas or
• 1:28
  whatever. Chocolate special.
• 1:30
  And I was thinking, hey, there's no green tea guy out there.
• 1:32
  Well, there wasn't really at the time anyway.
• 1:34
  So and Japan, Japanese culture, Japanese tea.
• 1:38
  And I was young and naive. I think it was 21 years old when
• 1:41
  I decided upon this. And I was like, hey, I'm going
• 1:43
  to be the tea specialist. I'm going to study Japanese and
• 1:48
  go over to Japan, study Japanese tea for a couple of years, and
• 1:51
  then probably the guy introducing Japanese overseas,
• 1:55
  which kind of happened. So to make a very, very long
• 1:58
  history or very Long story short, and this is not a
• 2:01
  straight Rd. basically a lot of things happen along the way.
• 2:04
  But eventually I did get my certification St. certified as a
• 2:09
  team instructor, Japanese team structor.
• 2:11
  As you know, I'm writing a couple of books on the topic.
• 2:13
  They're available in English, Japanese, and actually there's a
• 2:16
  version in French as well. And what else is there to be?
• 2:20
  So, well, I did my tea training actually basically in Shizuoka,
• 2:24
  A prefecture, which is probably a lot of your listeners are
• 2:27
  familiar with as well, one of the biggest tea growing regions
• 2:29
  in Japan and one of the most important ones as well because
• 2:33
  they do a lot of tea refining and blending as well, apart from
• 2:35
  just a growing tea there. But they have a tea Research
• 2:38
  Center where they do things like breed new cultivars and just
• 2:41
  conduct different kinds of research on tea.
• 2:44
  And I was there for a year and that's basically what I did
• 2:46
  where I got my proper tea training.
• 2:48
  And ever since I've been working actually for the IS government,
• 2:51
  I've been for myself as well. I have a company now.
• 2:54
  So I do have small tea brand as well.
• 2:56
  But my main thing is basically I do tea lectures, tea events it.
• 3:00
  Was awesome super interesting actually before we like dive
• 3:04
  into what like we talked about before for a good topic for an
• 3:08
  episode just like super curious what goes on behind the curtain
• 3:12
  at these tea research institutes across Japan.
• 3:15
  We've walked by the one in Kyoto and we were like, oh, what's
• 3:19
  going? We've heard about what goes on
• 3:20
  in there in terms of reading and selecting new cultivars, but
• 3:24
  like, I still don't have a very good understanding of what's
• 3:27
  going on in these centers. I actually need to ask you a
• 3:30
  question, Ryan. So you walked around it, but you
• 3:32
  actually didn't enter. No, we were just walking around
• 3:35
  like the general area. It was like 5:00 PM too.
• 3:39
  It was sort of weird random weekday.
• 3:42
  We were trying to get a sense of how much Honju's shading was
• 3:46
  actually happening in Uji. So we spent 5 or 6 hours just
• 3:49
  walking around everywhere and we're actually quite depressed
• 3:53
  by one. The number of abandoned tea
• 3:55
  farms, like even next to Okanoyama Tea Garden, like one
• 3:59
  block down the street, this an abandoned tea garden.
• 4:02
  What's like arguably one of the best areas to grow tea?
• 4:04
  And then Hanzu shading, I think. What did we see?
• 4:06
  Sound like four or five? Yeah, four or five and very
• 4:10
  small because I. Was going to say probably a very
• 4:13
  little, yeah. OK, So what goes on?
• 4:16
  Well, it really depends on where you are basically.
• 4:18
  So for example, at the place where you you didn't enter in
• 4:22
  Uji, they're mainly focused on breeding cultivars for for
• 4:26
  matcha and for any any shaded teas.
• 4:28
  Whereas firstly in a place like Chisulka, they have been at
• 4:32
  least until recently more focused on sencha.
• 4:34
  But they're also doing a lot of other things.
• 4:36
  It's not only about cultivar breeding, it's also about things
• 4:40
  like how does different kinds of fertilizers affect the tea plant
• 4:47
  and the nutrients and the tea tea leaves and so forth, and how
• 4:51
  does that affect the taste and the flavor and of course the
• 4:53
  soil, those kind of things. And you have research on
• 4:57
  pesticides as well, those kind of things.
• 4:59
  And then they also do research on different kinds of processing
• 5:04
  tea. So they're experimenting with,
• 5:06
  you know, things like withering. And it's fun.
• 5:08
  Actually. It's very fun to be there
• 5:09
  because especially, well, I can only speak for the, for the
• 5:12
  sexual one. And she's woke up because that
• 5:15
  was 1 where I did my training. But it's a very fun place to be
• 5:19
  if you're a tea lover, a tea enthusiast, or anyone who wants
• 5:23
  to learn about tea because basically they have equipment
• 5:26
  for making lots of different kinds of tea.
• 5:28
  So obviously we have a factory for making sencha.
• 5:32
  We have a factory for making oolong tea.
• 5:34
  We have a actually a factory for making black tea as well.
• 5:37
  So we were doing all that. And I think actually for me, one
• 5:41
  of the most more rewarding kind of interesting things to do was
• 5:46
  that we had, because when you do culture our breeding,
• 5:48
  essentially what you have is like sometimes just one single
• 5:51
  tea plant and you try to pluck tea leaves in spring to make tea
• 5:55
  from that. It's like 2 little tea leaves
• 5:58
  are they're basically not enough for processing sencha in a
• 6:02
  normal factory. So what we had was like kind of
• 6:05
  would kind of look like toy factory or kind of like, you
• 6:09
  know, not not as in a place where they make toys, but
• 6:12
  factory fork toys where, you know, Barbie dolls could work on
• 6:15
  processing teas or stuffed dolls or something like everything is
• 6:18
  smaller. So you have tea rollers,
• 6:21
  steamers, everything, everything is like tiny because you want to
• 6:24
  be able to make tea from those new kind of cultivar candidates.
• 6:29
  Uh, the new candidates, for the record, don't have a name yet.
• 6:32
  They just have a number. Uh, but you want to see how, how
• 6:35
  do they taste like? And, and funny thing is, you do
• 6:38
  tea evaluation as well a lot. So you have like 30-40 different
• 6:42
  samples in front of you and you do tea evaluation.
• 6:45
  Turns out that most of them taste awful, bitter.
• 6:48
  It's like awfully stringent or something and you just discard
• 6:52
  them basically. And they told me that, you know,
• 6:54
  because I was there for a year and a lot of people that have
• 6:57
  been working with the cultivar breeding for like, you know, 5-6
• 7:01
  years or even more, they said, well, basically our job is to
• 7:05
  throw things away. So, but there was just actually
• 7:09
  there or another researcher and he said, well, actually, so you
• 7:11
  can modify that bit saying that well among, you know, all the
• 7:16
  different candidates for becoming a new cultivar that we
• 7:18
  breed. Our job is well, of course,
• 7:20
  partly to discard or throw all these cultural candidates away.
• 7:25
  But then again, it's also our job to pick something up, keep
• 7:29
  something that has a very, very good taste.
• 7:30
  For example, also be that a particular tea plant is very
• 7:35
  strong towards frost or different kinds of disease.
• 7:39
  Yeah, it wasn't. It was very interesting and you
• 7:41
  do learn a lot and even in winter because there's not a lot
• 7:45
  to do in at a tea farm and that includes the tea farms, there's
• 7:50
  not a lot to do in winter. But they had like the best
• 7:53
  library ever, a lot of T books that you know are not printed
• 7:57
  anymore and so forth. So I was very happy by the time
• 8:01
  that I did spend most of my adult life learning Japanese
• 8:04
  because that's really a life project.
• 8:06
  But it turned out to be to pay off that was able to do or study
• 8:11
  about T at the T Research Center.
• 8:13
  Very interesting. How well does the knowledge
• 8:16
  getting transferred from the institute to the actual farmers
• 8:20
  or the factories? Like, is there a mechanism or
• 8:22
  like some sort of the education organization that does that or,
• 8:25
  you know, the institute does it themselves?
• 8:28
  So actually, contrary to what you might think, you can
• 8:30
  basically visit AT Research Center anytime you might want to
• 8:35
  give. So if you want them to guide you
• 8:38
  or something, but they're basically open to the public and
• 8:41
  especially if you're not restricted to, but especially if
• 8:44
  you are a Shizuoka resident and if you're a tea farmer, you
• 8:49
  could basically go there anywhere just, well, I mean,
• 8:51
  anytime, just to keep yourself updated on the latest news,
• 8:55
  whatever, if you want to get in touch with the researchers.
• 8:58
  And actually there are some farmers that are really
• 9:01
  interested in new cultivars in particular because if you're a
• 9:04
  tea farmer, you want to do something different from
• 9:06
  everybody else. Everyone's doing a Bukita, for
• 9:08
  example, though, and not recently a lot of people do see
• 9:10
  Hikaru. So there are like some of the
• 9:12
  cultivars that a lot of people or a lot of farmers are doing.
• 9:15
  But maybe if you're a tea farmer and, and if you want to do
• 9:19
  something unique just to stand out, what you can do is you can
• 9:23
  go to the tea Research Center and become one of those farmers
• 9:27
  who experiment with a new unregistered cultivars or not
• 9:32
  yet registered cultivars. So, and they do things like, you
• 9:35
  know, seminars and different kinds of gatherings.
• 9:38
  And I think they're quite closing contact with not only
• 9:41
  tea farmers, but you know, anyone in the business
• 9:43
  basically, and, and also people working for the prefecture.
• 9:46
  So when I was there, when I was there for a year and I feel like
• 9:49
  people were, you know, coming in and out all the time.
• 9:52
  And basically we especially, I mean teen discreet people, but
• 9:57
  also media. So I think they're always like
• 9:59
  and very close, closely connected to, to the public.
• 10:03
  So we can just walk in and like spend the day.
• 10:05
  Walking. But you might want to give them
• 10:06
  a heads up, especially if you're a foreigner and especially if
• 10:10
  you don't speak Japanese. You might want to have a
• 10:12
  Japanese speaker with you that could, you know, translate.
• 10:17
  It's quite fun to visit actually.
• 10:18
  I think I highly recommend it actually, especially the the
• 10:21
  kind of mini tea factory that I was talking about earlier.
• 10:26
  Both I think killed us. The one in kilter, the one in
• 10:30
  Uji is I think they renewed it is probably more maybe more than
• 10:34
  10 years ago now, but it's it's a quite nice looking building.
• 10:37
  And actually the one in Shizuoka too, when I was there is quite
• 10:40
  rundown. And they certainly needed some
• 10:43
  renovation. And, and guess what it's
• 10:45
  actually done now. It's isn't a place called
• 10:47
  Kikugawa City, but the whole area is called Makinoha Makinoha
• 10:51
  Daichi, which is like a plateau basically, more or less with
• 10:55
  basically only tea farms and some residential areas.
• 10:58
  But there's like tea farms as far as you can see basically.
• 11:01
  And then there's this tea Resource Center that finally
• 11:04
  looks nice now. It's supported by MAF like the
• 11:07
  Ministry of Agriculture and Fishery Forestries.
• 11:11
  So actually there this is very confusing, but there are two
• 11:16
  different T risk research centers on the same Rd. but
• 11:19
  they're in different municipalities.
• 11:21
  The one is in Shimada, and that one is very close to the that
• 11:26
  one is very close to the the tea Museum by the way they have
• 11:29
  there. So that's another reason for
• 11:30
  visiting that area. This is in the central part of
• 11:32
  Shizuka, but that one is actually the National Tea
• 11:36
  Research Center, which is sponsored by the the Ministry of
• 11:39
  Agriculture in Japan, as you mentioned.
• 11:42
  And there's another one further down the road, which is not a
• 11:46
  National Research center. It's a prefectural.
• 11:49
  So it's run by the Shizuka Prefectural Government and
• 11:52
  that's the one. Why was it?
• 11:53
  I guess so this is essentially much a podcast, but if listeners
• 11:57
  are somewhat familiar with the Sincha and Sincha cultivars,
• 12:01
  just to drop a few names here, some of the cultivars that were
• 12:03
  bred at the T Research Century and Shizuoka would be caution,
• 12:07
  for example. Very floral.
• 12:08
  Yeah, I'm caution. And what else?
• 12:11
  Yamakaya for example, I just name a few of.
• 12:14
  Both Sam and I got to try Kotian when we were a koto tea space in
• 12:17
  Bangkok from. Brand, you mentioned that.
• 12:19
  Oh, you mentioned in Kotovar. I just came back from a series
• 12:23
  of sessions, one of the best tea shops or tea spaces in the
• 12:26
  world, I said. They, I, I, I don't like
• 12:28
  classifying myself as someone who doesn't like sencha.
• 12:32
  I think I don't like most sencha.
• 12:34
  But actually it was the Kotian cultivar from your brand Senchi
• 12:38
  ISM that they brewed that really opened my mind.
• 12:41
  OK, wow, there's more dimensions to this than I thought.
• 12:45
  And what they do is variable temperature extractions.
• 12:48
  Really interesting. Or they start cold and get
• 12:50
  hotter and hotter. Was also kind of made me see
• 12:53
  sencha in a really new way. So very inspiring for my own
• 12:58
  like personal brewing, even for matcha.
• 13:00
  Like I've started to experiment with these variable
• 13:02
  temperatures. It's great to hear actually,
• 13:04
  because I remember having quotient for the first time.
• 13:07
  I was back in 2013. I just moved to Tokyo and I was
• 13:10
  basically one of those salary men.
• 13:13
  I had a corporate job here in Japan.
• 13:15
  I was working for a Japanese company and I was trying to get
• 13:18
  my tea instructor certificate, which was kind of hard to study
• 13:21
  on the side because, you know, long working hours, a lot of
• 13:25
  late. And I work basically and a lot
• 13:27
  of, you know, drinking with your colleagues, although those kind
• 13:31
  of things. But I kept studying tea and I
• 13:34
  went to this workshop held by a Japanese tea instructor just to
• 13:38
  motivate myself. This was on a weekend quite
• 13:40
  early after I'd moved to Japan. I was sort of caution.
• 13:44
  I just thought it was amazing. It's like, you know, I had this
• 13:47
  image of sencha in my head being mostly about the the green
• 13:51
  flavors and it's, you know, being a good balance of
• 13:55
  astringency, umami, all those kind of things.
• 13:56
  And but mainly about the green flavors kind of for us like
• 13:59
  aromas going on. And then caution has something
• 14:02
  completely different. It's like floral and then it's
• 14:06
  like a cinnamon like after taste.
• 14:08
  That's always great. So it kind of changed my
• 14:10
  perception of Sincha. And that was after having, you
• 14:14
  know, been ranking sencha for 10 years or so.
• 14:16
  So, so it's wonderful to hear that a lot of other people out
• 14:20
  there get a similar reaction. I have a question about the the
• 14:24
  research institutes and just the general structure of these
• 14:27
  different government bodies in Japan.
• 14:29
  There's like the auction houses, like you hear about the Shiosa
• 14:33
  Shizuoka auction house and the Kyoto 1 and that system and then
• 14:39
  you have these research centers and then you have the
• 14:41
  cooperatives. And I know like the Kyoto T
• 14:45
  cooperative associations like enormous, it's like 160 members
• 14:49
  or 130 something like that. How do these different entities
• 14:54
  interact with each other and how are they funded?
• 14:57
  Is it all from government support?
• 15:00
  Is it self supported? Is what's the ecosystem is a
• 15:04
  little fuzzy and how all of that's connected.
• 15:06
  So basically the the research centers, they're entirely ex
• 15:10
  funded. So they're either government
• 15:12
  funded as in funded through or via the the Minister of
• 15:16
  agriculture or one of the prefectural governments.
• 15:20
  OK, Well, for example, in the case of the Shizuoka Tea
• 15:24
  Research Center, they are funded by the whole organization, the
• 15:29
  premises, everything is funded by the local government as in
• 15:32
  the prefectural government. So that means that, for example,
• 15:35
  research at that particular tea Research Center is mainly aimed
• 15:40
  for benefiting tea farmers or any anyone, you know, in tea in
• 15:46
  Shizuoka. Now, this is not always entirely
• 15:50
  possible because let's say you're from me or whatever, or
• 15:54
  some other fairly nearby place and you go to Shizuoka and you
• 15:57
  want one of their cultivars. They're not very likely to stop
• 16:01
  you as in or, you know, to say, no, we're not going to give our
• 16:04
  cultivars to you because you're not part of Shizuoka.
• 16:07
  So it's not like, you know, not trying to, it's not like trying
• 16:11
  to stop like industrial espionage or something from, you
• 16:14
  know, foreigners coming, coming in trying to find out things
• 16:17
  about your industry or something.
• 16:19
  It's not on that level. But there is.
• 16:21
  So for example, in, in the case of so God, they think about the
• 16:25
  local climate whenever they are developing or breeding
• 16:29
  cultivars, those kind of things. And whatever research they
• 16:32
  conduct, you know, the whole, the main premise would be how
• 16:35
  does this benefit or how would this benefit or how would the
• 16:38
  results of this benefit the farmers or anyone in T in the
• 16:42
  prefecture? So As for the other ones,
• 16:43
  cooperatives there and mainly privately funded.
• 16:46
  So it's a completely different. So, but if you're asking me
• 16:50
  about the, the ecosystem and how it works, I think the T research
• 16:53
  centers, they're, they're essentially open for everyone
• 16:56
  actually. So you can, I mean, if you want
• 16:58
  to read the reports, if you want any information, you can get in
• 17:01
  touch with them. It's not like they're, you know,
• 17:03
  it's not like a private company, you know, OK, it's not like, OK,
• 17:06
  so we're developing this new whatever semiconductor and, and
• 17:11
  it's a lot better than our competitors.
• 17:13
  We don't know, we don't want anyone to know about this or how
• 17:16
  we do it basically. So it's kind of the opposite way
• 17:19
  around actually. So they do want people to use
• 17:21
  their cultivars. They do want people to.
• 17:24
  Interest and do the institute's talk to each other as well.
• 17:27
  The institute's as in the She's a professional Research Center
• 17:31
  and the national, for example, or.
• 17:33
  Yeah. Or like other teen institutes
• 17:35
  from other regions, like do they like exchange their insights or?
• 17:40
  They do. And I think there's a lot of
• 17:44
  personal interactions as well as in private, because if you're in
• 17:48
  T and if you're doing research on T, then this is a small
• 17:52
  world. So you're very likely to, let's
• 17:54
  say someone's doing research on fertilizers and you're doing it
• 17:58
  as well, then you're very likely to interact at some point.
• 18:01
  So I'd say yes, they do that, of course.
• 18:03
  And if there's been research on something at the National
• 18:07
  Research Center, they might make use of that in Chisoka and vice
• 18:10
  versa. Interesting.
• 18:12
  And the auction system is totally different or it's tied
• 18:15
  to one of those two. So those are a little different
• 18:18
  because they work different in different regions, different
• 18:21
  prefectures. So for example, some in some
• 18:24
  prefectures you're only allowed to join if you're actually if
• 18:29
  your business is based in the prefecture, whereas there are
• 18:32
  some places that are open for everyone.
• 18:35
  So you can actually be for example, in shizzle, it can be
• 18:37
  from Tokyo, for example, and you can still go to the tea market
• 18:40
  and shizzle cut and purchase tea.
• 18:41
  Some of them are closed and so like the one in.
• 18:45
  I heard the one in Kagoshima is like super closed.
• 18:48
  It's like a little oligopoly if we can get that material.
• 18:51
  I think so I think it's maybe I think they're working different
• 18:55
  way because I mean they've been developing along very different
• 18:59
  lines. For example, Shizuoka is
• 19:01
  although being one of the biggest T1 regions in Japan.
• 19:05
  So it was the biggest for a very long time.
• 19:07
  It has developed not only as AT1 region, but also as a place
• 19:11
  where they do things like T refining and also T blending.
• 19:14
  So for example, you mentioned Kagoshima, actually Kagoshima's
• 19:18
  biggest customer, most important customer used to be Shizuoka,
• 19:23
  not as a perfector obviously, but you know, tea businesses in
• 19:25
  Shizuka taking as a whole until not so long ago.
• 19:29
  Actually, if you were selling something, if you if you, you
• 19:33
  bought Shizuka tea could actually contain a lot of tea
• 19:35
  from Kagoshima. They changed the regulation.
• 19:38
  So if you want to sell something as Shizoka tea, it has to be
• 19:42
  100% made in Shizoka. The raw tea the has to be 100%
• 19:47
  grown in Shizoka. But that didn't used to be the
• 19:50
  case. So let's say if we rewind back
• 19:52
  to the 70s or something, they would still buy a lot of tea
• 19:56
  from Kagoshima blended with Shizoka.
• 19:57
  So it's she's always essentially the name of a blend.
• 20:01
  I think since the, the along those lines, if you look at it a
• 20:05
  place like Kagoshima, they kind of started out as an, as an
• 20:09
  exporter kind of in a way. I mean, they're not exporting
• 20:13
  overseas, but they're selling most of their teas now.
• 20:17
  What they're what they've been trying to do.
• 20:19
  And this is actually quite new. A lot of people are, you know,
• 20:22
  used to seeing teas like Chirancha and, you know, or
• 20:25
  Kagoshima tea, pure tea as in from from Kagoshima as in, you
• 20:29
  know, containing only or from Kaboshima Prefecture.
• 20:33
  This is quite a new phenomenon, actually.
• 20:35
  So they used to ship their teas either to Shizuoka or to Uji.
• 20:38
  So I think that's kind of them kind of wanting to be in control
• 20:42
  and the tea industry. Whereas a place like Shizuoka,
• 20:45
  you probably benefit more from, you know, having people come in
• 20:49
  tea tea vendors, tea dealers from places like Tokyo to come
• 20:53
  in and buy your tea where because you already buy tea from
• 20:56
  a lot of different places. And basically your mission has
• 20:59
  been to push that kind of onwards or to different markets.
• 21:03
  Whereas in Kagoshima, it's about getting Kagoshima tea out
• 21:07
  basically only. And it's not you don't you don't
• 21:09
  buy any tea from other prefectures and in Kagoshima, at
• 21:13
  least not to a considerable degree at the moment.
• 21:15
  So that's probably why they have, yeah, murdered down.
• 21:20
  Yeah, exactly. Yep.
• 21:22
  Interesting. Well, yeah, you can just see
• 21:25
  Oscar this podcast expand way beyond the topic of matcha.
• 21:29
  Exactly. I think we're touching on
• 21:30
  subjects that are common for both leafty and matcha.
• 21:34
  I think when we were speaking couple of weeks ago, I remember
• 21:38
  that we, we talked about, you know, could you make cultivars
• 21:42
  that taste like caution and then kind of turn it into matcha
• 21:46
  making the matcha floral or, you know, herbal And that makes it
• 21:51
  kind of interesting if you think of the possibility of that.
• 21:53
  I think though, the answer is at least for now, because we, we,
• 21:58
  we do kind of know actually, because you can try this, you
• 22:00
  can grow caution or see he cut it or some, some kind of floral
• 22:05
  fruity cultivar and shade it for three weeks.
• 22:08
  If you want to make, let's say you want to make proper matcha
• 22:10
  and then you do all the things necessary.
• 22:13
  You, you hand pluck it and then you steam it and then you dry it
• 22:18
  without rolling. And finally you take out the
• 22:21
  veins and everything. You do what you, you know, you
• 22:23
  produce tincha basically, and then you mill, mill that stone
• 22:27
  meal and you end up with matcha. Will it taste quotient?
• 22:31
  There is an interesting part. Probably not because you shave
• 22:34
  for three weeks, right? So it's shaped for three weeks,
• 22:37
  you get the shaded flavor, right?
• 22:38
  The kind of seaweed like in Japan, it's quite common to
• 22:42
  describe it kind of like kind of as Al naughty, which is it's a
• 22:45
  type of seaweed that you that you put on okonomiyaki popular
• 22:51
  dish here. I think a lot of people probably
• 22:54
  like Japan, so a lot of your listeners are probably familiar
• 22:57
  with okonomiyaki, but it's the kind of like powdery green
• 23:01
  bluish kind of seaweed powder that you put on okonomiyaki and
• 23:06
  it has a similar flavor. Actually, there is a, there is a
• 23:09
  molecule and dimethyl sulfate that you get a lot of when you
• 23:12
  shade, especially if you shade for more than 10 days, you start
• 23:15
  getting this jaded aroma or oikos is also called in
• 23:19
  Japanese. And as you get more oyka, you
• 23:24
  lose other cultivar flavors. So you're much is not going to
• 23:29
  taste like quotient, sadly. But you then again, you never
• 23:33
  know because I mean, if you look at, I don't know, maybe we
• 23:35
  should make a visit to the, the Uji research station because I
• 23:39
  think what they probably have done so far is they've been
• 23:43
  developing or breeding cultivars that are good for shading.
• 23:46
  And I think, I mean, there are two perspectives here. 1 is the
• 23:51
  tea plant should be good at being shaded, as in it should
• 23:55
  not, you know, get too weak from shading.
• 23:58
  So it has to be, you know, tolerant enough to the stress
• 24:02
  involved in being being shaded. But I also think that, and this
• 24:06
  is actually similar to most cultivars and when it comes to
• 24:08
  sencha, because in the case of sencha, we got your Bukita,
• 24:11
  right, which is the main cultivar.
• 24:12
  And most of the other cultivars have actually been bred to bred
• 24:17
  kind of in order to get mixed with or blended with Yabukita.
• 24:21
  So cultivars like those kind of flavorful cultivars, it's a very
• 24:26
  new phenomenon. I think tea character.
• 24:29
  Exactly. I think people who, you know,
• 24:32
  tea enthusiasts, aficionados, whatever people that are into
• 24:36
  tea, beef tea today, they want, you know, the different flavor
• 24:40
  flavors and different taste experiences.
• 24:43
  But that wasn't necessarily the case.
• 24:44
  You know, let's say like 30-40 years ago, the most teas were
• 24:48
  blended and we didn't really have a single estate Japanese
• 24:50
  tea scene. So if you breed something like
• 24:53
  caution in the 70s or 60s, it's not going to pass.
• 24:58
  It's going to be discarded. It's going to be one of those
• 24:59
  cultivars that the researchers discard because it's it's too
• 25:04
  flavorful. It's not going to, you know, be
• 25:06
  easy to blend. So you want something that
• 25:08
  tastes similar to Yabuka. And then if we jump back to
• 25:10
  matcha, I think, you know, we have cultivars like Samidori,
• 25:15
  Asahi and Ujikari. And of course they're a little
• 25:18
  bit different. But I mean, let's be honest,
• 25:20
  you're not like extremely different from each other.
• 25:23
  So if we go back to sencha again, like Yabukita and Koshan,
• 25:27
  those are entirely different, very different.
• 25:30
  I think they're like, you know, this is like Pinot noir and I
• 25:33
  don't know, covering this onion or something.
• 25:35
  I don't know if that's a good reference entirely, but it's not
• 25:38
  a perfect analogy. But if you can't separate those
• 25:40
  two, you probably didn't have a lot of red wine in your life.
• 25:44
  So, and saying with caution, and they're very, very different.
• 25:47
  Now let's go back to Samidori and Asahi.
• 25:50
  Let's make a blind test. I mean, there's a difference.
• 25:53
  There is a difference. Of course it is.
• 25:54
  I mean, I think outside is a little more thick, like more
• 25:57
  avocado, like kind of in this texture and taste.
• 26:01
  It's kind of grows in the mouth, something that it tends to be a
• 26:03
  little bit more fresh. So there's a difference here.
• 26:06
  But I mean, it's, it's possible to make a mistake, right?
• 26:09
  I don't think it's possible to make a mistake if you compare
• 26:12
  your work done caution, unless you know there's something wrong
• 26:14
  happened during processing or something.
• 26:16
  But I think it's a lot more difficult when it comes to
• 26:18
  matcha. And this could actually be one
• 26:20
  reason, could be that most of the culture rest bred from
• 26:23
  matcha so far has been bred so as to kind of resemble each
• 26:27
  other because they're blends anyway.
• 26:29
  But maybe because now we're thinking in a different way.
• 26:33
  Now people want different, you know, flavor experiences and
• 26:36
  people are looking for something more diverse.
• 26:40
  You don't want exactly the same thing every day.
• 26:42
  Also, I think this is not only consumers or tea, tea drinkers,
• 26:45
  whatever. I think this is also about how
• 26:48
  tea companies work because you won't if you, if you run a
• 26:52
  matcha company, you probably prefer that your matcha tastes a
• 26:56
  little bit different from your competitors.
• 26:58
  Whatever, at least a little different.
• 27:00
  So I think there's probably demand for making matcha that
• 27:04
  tastes quite different. Is it possible?
• 27:06
  And in in that case, to what extent, I don't know.
• 27:10
  Actually I think we, we need probably like, you know, another
• 27:13
  1520 years maybe before we could see like really strong flavored
• 27:18
  matcha. That's interesting.
• 27:20
  The breeding is a slow process. The.
• 27:22
  Purpose of breeding is, you know, people are developing all
• 27:25
  these cultivars with the mindset of blending and, you know, with
• 27:29
  the mindset of maintaining consistency and with the mindset
• 27:32
  that's not having one cultivar being too, you know, different
• 27:35
  from the others. I don't know.
• 27:38
  Yeah. You know, like with all these
• 27:39
  global trend about, you know, single estate and single origin
• 27:42
  and single cultural matcha, people are going to look for
• 27:45
  novelties. I don't know if that has has
• 27:47
  been down to the local production and you know, team
• 27:50
  research in Japan. I think it has, but I think one
• 27:53
  thing everyone needs to understand is that it takes a
• 27:56
  lot of time to breed a cultivar. So basically what you do is
• 27:59
  let's say you have Yabukita and so you need a flowering
• 28:04
  Yabukita, which happens in late October typically, but depends a
• 28:07
  little on where in Japan you are.
• 28:10
  And then let's say you want to mix this Yabukita with or cross
• 28:14
  breeded with, well, let's say caution.
• 28:17
  So what you do is you have a flowering Yabukita and then you
• 28:20
  take pollen from a flowering caution and you insert that
• 28:25
  pollen into the flower. Then you put actually what you
• 28:28
  do is you put a small bag or a kind of sack licking thing on
• 28:34
  top of the flower because you don't want any other pollen
• 28:36
  coming in there. You want to make sure that you
• 28:38
  actually get the, the, the desired mix of those two.
• 28:42
  You can of course, do it the other way around if you want
• 28:44
  the, the caution to be, if you want caution to be the mother
• 28:47
  plant, you can do the opposite way around.
• 28:49
  Anyway, you need two different flowers to, to to get a seed.
• 28:53
  And if you're lucky, you get a seed next year, first of all.
• 28:56
  OK, so that's one year. You plant that a couple of
• 28:59
  months later in a small pot and then you keep that in the
• 29:02
  greenhouse. And eventually, if you're lucky,
• 29:04
  you actually do get a small tea plant.
• 29:06
  And if that survives, you probably replant it in a kind of
• 29:11
  nursery just outside where you keep a lot of new cultivars or
• 29:16
  cultivar candidates if you like. And you see that survives.
• 29:19
  If it does, you get small tea plant eventually.
• 29:22
  And when it's 2-3 years old, you can start plucking a little bit
• 29:25
  in spring. And then you can use those
• 29:28
  leaves, steam them and process them into something that
• 29:32
  probably wouldn't call, call it, you know, sencha, but you know,
• 29:35
  something resembling sencha in one of those mini factories that
• 29:39
  you have at the Tea Research Center.
• 29:40
  And then what you do is you have the researchers, they do the tea
• 29:44
  evaluation and they realize that, oh, 90% tastes awful.
• 29:48
  Let's just discard these. The other 10% survives and or
• 29:53
  they get to survive. And what you do is then you see,
• 29:56
  oh, do they grow healthily or are they likely to, you know,
• 29:59
  catch different kinds of disease like fungi and those kind of
• 30:02
  things? And so that's another like two
• 30:05
  or three years. Then eventually you multiply it.
• 30:08
  So you take cuttings now eventually you get like a small
• 30:11
  tiny hedge tea plants. So you can now process tea in
• 30:15
  the not the mini factory, but the just slightly tiny factory.
• 30:20
  And then eventually you keep repeating this and after 1012
• 30:24
  years what you do is OK now. Now is the time to actually let
• 30:29
  these cultivar candidates go and see what happens if we actually
• 30:34
  have them grown by actually tea farmers.
• 30:38
  So you look for volunteers, tea farmers that are interested in
• 30:42
  basically experimenting, sacrificing a part of their plot
• 30:46
  to try to grow these new cultivars.
• 30:49
  And you give them cuttings basically.
• 30:51
  And they're still calls is four or five O 3, whatever.
• 30:56
  Like they just have a number basically and the farmers they
• 31:01
  produces. And so you if this isn't she's
• 31:04
  OK for reason, we probably probably do this in a few
• 31:06
  mountainous regions and then some.
• 31:09
  You'd also experiment. You also want the farmers to do
• 31:12
  this in more flat areas so you can see how the tea plant
• 31:15
  behaves in both cases. Exactly because you also want to
• 31:19
  make you need to make a decision.
• 31:20
  It's going to be, you know, cultivar for steam, deep steam
• 31:24
  tea or like Gummichi or is it going to be a cultivar for, you
• 31:27
  know, high mountain or like high altitude places.
• 31:31
  So you have to take those kind of decision decisions and you
• 31:34
  you bring back all the data, you evaluate the tea and then
• 31:40
  finally, after a couple of years, say, no, we finally have
• 31:42
  this cultivar. It kind of tastes like chocolate
• 31:45
  or whatever. It's really unique.
• 31:46
  It tastes like nothing we have ever seen before.
• 31:49
  And it actually survives, you know, it doesn't die every
• 31:54
  summer because you know, it gets attacked by moths or whatever.
• 31:57
  So OK, let's give it a name and spread it.
• 32:00
  And actually by by the time that happens probably at least 20
• 32:04
  years have got passed since you mixed, you know, the pollen, you
• 32:09
  know from the cochin flower with the yelukta, so.
• 32:13
  That's. Crazy.
• 32:14
  At least 20 years. So when I was at the Research
• 32:17
  Center, that's eleven years ago now, which means whatever I bred
• 32:22
  there, if it ever gets registered, it's probably
• 32:25
  another 1213 years. So we're looking for new matcha
• 32:29
  cultivars. But we want it now, right?
• 32:31
  Because now matcha is popular, right?
• 32:33
  So maybe you want a purple matcha or something, or you
• 32:37
  know, maybe maybe 1 of matcha with, I don't know, slightly
• 32:40
  floral herbal flavor. I don't know if it's possible or
• 32:44
  not. But if it's possible, I mean,
• 32:45
  it's going to take a long time to breathe this unless you do
• 32:48
  things like genetic engineering or something.
• 32:51
  I mean, the current, current ways of breeding cultivars, it
• 32:56
  takes about 20 years before we can actually get, you know, all
• 32:59
  the results needed for, for taking the decision that, OK,
• 33:03
  this is the one we're going to register.
• 33:05
  It's kind of insane to think about.
• 33:07
  For all the matcha that's been unpopular today, it was actually
• 33:11
  being developed like 20 years ago with a very different
• 33:14
  mindset and goals. Exactly.
• 33:16
  So there's timelike here. Quite amazing timelike I think,
• 33:19
  yeah. Is it possible to do some like
• 33:21
  cultivar arbitrage? Are there cultivars that exist
• 33:24
  in Taiwan or in mainland China or in Korea that might just be
• 33:30
  very suitable for shaded cultivation and matcha
• 33:33
  processing? Because we've heard that Long
• 33:35
  Jing 43, there's some Chinese producers and we've actually
• 33:40
  tried some samples. I mean, it doesn't hold a candle
• 33:43
  to at least the ones we tried to anything that comes out of
• 33:46
  Japan. But, you know, it also was like,
• 33:49
  wow, actually this case, like it could work if maybe someone like
• 33:54
  if a Japanese farmer had that cultivar, like probably could
• 33:57
  taste good using, you know, better techniques.
• 34:00
  But is there any like experimentation going on about
• 34:04
  the importing other cultivars that were developed elsewhere?
• 34:07
  Well, I mean, if your question is specifically about matcha, I
• 34:11
  would have to, you know, call the Research Center UG or, you
• 34:14
  know, wherever they do research on cultivars for for making
• 34:19
  shaded teas. But if we just talking generally
• 34:22
  about Japanese tea, there's actually a long tradition of
• 34:25
  importing cultivars or different kinds of tea plants from
• 34:27
  overseas. I think the biggest way was
• 34:30
  probably during the Meiji period the when Japan modernized
• 34:33
  because the important. Thing to think about, this was
• 34:36
  happening 150 years ago. Exactly.
• 34:38
  You didn't see that one coming because at the time, actually
• 34:41
  tea export was a really important industry for the whole
• 34:46
  tea industry was really important for Japan because it
• 34:48
  was one of the few ways they could actually gain foreign
• 34:51
  currency. The other big one was silk.
• 34:54
  But actually the second biggest export product at the time was
• 34:58
  tea. It was mainly sent shipped to
• 35:00
  the US and Canada, but also to European countries.
• 35:03
  But at the time, what happened was that the whole world market
• 35:07
  for tea was kind of changing in favor of black tea.
• 35:11
  Demand for black tea was rising, but Japan was essentially mainly
• 35:15
  producing green teas. And they try to make black tea.
• 35:17
  You can make black tea from, you know, Japanese cultivars.
• 35:20
  And actually, this is before cultivars.
• 35:22
  This is when we have seed propagated tea.
• 35:24
  So but exactly. But anyway, the tea farms or the
• 35:29
  tea plants that they had in Japan were essentially better
• 35:32
  for making green tea. So what they did was they went
• 35:36
  to India and sounds like a very simple thing to do, but I think
• 35:41
  a lot of people, Japanese people, they were actually
• 35:43
  risking their lives going to different mountainous regions in
• 35:46
  India to get seats. And basically for from tea
• 35:49
  plants that were good for making a processing black tea.
• 35:52
  And they were introduced to, to Japan in a number of different
• 35:55
  places. They were planted in a number of
• 35:57
  different places. But what happened is, or what
• 36:00
  happens is actually even now, if you plant Indian with the
• 36:03
  Asamika varietal in Japan is that it won't survive.
• 36:08
  It's simply too cold in Japan, especially in spring.
• 36:12
  Some places it's too cold in winter as well for the Asamika
• 36:15
  plant. But it's essentially the spring
• 36:17
  with all the frost in in March and so forth that because the
• 36:20
  Asamika varietal tends to grow very fast.
• 36:23
  So what they did was they cross bred the the Asamika T fine with
• 36:28
  the sinensis or the, the, the Chinese bread or that they
• 36:31
  they've had in Japan for a couple hundreds of years.
• 36:34
  And eventually we got things like or cultivars like Benny
• 36:38
  Fuki Benny home on it. For example, any of the Benny
• 36:42
  cultivars, those are black tea cultivars with, with Indian DNA.
• 36:48
  This actually, this has been going on for for quite a long
• 36:51
  time actually. And there has been a lot of
• 36:56
  cases where they've imported cultivars from Taiwan as well.
• 37:00
  If you go to the T Research Center in Shizulka, you should
• 37:04
  ask them to take you to the, the, the kind of DNA bank
• 37:09
  greenhouse. It's a small greenhouse where
• 37:11
  they have tea plants that actually among them.
• 37:14
  There are some of them that don't really look like tea
• 37:16
  plants. It's just, it feels like, I
• 37:19
  don't know, place where they're making like genetic engineering
• 37:23
  experiments or whatever. It's all, it's all natural.
• 37:27
  But they're, you know, they're tea plants from places like
• 37:30
  Myanmar, from China, whatever it's, they just keep them there
• 37:33
  just in case they'd be able to do something interesting.
• 37:36
  And a lot of them has been, a lot of them have been there
• 37:38
  since, you know, many decades back, like some even like 100
• 37:42
  years back or something. Or this is actually a long
• 37:45
  tradition. And I think it's more to do now
• 37:49
  because nowadays, you know, in the modern world, it's a little
• 37:52
  more tricky to import. Customers in and out.
• 37:57
  More cuttings? People are more protective,
• 38:00
  actually. Yeah.
• 38:02
  I mean, if you're, if you have Liz, you mentioned like Long
• 38:05
  Jing 43 or something. I mean, you probably want to
• 38:09
  keep that in Zhejiang or, you know, at least in, in China,
• 38:13
  you're Chinese and probably don't want, you know, the
• 38:15
  Japanese to. Yeah, it's more of a business
• 38:18
  athlete. This Meiji story sounds very
• 38:23
  much like a Japanese version of Robert Fortune, the Scottish
• 38:27
  botanist who. From China, but the other way,
• 38:31
  not into India, but yeah, being out India.
• 38:35
  Interesting. So actually nothing that we've
• 38:38
  talked about so far with what we had originally proposed to talk
• 38:42
  about, which is always great. But the conversation we were
• 38:48
  having two weeks ago was so fascinating to me.
• 38:51
  It's still resonating in my mind.
• 38:52
  And I was giving a suggestion to sort of talk about the single
• 38:56
  origin versus blended concept to put some color on that, You
• 38:59
  know, just as a consumer trying to learn tea, kind of bringing
• 39:02
  in a specialty lens. I was really into Chinese tea
• 39:04
  and coffee where like a sense of origin is super strong.
• 39:07
  Like you can pretty reliably learn the taste of different
• 39:09
  regions or different cultivars and getting into Japanese tea,
• 39:13
  spending all this money on uji matcha, and then very slowly,
• 39:17
  bit by bit learning that most of the ujimatcha I've ever was
• 39:21
  trying to associate a flavor with a place.
• 39:24
  Tywar was probably like mistraining.
• 39:28
  Like I was not drinking samples that were grown in uji.
• 39:31
  I was not learning tywar. I was learning like a blending
• 39:35
  style. And I really felt lied to as a
• 39:37
  just as a consumer like that. It's not ujimatcha.
• 39:40
  And we've learned that she's Woka, I guess now is she's woke
• 39:45
  up like reliably, but at one point it wasn't.
• 39:47
  And I've learned the same case for Nishio and some other
• 39:49
  regions. So I got really intrigued, was
• 39:53
  uji matcha ever from Uji? And at what point did it stop
• 39:58
  being from Uji? And you had such an interesting
• 40:00
  take that really took me back because even during like the Edo
• 40:03
  period when it was forbidden to grow matcha anywhere outside of
• 40:07
  Uji proper. And let me know if I'm
• 40:09
  mischaracterizing this, but your argument was it actually tawar
• 40:12
  doesn't really matter. It really has always been about
• 40:16
  fertilizer and processing technique that's driving these
• 40:19
  flavor profile outcomes and that great matcha and uji tastes.
• 40:23
  Testing matcha can theoretically be grown anywhere, and the magic
• 40:27
  is happening in the fertilizer and in the processing.
• 40:31
  Is that a fair characterization? In short, I'd say yes.
• 40:35
  I mean, so tea in general, especially well Japanese, your
• 40:38
  steamed green teas are less terror dependent or terror
• 40:43
  driven if you like. I think tea in general, though,
• 40:45
  we have to remember that when we drink tea.
• 40:48
  I mean, where are you guys right now?
• 40:50
  I'm in Tokyo. You're.
• 40:52
  In Paris. You're in Paris, Hong Kong, Hong
• 40:54
  Kong. So let's see, we're, we want to
• 40:56
  have the same tea, which happens sometimes people do those kind
• 40:59
  of tea gatherings, right? And you're in different parts of
• 41:02
  the world and you have the same tea, but it's not going to taste
• 41:04
  the same, right? It's 99.9% or so water, right?
• 41:08
  Give it to you. So which means that you're
• 41:11
  essentially drinking a lot of water.
• 41:12
  I think first of all, it gets affected by the water we use for
• 41:16
  brewing. But not only that, processing is
• 41:18
  also very important. So I think when we talked about
• 41:21
  this, I think I mentioned that. So just to slide back to sencha
• 41:25
  because it makes it a little easier to explain this.
• 41:29
  So for example, if you have a river, let's say the the Abbe
• 41:32
  river in Shizuoku or something, and you have tea farms on the
• 41:36
  east side of the river and tea France on the West side of the
• 41:39
  river. And then you try the different
• 41:42
  teas and you say, oh, they're actually, you know, tastes a
• 41:44
  little different. You know, West side is a little
• 41:45
  bit more astringent and the other one's a little more sweet,
• 41:49
  whatever. And if you're new to tea or like
• 41:53
  sencha and Japanese green tea, you're probably inclined to
• 41:56
  think that, oh, this must be, you know, the way the the sun
• 41:59
  hits the, you know, T plans or must be like exposure to some or
• 42:05
  something or, you know. Rainfall.
• 42:08
  Local climate, whatever. So you interpret this as a stir
• 42:12
  war and I think it's it's quite a natural thing to do.
• 42:14
  However, it turns out actually that things are quite different.
• 42:18
  What happens is so typically if you travel downstream kind of to
• 42:25
  the lower parts of the river, whatever lower altitude areas,
• 42:30
  there's typically a tea refining factory there.
• 42:33
  OK, so this this where they do the blending and it's also where
• 42:36
  they do the tea refining. So they have a style of
• 42:40
  refining, but nevermind actually the, there's a change even
• 42:44
  before that, because what happens is all of the tea
• 42:47
  farmers, probably at least if you're a tea farmer on the West
• 42:51
  side of the river, you probably ship your tea or hand over a
• 42:55
  large chunk of your production to the tea refiner on the West
• 43:01
  side. Whereas if you're on the east
• 43:02
  side, you probably, you know, ship your tea or hand over your
• 43:06
  tea to the the other tea refining factory that's on the
• 43:08
  east side of the river. So you have two different tea
• 43:11
  refining factories. And here's an interesting thing.
• 43:13
  So even if you're in the realm of Sincha sake of the argument
• 43:17
  and everyone's doing like kind of orthodox classic spontaneous
• 43:20
  scent just so it's like short steaming time, it's and they're
• 43:24
  probably using similar equipment as well made by any of the, you
• 43:28
  know, big key processing machine companies in Japan or makers in
• 43:32
  Japan. That would be either Tada or
• 43:34
  Kawasaki Kiko. But let's say they're using the
• 43:37
  same just for the sake of the argument.
• 43:40
  He's still going to taste a little different.
• 43:41
  But this is mainly because the T refining factory, they're
• 43:46
  basically the ones calling the shots.
• 43:48
  They're saying like, hey, I want you to, you know, steam this
• 43:51
  little slightly more, or like maybe you should roll this a
• 43:54
  little more. You know, the fine rolling
• 43:56
  should be like, you should do that for a little longer or
• 43:59
  whatever. They do all the quality
• 44:02
  evaluation and they give the feedback to the farmers.
• 44:05
  So the farmers essentially produce the tea that the tea
• 44:08
  refiners want. So there's pretty style.
• 44:12
  So this is not, you know, the sun exposure.
• 44:14
  This is actually, you know, what they've been instructed to do.
• 44:17
  So if you tell the people, let's say the, let's say the, the T
• 44:21
  refining factory on the West side goes bust for some reason.
• 44:25
  So now all the farmers suddenly have to ship their teeth to the,
• 44:28
  the factory on the east side. And they have capacity for this.
• 44:31
  So they, they managed to solve it somehow, but they're going to
• 44:34
  give new directions to the farmers.
• 44:36
  They're going to say no, no, no, actually, because we, we're
• 44:38
  making this blend here. So we want you to process this
• 44:41
  in a slightly different style and eventually both are going to
• 44:44
  taste the same basically. So this has more to do with who
• 44:48
  they actually hang out with as in who are they dealing with
• 44:52
  that What kind of tea refiner is is in charge of, you know, the
• 44:55
  blending and who's calling the shots basically.
• 44:58
  So, and if we look at this from a wider perspective, if you have
• 45:01
  if you have a tea plant, we already talked about black tea
• 45:04
  varietals imported from India, right?
• 45:06
  But you can still do make black tea from Yelukita or any
• 45:10
  Japanese green tea cultivar. So, So processing is more
• 45:14
  important than terroir obviously, because you can make
• 45:16
  such different things as, you know, black tea and green tea or
• 45:21
  long teas, whatever. So we have processing, and then
• 45:25
  we do have things like weather, actually, because if we do get a
• 45:28
  lot of sun exposure, you know, the tea is likely to taste more
• 45:31
  bitter is why shaded teas taste more sweet because less exposure
• 45:35
  to to sunlight, so more sweetness in the mummy.
• 45:38
  So we have processing, and we also have local climate as in
• 45:42
  exposure to sunlight and altitude, those kind of things.
• 45:45
  But we also have cultivars. Yeah.
• 45:47
  And I think of all the things affecting the taste and flavor
• 45:52
  of tea output, at least for Japanese green tea, I put
• 45:56
  terroir quite low. You, I think it would be the
• 45:59
  last thing. So we start with processing.
• 46:02
  And processing includes things as, you know, just slight
• 46:06
  differences in how you roll your tea, whatever.
• 46:09
  So it's not only, you know, are you making black tea or green
• 46:12
  tea or are you making, you know, deep steam tea or light steam
• 46:15
  tea processing effects at all? And then cultivation too.
• 46:19
  And that's going back to our matcha topic because you need a
• 46:23
  lot of fertilizers to get all that umami, you know, to get
• 46:27
  those soft leaves with a lot of nutrition.
• 46:29
  I think yes, you can kind of actually repeat this if you are
• 46:34
  in a completely different place. But then the question is even if
• 46:38
  you have, you know, the climate should be suitable enough for
• 46:41
  for making tea. So you can do this probably
• 46:43
  anywhere in any Tiguan region in Japan.
• 46:45
  But do you have a know how you know?
• 46:47
  So this is, you know, another aspect of terroir in a sense,
• 46:52
  because when you when we talk about terroir, we tend to
• 46:54
  exclude humans, right? We tend to talk about altitude,
• 46:58
  you know, soil, those kind of things.
• 47:00
  But if you use the word or the notion of potato or in a wider
• 47:04
  sense, you can actually include things like culture and history
• 47:07
  too. So, and Uji has developed, as
• 47:10
  you know, they produce a lot of different teas, but to some
• 47:12
  degree a macho producing or attention producing a region.
• 47:15
  So they have the know how they have the traditions, you know,
• 47:18
  that they have the the tea pickers, everything basically.
• 47:21
  So if you include that in terror and yeah, certainly it is, but I
• 47:25
  think it's it's very different, you know, from suggesting that,
• 47:28
  you know, because the soil is, isn't that also he tastes a
• 47:32
  little whatever. I think this is really
• 47:34
  different, difficult to taste difference from different kinds
• 47:39
  of soils and so on. Yeah, because it's so far down
• 47:42
  the list and you'd said? To shaded cultivation is kind of
• 47:45
  a homogenizer. Is it even possible to build a
• 47:47
  deductive tasting framework to work backwards and say you know
• 47:52
  this tea is from like for Akawa say cha or this tea is from Suji
• 47:57
  San or this tea is from Horaty Shiman based on the taste Like
• 48:02
  can we paste for information and work backwards or is there not
• 48:06
  enough like facts to learn from and reference samples to build
• 48:11
  that framework to actually blind identify reliably or like
• 48:16
  specific flavor is? Attributed mainly towards like
• 48:19
  cultivation or it's from processing, Yeah.
• 48:24
  Or this is from this fertilizer? This is natural versus synthetic
• 48:27
  or this is tonna shelf shaded or direct covering.
• 48:30
  Very complicated question, yeah, but I think.
• 48:32
  It's a very good question. And I think it's extremely
• 48:36
  difficult. First and foremost, I know for a
• 48:39
  fact that this is possible when it comes to Sencha because I
• 48:43
  know people and including myself, we've been doing things
• 48:45
  like, you know, tea guessing and those kind of things.
• 48:47
  And, and sometimes you can even tell, oh, this is this person's
• 48:50
  tea. And sometimes you can even see,
• 48:52
  you know, the tea leaves because tea leaves they're, they kind of
• 48:55
  give away. Actually, if you have a whole
• 48:57
  leaf tea and you do tea evaluation and you're using all
• 49:00
  the necessary tools or utensils for that, there's no source of
• 49:06
  like misinformation and you basically get what you get.
• 49:09
  Basically, when it comes to matcha, it's milled.
• 49:12
  It gets really tricky. I think it's a very good
• 49:14
  question. Yeah.
• 49:14
  Like you said, like they'll name a few different brands or a tea
• 49:18
  producers there. I think.
• 49:19
  I mean, there's certainly some degree of style there.
• 49:21
  I mean, like you mentioned Suji Song, for example, I think
• 49:24
  there's a richness in this matcha that is it's quite remark
• 49:28
  remarkable indeed. I think it's more, I mean, well,
• 49:33
  he has his he has his peculiar ways of fertilizing his tea
• 49:36
  farm. So I mean, but I think it's more
• 49:39
  those techniques actually, rather than, you know, the soil
• 49:42
  itself. So if you want to, you know, you
• 49:45
  want to backpack it or like to see what what's what.
• 49:47
  I think that's a such a good point.
• 49:50
  Tea leaf is such. A good giveaway when it comes to
• 49:53
  information feels like cheating because you actually.
• 49:55
  Look at tea leaves before you eat the tea.
• 49:58
  So you get a lot of data just from just by looking at the tea
• 50:04
  leaves basically. So yeah, you can't do that for
• 50:06
  matcha. Maybe for tensha, Definitely,
• 50:09
  yeah. Potential is also like.
• 50:11
  Fragment that you. It's hard to see like the the
• 50:14
  shape of the leaf, like it's hard to deduct, like, you know,
• 50:17
  different processing methods or cultivars.
• 50:20
  Anyway, I think, I guess, I guess maybe.
• 50:23
  That I feel like so much is more about well, it is, you know,
• 50:26
  there's a cultivar difference and then it is about how you
• 50:31
  cultivated the fields basically. So because there's no rolling
• 50:34
  process, right? So, and when it comes to teas
• 50:36
  like sencha, that's that actually affects the tasting
• 50:39
  flavor a lot like how it's processed basically and how it's
• 50:42
  rolled, whereas in much of there's no rolling process.
• 50:44
  So I'd say the percentage of, you know, what happens at the
• 50:47
  tea farm as opposed to tea factory is when it comes to much
• 50:51
  as more about the tea farm, even more about the tea farm because
• 50:54
  it's not as processed as as so. But having said that, I don't
• 50:58
  know, maybe I mean, it's like people.
• 51:03
  And this goes for Japan in in in many ways actually.
• 51:08
  So you know that back in the days when the, the tea from
• 51:12
  Togano was like considered to be the, the real tea and all other
• 51:16
  teas were like, you know, copies and they did these tea and
• 51:22
  guessing games. And when that was popular, I
• 51:26
  think, you know, people are trying to copy Togano basically.
• 51:28
  So they're basically doing or trying to do the same thing.
• 51:32
  And I think that's happening now again, maybe if people become
• 51:35
  even more experimental, whatever, try to do different
• 51:38
  things with matcha. I mean, that could be like any,
• 51:40
  anything from cultivars to, you know, processing.
• 51:43
  And I mean, there might be things we can do here.
• 51:45
  We don't realize it because, you know, it's been because
• 51:48
  everyone's trying to do the same thing.
• 51:49
  And that's how they've been doing things basically for, for,
• 51:53
  for decades or even longer. So there might be ways of making
• 51:56
  your matcha taste a little more unique.
• 51:58
  If we're excluding flavoring here, basically we're saying
• 52:01
  that it has to be, you know, only the taste from tea, not
• 52:05
  adding any like flavoring the other ingredients.
• 52:10
  Then I think the, I mean, it might be things you could do,
• 52:13
  but we're so focused on, or I mean, we as a not maybe I'm not
• 52:17
  a tea farmer, but I mean tea tea tea producers have been focused
• 52:21
  on making things kind of more or less in the same way because
• 52:26
  that's, you know, that's been the definition of a certain type
• 52:29
  of tea or a way that things have been done.
• 52:32
  There's a lot of tradition in there when you were referring to
• 52:34
  the period where they're. Doing these guessing games, I
• 52:37
  know that at some point in history that the Switch, like at
• 52:40
  some point single origin mattered.
• 52:43
  People cared. You could say there's market
• 52:46
  demand for it and it actually was single origin.
• 52:49
  And then slowly over time that did not become the case.
• 52:52
  So presumably during the ghetto period when there were, it was
• 52:56
  basically a state controlled oligopoly of different families
• 53:01
  or clans who were given the license to produce tensha and
• 53:05
  matcha only within Uji. How did, what was that history?
• 53:09
  And then how did it, how did we get to where we are today where
• 53:13
  you have all of this blending going on and the concept of
• 53:17
  origin was lost even though the consumer perception for it was
• 53:20
  not? Perhaps.
• 53:23
  I think maybe, maybe. In this case, it's helpful to to
• 53:27
  realize that I mean or to separate modern, the modern
• 53:32
  notion of single estate, single origin and why we are enjoying
• 53:37
  it in the first place from traditional, you know, single
• 53:41
  origin way of thinking thing. I think when it comes to the Edo
• 53:45
  period, I think it's a lot of, you know, kind of similar to a
• 53:49
  brand or something or actually it's, you know, this isn't the
• 53:53
  feudal. So we don't have an you
• 53:56
  mentioned there was an oligopoly system.
• 53:58
  Basically, there are only a few places that are allowed to are
• 54:02
  licensed to use shading for their for the tea farms
• 54:06
  basically. So this is not a free market.
• 54:08
  And I think maybe this is more like actually decided beforehand
• 54:14
  what's, you know, what's real tea and what's not tea.
• 54:17
  I mean, regardless of taste and flavor, whereas in the modern
• 54:21
  world, I think it's more like, OK, so we have back to our
• 54:24
  central cultivars. We have floral cultivars like
• 54:26
  Caution. We have, you know, the more
• 54:28
  classic ones like Elukta and they all taste very different.
• 54:31
  And I think, you know, we're not saying today that, you know,
• 54:35
  this book that's the real tea and all other teas are, you
• 54:38
  know, fake teas during like not good enough.
• 54:41
  We just say they're different, right?
• 54:42
  And I think that's a very modern approach.
• 54:45
  Well, it comes from, you know, things like wine and and also
• 54:48
  third way coffee, whatever, and has kind of like slowly entered
• 54:53
  the world of tea or the world of Japanese tea as well.
• 54:55
  So we see the same phenomenon going on.
• 54:58
  But this is very recent. So I mean, this has been going
• 55:02
  on for about 30 years now. So most teas basically were
• 55:05
  blend. All teas were blends basically.
• 55:07
  So any of the, you know, we've been talking a lot about
• 55:09
  cultivars and you mentioned some, you know, tastes and
• 55:13
  flavors from different cultivars, but essentially
• 55:15
  cultivars were bred not for the purpose of giving tea a
• 55:19
  different flavor or taste or something.
• 55:21
  But actually you have early cultivars, late cultivars and
• 55:25
  middle ones because you want to spread out your harvest.
• 55:28
  Basically, if you only have one cultivar, all your tea, it has
• 55:33
  to be plucked, you know, at the same time, and it's just going
• 55:36
  to clog your tea factory and your leaves are going to start
• 55:39
  withering and degrading well before, well, well, long before
• 55:42
  you you're even able to process everything.
• 55:45
  So that was the original idea with, you know, called for
• 55:47
  breeding. Then at some point a few people
• 55:50
  realized that, hey, wait a minute, they actually taste
• 55:52
  different. And I mean, this people who were
• 55:54
  into tea refining and also researchers, they knew this
• 55:58
  already, but people start realizing, hey, maybe we can do
• 56:01
  something like they do with, you know, Chateau wines, for
• 56:04
  example. You have, you know, this Melo
• 56:07
  from this particular place and it tastes like this because, you
• 56:10
  know, and of course, in the world of wine, we have the whole
• 56:12
  notion of the terroir as well. But just to make it easier for
• 56:15
  us, I think basically what people want to do was to offer a
• 56:19
  product or a tea that actually tastes different from all other
• 56:23
  teas. And maybe you can only produce
• 56:25
  this in small quantities. So let's say maybe you only get
• 56:27
  like 20 or 40 kilos a year. But hey, here is a tea that
• 56:31
  actually, you know, tastes very different from all other teas.
• 56:34
  And then from there we have now a multitude of, you know,
• 56:38
  different centas, a different, you know, green teas.
• 56:41
  And I think now, because we have all this, we feel like, and
• 56:45
  especially if you get into tea, let's say if you're, you know,
• 56:48
  from, from the US or Europe or something, and you start, you
• 56:52
  know, getting into Japanese tea and you drink a lot of different
• 56:54
  teas and you explore the differences and you find single
• 56:57
  cultivar teas and single state teas.
• 56:59
  And then at some point you ask yourself, why isn't there any
• 57:02
  more of this? Because this is so interesting.
• 57:05
  This is like, you know, but then you have to remember that that's
• 57:07
  a very new approach to Japanese tea in the 1st place.
• 57:11
  So only 30 years ago, everything was blends and no one thought
• 57:15
  about making, you know, single cultivar teas.
• 57:17
  All this, you know, thinking about enjoying different tastes
• 57:20
  and flavors, it's a very new thing.
• 57:22
  So what about the Edo period single estate or single origin
• 57:27
  teas? Well, first of all, they were
• 57:28
  very different because they didn't have cultivars.
• 57:31
  So if we want to call them single estate teas or single
• 57:35
  origin teas, we can do so, but we have to at least just to get
• 57:39
  our definition straight, we have to realize that they were not
• 57:44
  single estate teas in the same, you know, way modern teas are
• 57:51
  because they didn't have cultivars, they had only had
• 57:53
  zeiod or seed propagated teas. So they were essentially mix of
• 57:57
  different tea plants, kind of natural blends already.
• 58:02
  And so I wouldn't expect, you know, if you could travel back
• 58:05
  in time and go back to the Edo period and try different teas, I
• 58:10
  wouldn't expect them to, you know, you wouldn't find one tea
• 58:13
  from with a floral flavor and another one with, you know,
• 58:16
  first like flavor. I think it did be pretty similar
• 58:19
  actually in flavor, but the probably was so different
• 58:23
  because they process it differently.
• 58:25
  And this is before, you know, standardization and those kind
• 58:28
  of things. So before tea industry modernity
• 58:31
  plays, I mean, now we have more or less the same kind of
• 58:34
  equipment, you know, for or processing machines for, for for
• 58:39
  producing tea. But I mean, back in the Ito
• 58:40
  period, this is a lot of handmade stuff.
• 58:42
  So it'll taste a little different.
• 58:44
  I mean, this will be like, you know, try to make the same, I
• 58:48
  don't know, bolognese or something or, you know, any
• 58:52
  given dish. I.
• 58:53
  Mean you probably. Make it slightly different from
• 58:55
  from the way I make it. And even if we try to use this
• 58:58
  pretty much the same recipe, then it's going to taste a
• 59:00
  little different. And why is it different?
• 59:03
  Well, I mean, maybe you're using a different kind of salt and,
• 59:05
  you know, your spices are from a different place.
• 59:09
  You know, the meat could be from a different place.
• 59:11
  I mean, there's so many factors here.
• 59:13
  And I think back in those days, there's no probably no.
• 59:16
  I mean, even if there was an oligopoly system, I don't think
• 59:19
  there was, you know, like a modern institution, you know,
• 59:22
  people going to all those tea farms, you know, instructing
• 59:26
  them exactly on how to fertilize the tea farms and so on.
• 59:30
  I think this is, I mean, information travels a lot slower
• 59:33
  back in those days. So I think they're going to feel
• 59:36
  different for a lot of different reasons.
• 59:37
  But essentially because it's it's handmade, Do we want to
• 59:40
  call them single estate teas or single urgent teas?
• 59:43
  We can, but I mean it's very different thing from what we
• 59:46
  expect from single city teas today.
• 59:48
  Do you know when they started opening up and.
• 59:50
  Like having tensha brought in from like Wazuka, Ujitawara,
• 59:55
  Joeyo town, like E Day town, because there's a lot of people
• 1:00:00
  now that will label like Fuji Tawara or Wazukati and claim it
• 1:00:04
  to be Wujicha, which I was originally very skeptical of
• 1:00:08
  that claim because a modern single origin lens, it's not
• 1:00:12
  from Uji, right? Like how can you call it that?
• 1:00:14
  But then there's this historical argument that it was like the
• 1:00:18
  backbone of these blends. What's your take on that?
• 1:00:22
  Because to me, I think like, let's just not call something
• 1:00:25
  what it's not. Like if it's from that place,
• 1:00:27
  let's call it from that place, we can learn what that place is.
• 1:00:30
  It has its own merits and demerits its own style, its own
• 1:00:33
  history. So like, what's your take on
• 1:00:36
  like even answering like, what is wujicha right?
• 1:00:40
  There's a legal definition, there's the spirit of it,
• 1:00:42
  there's consumer perception. What's your take on that thread?
• 1:00:45
  Well, so the legal definition is it has to.
• 1:00:47
  Be well, it's T from 4 different places essentially, and it's,
• 1:00:51
  it's not only from Wuji, but the entire Kyoto prefecture and also
• 1:00:54
  the neighboring Shiga Nada, also me a prefecture.
• 1:00:58
  So for different prefectures. And I think if you, if you
• 1:01:01
  travel to Uji, which by the way, everyone should do, it's a it's
• 1:01:04
  a lovely little town and there are a few temples and shrines
• 1:01:07
  here well worth visiting as well.
• 1:01:09
  And it's very close to Tokyo's proximity to Kyoto.
• 1:01:11
  That's right, makes it very easy to to travel there.
• 1:01:14
  And so there's really no excuse. But one thing that probably
• 1:01:17
  strike you would probably strike you is that, you know, they're
• 1:01:20
  not not that many tea farms. If you looked at or if you were
• 1:01:24
  to look at the picture, a picture from, you know, central
• 1:01:27
  Fuji taken in the 50s or something, actually, they did
• 1:01:32
  still have quite a lot of tea farms.
• 1:01:34
  And the reason that they don't have so many tea farms these
• 1:01:38
  days is that because of the proximity to Kyoto and also
• 1:01:41
  because they have other assets, as in, you know, famous temples
• 1:01:44
  and so forth, they have a lot of people traveling there.
• 1:01:46
  People live there. If you go to mountainous tea
• 1:01:49
  grown region place like northern Chisawka, whatever any, any
• 1:01:52
  mountainous part of Kyushu or something, there's no reason to
• 1:01:57
  build an outlet or you know, any like commercial urbanization
• 1:02:03
  whatever like. There's no.
• 1:02:05
  Reason to build parking lot for example, but there's actually
• 1:02:10
  reasons between the parking lot, maybe you can make more money
• 1:02:12
  from, you know, just paving the ground, turning it into a
• 1:02:15
  parking lot if you're an Uji. So the whole math surrounding
• 1:02:20
  tea farm, tea farming, new G is very different.
• 1:02:22
  But even if you go back to, you know, say the 50s or even even
• 1:02:26
  pre war times as in before the Second World War, I mean even
• 1:02:29
  when they had a lot of tea farms in central Uji, they still
• 1:02:32
  wouldn't be able to make that much tea as in, you know, they
• 1:02:35
  can't supply the great demand for Uji tea.
• 1:02:39
  So this is essentially, I mean, they do grow some tea, but Uji
• 1:02:43
  is mainly or essentially a name of a brand.
• 1:02:48
  It's a tea that is made in a certain style they use.
• 1:02:50
  As for the leaf tea from Uji, they use a lot of shaded teas.
• 1:02:54
  So Fuji tea has a sweeter flavor profile if you compare it with
• 1:02:59
  the Shizuoka tea, for example, which is more a stringent in
• 1:03:02
  comparison. So Uji is basically the name of
• 1:03:05
  a brand. And I think from a modern
• 1:03:09
  perspective, we react to saying, hey, I feel like I'm being lied
• 1:03:12
  to because, you know, Fuji is a city or like, you know, a
• 1:03:14
  location. I wanted Uji tea.
• 1:03:17
  But you know, then you get this blend and most of it is from
• 1:03:21
  Mia, which is like a completely different place.
• 1:03:24
  And they actually grow a lot of tea and Mia, but most of it is
• 1:03:27
  shipped to Uji instead of getting sold as Mia tea.
• 1:03:31
  So but that's how you feel because you're a modern person,
• 1:03:34
  you're a modern tea enthusiast. That's not how people felt
• 1:03:39
  previously because people felt you buy tea.
• 1:03:41
  Buying tea is like not buying from a farmer, buying teas, you
• 1:03:45
  know, buying tea from a tea refiner, A wholesaler or
• 1:03:48
  something, you know, with a brand.
• 1:03:49
  And the taste and flavor is guaranteed by that person or
• 1:03:53
  that company basically. So.
• 1:03:56
  And that used to be the main approach to tea, basically, back
• 1:04:00
  in the days, the flavor was created by the chashi.
• 1:04:04
  By exactly by the chashi, not origin.
• 1:04:06
  The tea farmer, right? It's quite interesting.
• 1:04:08
  Like there's a. Lot of nuances like in all of
• 1:04:12
  these concepts and like it's really what really matters is
• 1:04:15
  like single like what like single origin or single in state
• 1:04:20
  or for the matter, like we should probably talk about like
• 1:04:23
  single factory or like single like plan or Google File.
• 1:04:27
  Like there's so many things that's going on.
• 1:04:30
  I think single factory is not bad at all actually.
• 1:04:32
  Because there is a style and they have all those cooperatives
• 1:04:35
  and there's there's always a head of the factory.
• 1:04:37
  And he does definitely because it's typically he most often.
• 1:04:41
  But anyway, they affect the taste of flavor a lot.
• 1:04:44
  I'd say so, But I'm saying it's an interesting thought.
• 1:04:47
  I think. I think, you know, the whole way
• 1:04:50
  of thinking when it comes to teas like VG, if you're in the
• 1:04:54
  tea industry, you don't feel like you did anything bad.
• 1:04:56
  It's like you just, you know, it's business as usual.
• 1:04:58
  They're like, we've been doing this for hundreds of years and
• 1:05:00
  you know, blending is part of it.
• 1:05:02
  And now suddenly you have, you know, the single origin people
• 1:05:05
  that are, you know, complaining about things like currency and
• 1:05:09
  stuff. But it was never an issue.
• 1:05:11
  I think actually, maybe I'm being a little cynical here, but
• 1:05:14
  I'm thinking back, you know, in the back in the days, and we
• 1:05:18
  traveled back in time to the Edo period again when they had the
• 1:05:21
  oligopolis system. This means that only a certain
• 1:05:24
  number of tea farms can grow shaded tea, right?
• 1:05:28
  How do you actually check back in?
• 1:05:30
  You know, this is like 200 or something years ago.
• 1:05:33
  Yeah. How do you Yeah, that was.
• 1:05:35
  Also, my my question too, because like there were three
• 1:05:38
  types of chashi, right, that were allowed to excusate the
• 1:05:41
  cultivation, but what were the relationship between those
• 1:05:44
  chashi and the gardens? Like they have their own gardens
• 1:05:47
  or like how did they work? No, so the the number of tea
• 1:05:51
  gardens. Actually, if you look at history
• 1:05:53
  has like a swung back and forth. So at some point it was like 39,
• 1:05:57
  at some point it was 35. So that number has changed, but
• 1:06:01
  they all had to be associated with any of those 3 Chachi's
• 1:06:04
  basically. But I'm thinking that you know
• 1:06:08
  what, if you because look at what's happening right now, we
• 1:06:11
  have a much shortage right now, right?
• 1:06:14
  And when things like that happens, quality is, I think
• 1:06:17
  it's really hard to maintain quality because a lot of people
• 1:06:21
  out there are tempted, you know, to blend their good matcha with
• 1:06:27
  bad matcha. Would you notice if you add 1%
• 1:06:31
  of whatever you know something is elasticity and?
• 1:06:34
  Fungibility in the supply of blended products.
• 1:06:37
  Exactly. And I think, you know, it's so.
• 1:06:39
  Many things are happening right now that we're completely, you
• 1:06:43
  know, thinkable just a couple of years ago, Matcha is supposed to
• 1:06:47
  be kind of stored and matured until fall October.
• 1:06:53
  That's when you start shipping your matcha and a lot of and
• 1:06:57
  matcha producers still do, But I also know that a lot of people
• 1:07:02
  just ship their whatever they had in spring because you know,
• 1:07:05
  there's a matcha shortage and there's a frenzy now.
• 1:07:08
  So suddenly we have young matcha kind of whatever, whatever you
• 1:07:12
  want to call it. And that's very regular for for
• 1:07:14
  the Japanese tea market. That's one thing.
• 1:07:16
  Another thing is that, you know, blends, they're adding more
• 1:07:21
  second harvest teas, more fall teas, more teas that are
• 1:07:25
  actually not much are just other powdered green teas, especially
• 1:07:28
  when it comes to, you know, all the blends and so forth.
• 1:07:31
  And I think this is just going to get worse and worse in the
• 1:07:34
  sense that it's going to be really difficult to tell what
• 1:07:38
  you actually have in there. So, but I mean, that said, of
• 1:07:41
  course there are reliable people out there still.
• 1:07:44
  But if we travel back in time again to the Edo period, what do
• 1:07:47
  you do if you have a matcha shortage in the Edo period?
• 1:07:51
  I mean, I'm thinking that maybe there's a tea farmer there.
• 1:07:54
  Maybe we can do some shading and we can just say that he's
• 1:07:56
  associated with us, whatever. I mean, there must have been
• 1:07:59
  loopholes. I mean, and how, how do they,
• 1:08:02
  how do they control this even, like, do they have tea police or
• 1:08:05
  like tea samurai police checking, you know, I think.
• 1:08:11
  Yeah, that's some shading. You got some shady business
• 1:08:13
  going on there. Yeah, it must be.
• 1:08:16
  I mean like because. Like later during that period
• 1:08:19
  that there were is they called a hair Tashi that kind of emerge
• 1:08:23
  in, you know, outer skirts of Fuji area that kind of represent
• 1:08:27
  the more, you know, peasant level tea farms that can also do
• 1:08:30
  shade the cultivation. So maybe, you know, at some
• 1:08:33
  point that kind of got out of control and the government just
• 1:08:36
  said, OK, you guys can do it too.
• 1:08:38
  I mean if you were associated with the right?
• 1:08:40
  People and you know, there might have been loopholes here, but
• 1:08:43
  I'm not saying this, you know, I mean, I mean, I don't know for a
• 1:08:46
  fact. I'm just thinking that, you
• 1:08:48
  know, systems change and governments change and, you
• 1:08:52
  know, feudalism is very different from, you know,
• 1:08:57
  system. We have each whole system that
• 1:08:59
  we have in modern Japan, which is more like capitalism
• 1:09:01
  oriented. And I still think that, you
• 1:09:04
  know, essentially humans are the same.
• 1:09:05
  We're the same. So and we react to whatever
• 1:09:08
  happens and you know, in our environment on the market.
• 1:09:13
  And just because the market operates differently doesn't
• 1:09:17
  mean that, you know, people don't.
• 1:09:19
  There's no official. History, but you know.
• 1:09:21
  How are we going to, you know, write the history of matcha now?
• 1:09:25
  We tend to forget that we're also like, you know, in a way,
• 1:09:28
  living in history. Like 20 years, 30 years from
• 1:09:31
  now, someone's going to write the book, you know, about the
• 1:09:33
  matcha boom or you know, the matcha frenzy that happened the
• 1:09:39
  twenty 20s. And how do you write that
• 1:09:41
  history? And what what were people
• 1:09:43
  drinking? Were people drinking, you know,
• 1:09:46
  traditional matcha? Or were they just drinking
• 1:09:48
  powdered green teas and just call them matchas?
• 1:09:52
  And you know, you know, how do you even do this?
• 1:09:54
  So if you go back in time, then we have the official history of
• 1:09:59
  the IT says that, you know, there there was like a license
• 1:10:01
  system or, you know, you had to be like a designated place where
• 1:10:05
  in order to shade your, your tea or tea farm.
• 1:10:09
  But you know, it's, it's humans operating not like a perfect
• 1:10:14
  it's, I mean, that's my greatest.
• 1:10:16
  Critique actually of the traditional system, which I
• 1:10:19
  totally respect by the way, and like all these old chashis and
• 1:10:22
  blend houses. But it's a system that's set up
• 1:10:26
  to remove a very interesting human story.
• 1:10:29
  Like the farmers, the processing, the cultivation
• 1:10:31
  techniques, the cultivars, right?
• 1:10:34
  Like the modern, like if you walk into a traditional blend
• 1:10:36
  house, everything about the product positioning and the
• 1:10:39
  experience is to abstract away any human decision that was made
• 1:10:46
  and give it a poetic name. Even the chashi's aren't that
• 1:10:49
  celebrated. You don't see very interesting
• 1:10:51
  stories of Chashi from this blender blending house or that
• 1:10:56
  blending house talking about even the relationship between
• 1:11:00
  the flavor and the poetic name, right?
• 1:11:02
  There's even a really interesting human story there
• 1:11:05
  about why we named it Yame no Shiro or something, or Uji no
• 1:11:09
  Shiro, or, you know, all of these different names.
• 1:11:12
  Let alone the processing, the blending, the aging, the
• 1:11:16
  refining, the production techniques, it all gets erased.
• 1:11:20
  It's not the point. And like the specialty movement
• 1:11:24
  of the single origin single cultivar products is really
• 1:11:28
  ultimately discovering one very interesting human story about
• 1:11:32
  the intentions and the decisions that get made at each point.
• 1:11:36
  And like, even like with your brand sensualism, right?
• 1:11:39
  Like it, it's about these cultivars, it's about these
• 1:11:41
  farmers, it's about these stories.
• 1:11:43
  We can talk about how Koshin got created and why and how and why
• 1:11:47
  it's super interesting. And in the traditional macho
• 1:11:50
  world, it's all erased. It's interesting how that do you
• 1:11:53
  see that swinging? Do you see these traditional
• 1:11:56
  companies changing the types of narratives that they tell?
• 1:12:01
  Because the consumer preference base is very different.
• 1:12:06
  I mean, you have a declining Japanese tea ceremony
• 1:12:09
  practitioner base. I think even in the last, like,
• 1:12:12
  what was it, 15 years, it's moved from 2 million to
• 1:12:14
  1,000,000 in Japan. Like I forget the exact numbers,
• 1:12:18
  but it's huge. And it's not growing abroad.
• 1:12:21
  So you have a very different consumer base that cares about
• 1:12:23
  very different things. Like do you think that switch is
• 1:12:27
  going to happen or do you think it's going to be super slow?
• 1:12:30
  Like how do you see this evolving?
• 1:12:32
  Well, I think first and foremost.
• 1:12:34
  When it goes to traditional matcha consumption in Japan, it
• 1:12:37
  has mainly been for the the tea sermonies, right?
• 1:12:40
  And interestingly, because I've been practicing the tea
• 1:12:44
  sermonies well at some degree. And one thing that I found very
• 1:12:48
  interesting was that after a tea Germany, you always look at the
• 1:12:55
  different utensils, the Tawan, the tea bowl and, and also the
• 1:13:00
  tea whisk and so forth. And, and typically the, the
• 1:13:02
  whole conversation is kind of oriented around talking about
• 1:13:07
  which style the different things are made in and so forth.
• 1:13:09
  But you don't really talk about the matcha so much.
• 1:13:12
  So I think matcha has been, of course, it's the center of the
• 1:13:16
  tea ceremony, but it's not, you know, it hasn't been enjoyed in
• 1:13:20
  the same way as you would enjoy, you know, an old burgundy red or
• 1:13:24
  something. It's, you know, it's and I think
• 1:13:27
  not like some long teas or leaf green teas that are more like
• 1:13:31
  inspiring you in their direction of, you know, being poetic,
• 1:13:37
  whatever, and you know, gives you a lot of associations.
• 1:13:39
  I think matcha has been more simple.
• 1:13:42
  And as such, you know, there hasn't been a demand until
• 1:13:46
  recently, you know, for great variations or, you know, the
• 1:13:50
  story of the farmer behind the matcha.
• 1:13:53
  I think that's changing now. And I can definitely see it
• 1:13:56
  changing here because I think we already mentioned Suji son,
• 1:14:00
  right? Jihad at Suji.
• 1:14:02
  I think that's that's probably the most famous matcha farmer
• 1:14:05
  out there. And I think he's probably a sign
• 1:14:09
  that everything is about to change or has changed already.
• 1:14:12
  I mean, because until a couple of years ago, you'd never hear
• 1:14:18
  about any farmer. You only hear about, you know,
• 1:14:21
  Maduka, Yemen or Yamamasaka, Yemen.
• 1:14:23
  Or like you have those refiners or wholesalers, whatever you
• 1:14:28
  want to call them that sell them matcha.
• 1:14:31
  They have their farmers, obviously, but they were
• 1:14:34
  actually very particular about not, you know, letting their
• 1:14:37
  farmers, giving their farmers any space and media, for
• 1:14:40
  example, whatever because they see it as, you know, matcha.
• 1:14:43
  We we're making matcha like their perspectives, like you as
• 1:14:49
  a new farmers, you're only making like parts.
• 1:14:52
  It's like it's like BMW or some, some car brand.
• 1:14:55
  Suddenly, you know, you have all the people that we actually made
• 1:14:58
  the you know, this thing for the engine or actually we made, you
• 1:15:01
  know this, which typically doesn't happen, right.
• 1:15:03
  So in the case of March, I think that has changed a lot in the
• 1:15:08
  last couple of years because you have people or farmers like
• 1:15:11
  Kiyoharat Siji, you have also just some farmers who have their
• 1:15:16
  own like tea cafes or you know, tea places where you can have
• 1:15:20
  much of. And that wouldn't happen like 15
• 1:15:24
  years ago or so. This is very new.
• 1:15:26
  So it is changing and I think the tea industry has got gotten
• 1:15:32
  a little softer, as in I think it's a little friendlier now.
• 1:15:38
  They were extremely protective back in the days.
• 1:15:42
  And I can feel it too, actually, you know, because I've been here
• 1:15:44
  now for I've been in Japan for more than 10 years.
• 1:15:48
  And I feel like there is a new generation taking over sort of
• 1:15:52
  because a lot of tea wholesalers, they used to be
• 1:15:55
  very conservative and very sensitive about.
• 1:16:00
  And even for leaf tea too, they wouldn't, you know, want, you
• 1:16:03
  know, people to visit their farmers.
• 1:16:05
  And, you know, this kind of afraid that, you know, the
• 1:16:08
  farmers will just, you know, start selling directly.
• 1:16:10
  That's of course 1 thing they're worried about.
• 1:16:13
  But also I think that it's, it's almost like a question of
• 1:16:19
  ideology or something. It's like for a lot of people in
• 1:16:22
  the tea industry, and this includes people with a
• 1:16:25
  certification like so I'm a certified Japanese tea
• 1:16:28
  instructor. And I think that, you know, for
• 1:16:31
  a lot of us, we don't consider Aracha or like roti as a, we
• 1:16:35
  don't consider it a product really.
• 1:16:36
  So this is like, and not not like religion or, or ideology or
• 1:16:42
  anything, but you know, it's something that we're so used to
• 1:16:46
  thinking in those patterns and it's a question of definition.
• 1:16:50
  So for a lot of people, I think that stretches not only as far
• 1:16:56
  as to refining but also to blending, which means that to
• 1:17:01
  have, you know, tea farmers appearing on your TV or, you
• 1:17:05
  know, talking about their teas or tea farmers selling their
• 1:17:08
  teas or tea farmers, you know, being in the limelight basically
• 1:17:13
  is something that a lot of people don't approve of.
• 1:17:16
  But I think that's changing. It has changed.
• 1:17:18
  It already changes because, you know, I think that fortress was
• 1:17:21
  breached many years ago now and it's kind of, it kind of feels
• 1:17:26
  old and you know, overly conservative to be over
• 1:17:32
  protected like that in these days.
• 1:17:33
  So I think it's changing. But then again, you don't know
• 1:17:36
  because now we have the, you know, the Mata shortage.
• 1:17:38
  And I think now people are going to be protected for different
• 1:17:41
  reasons because everyone's fighting whatever is left there.
• 1:17:45
  And you know, it's going to be harder and harder to sell tea
• 1:17:48
  from a certain place. Because I know for a fact,
• 1:17:51
  because I've been talking to a lot of farmers and people
• 1:17:53
  involved in much and they said like actually, so they, they can
• 1:17:57
  get much on, but they don't want the farmers don't want them to,
• 1:18:01
  to tell the people that it's from a particular place because
• 1:18:05
  they're also selling, you know, much to other places.
• 1:18:08
  And, and you, you don't want, you know, I think Suji son, he's
• 1:18:13
  different in the sense that he's already got a brand, right?
• 1:18:16
  It's his tea and people don't put their own brand on top of
• 1:18:21
  his brand in general. It might be exceptions, but and
• 1:18:23
  if they do, it's like their brand.
• 1:18:24
  And then Sudhi son. But let's say if you're not him,
• 1:18:27
  if you're another macho farmer, I think maybe you don't want
• 1:18:32
  your name all over the place because people will start
• 1:18:35
  comparing prices and, you know, people, especially your
• 1:18:39
  wholesalers. And it's a little different
• 1:18:41
  from, you know, the overproductive engineer might be
• 1:18:44
  a little weird. Yeah.
• 1:18:45
  So you because. You might, you know, find.
• 1:18:47
  Let's. Say you have a tea shop in, I
• 1:18:50
  don't know, let's say somewhere in, in the capital in Europe
• 1:18:53
  where they sell a feed from, I don't know, let's say it's in
• 1:18:56
  Maruku Kuya Mayan. And then they also have the, you
• 1:18:58
  know, from a certain farmer that supplies seeds in Maruku Kuya.
• 1:19:02
  And that's a little weird position from for, for the
• 1:19:06
  farmer and also for Madokuka on my end.
• 1:19:08
  And I think they're going to have a problem, like an internal
• 1:19:11
  problem. So in order to avoid this from
• 1:19:14
  happening, I think a lot of people are going to or a lot of
• 1:19:16
  farmers might opt for, especially in places like legit,
• 1:19:19
  like traditional places, they might opt for selling their
• 1:19:21
  matcha, but with the promise that you don't actually put the
• 1:19:25
  name. So we're going to have a lot of
• 1:19:26
  single origin teas out there, but we won't be able to tell
• 1:19:30
  where they're from or that might be the case.
• 1:19:32
  I can't say this is going to happen for sure, but I've seen
• 1:19:34
  the trend and I've heard about this phenomenon.
• 1:19:37
  So I think it might actually be happening.
• 1:19:40
  It's interesting, very interesting.
• 1:19:43
  One thing that I'm thinking. About in terms of like.
• 1:19:45
  Really looking into the. Future.
• 1:19:47
  Of matcha as a specialty product because it's very much a product
• 1:19:50
  of the world considering how many people have real love for
• 1:19:54
  it. Is moving part of the value
• 1:19:56
  creation closer to the consumer and can we have a very
• 1:19:59
  interesting and creative world of people blending matcha?
• 1:20:03
  Because I I refuse to believe and to my knowledge almost all
• 1:20:06
  Chashis are old Japanese men. Have any clue what it can suit
• 1:20:11
  what a teenager in Saudi Arabia wants, or what someone in
• 1:20:15
  California wants, or what someone in Mexico City wants?
• 1:20:18
  It's just beyond the capacity of such a narrow demographic to
• 1:20:22
  truly understand the preferences of other people and what would
• 1:20:26
  be really cool to see. And I'm one curious what you
• 1:20:29
  think the structural barriers are to do have have people do
• 1:20:32
  their own chiage processing so they get access to RHR, they
• 1:20:36
  have access to the commodities market, do their own chiage
• 1:20:39
  processing, blending and if they have the capacity to mill, do
• 1:20:42
  their own milling to create hyper localized versions.
• 1:20:46
  Just like we see different coffee roasteries roasting green
• 1:20:49
  coffee from all over the world, creating a blend that people
• 1:20:52
  like, know their consumers, they can deliver something that they
• 1:20:55
  would love. Like what are the structural
• 1:20:57
  barriers from that happening? And would it be a good or bad
• 1:21:01
  thing for the industry in Japan? First of all, there's so many
• 1:21:05
  layers here. I mean the teenager in.
• 1:21:08
  Saudi Arabia there or the hipster in California or
• 1:21:10
  whatever it was. I think, I mean, it's, it's a
• 1:21:13
  positive thing that people discover tea in matcha.
• 1:21:15
  But I think that if you look at it from the perspective of a
• 1:21:20
  person doing tea ceremonies in Japan, maybe you've been
• 1:21:23
  practicing the tea ceremony for 15 years or 30 years or
• 1:21:26
  something, and suddenly just find yourself in the position
• 1:21:29
  where your matcha is like twice the price, whatever you know,
• 1:21:32
  that's for you. That's a very negative
• 1:21:34
  experience, right? This might be good for the the
• 1:21:36
  tea industry, might be beneficial for the farmers to
• 1:21:39
  some degree, but it's not necessarily good news for for
• 1:21:42
  everyone, right? So that's one aspect of it.
• 1:21:45
  And I think that we tend to overlook very often.
• 1:21:46
  And I think, you know, I mean, I'm not saying to people out
• 1:21:48
  there stop doing much. I'm just saying savor it a
• 1:21:52
  little bit more. I think it's a little like too
• 1:21:54
  trendy though. And I think, yeah, pay more
• 1:21:56
  attention to, you know, tasting flavor and savor it more and at
• 1:21:59
  least don't overindulge. And but I mean, that goes for
• 1:22:02
  anything, I suppose. But certainly so for for matcha
• 1:22:05
  because it's so popular right now.
• 1:22:07
  But then when it comes to, you know, bringing out more
• 1:22:09
  different flavors and because, like you mentioned, the teenager
• 1:22:13
  in Saudi Arabia and might have a different palette and, you know,
• 1:22:16
  the traditional Japanese old man working a tea refining factory.
• 1:22:21
  So well, of course, you could, you know, give people stone
• 1:22:24
  meals and you can you probably, you know, have a lot of smaller
• 1:22:28
  factories. So I think it's kind of
• 1:22:29
  happening already because part of the matcha shortage is
• 1:22:32
  actually not a well, I mean, now I think we have a real shortage,
• 1:22:35
  but the shortage last year was more a stone mill shortage
• 1:22:38
  basically. So you have the stone mill
• 1:22:40
  working 24/7, basically driven by electricity, but I mean,
• 1:22:44
  apparently still not enough. So people are building their own
• 1:22:47
  stone mill factories or like Jeff Miller ball milk factories
• 1:22:50
  just to compensate for or make up for the for the shortage.
• 1:22:53
  But, and I think at some point, yeah, it might be the case that,
• 1:22:55
  you know, if you start making more single cultivar machos and
• 1:22:59
  like you get more options if you have if you have your own or
• 1:23:03
  you're likely to get more options if you have your own
• 1:23:06
  milling factory and you can, you know, choose to import different
• 1:23:09
  kinds of matcha made from different culture.
• 1:23:11
  So it might be positive in the sense that we get more different
• 1:23:14
  flavors, if that's desirable anyway, that's, you know,
• 1:23:17
  considered desirable. And I think it might be we might
• 1:23:20
  be going in that direction. I think also we shouldn't
• 1:23:22
  overlook these. We're talking about Japan,
• 1:23:24
  obviously. I mean, I've been living in
• 1:23:26
  Japan for for a total of 13 years.
• 1:23:28
  And I mean, Full disclosure, I'm what a team Japan here.
• 1:23:32
  So I mean, I'm caring mostly for the the tea farmers and everyone
• 1:23:37
  involved in tea here. But tea is like a huge industry
• 1:23:41
  right in spans over several countries.
• 1:23:43
  And I think what's happening now, it's like matcha is from
• 1:23:46
  having been a Japanese kind of tea now it's kind of an
• 1:23:49
  international thing. And you know this huge
• 1:23:52
  production, the volumes are huge in countries like China and even
• 1:23:55
  countries like Vietnam and Thailand, they're making matcha
• 1:23:58
  now. So I think matcha is not
• 1:24:00
  something that is entirely Japanese anymore.
• 1:24:03
  So and just by that happening, I think the market is like getting
• 1:24:09
  more diverse and for good and for bad because I mean, I know
• 1:24:12
  that a lot of those and I think most people know that, you know,
• 1:24:16
  most of the foreign match is there to supply the lot and the
• 1:24:20
  much a lot to demand. And it's not necessarily that
• 1:24:22
  the greatest qualities. But then again, that's the
• 1:24:24
  beginning of it, you know, might change for reasons that we can't
• 1:24:29
  foresee because we're focusing on what's happening right now.
• 1:24:32
  It's like in Japan, like people are thinking about, should we
• 1:24:35
  maybe quit leaf tea and switch to tin cha?
• 1:24:38
  Because it seems like the wisest decision to do now.
• 1:24:41
  If you have resources to, you know, build a new factory.
• 1:24:45
  And if you're young enough to, you know, at least have, you
• 1:24:50
  know, the prospect of being able to make tea for a couple of
• 1:24:55
  decades to come, then it sounds like the the reasonable thing to
• 1:24:58
  do. But then again, what's going to
• 1:24:59
  happen in 10 years, 15 years, like 20 years, It's going to be
• 1:25:02
  as popular. Oh, you know, and foreign
• 1:25:05
  production volumes are going to be like what?
• 1:25:08
  Absolutely no idea. So I think it's going to be more
• 1:25:12
  diverse, partly because what you said like that people probably
• 1:25:15
  going to move the whole distribution system is going to
• 1:25:18
  be different. Like people will have their own
• 1:25:19
  milling factories. There's no there's really no
• 1:25:21
  need actually to meal everything in in Japan.
• 1:25:24
  It's actually might actually get better for the quality if it's
• 1:25:27
  more freshly new in Paris or Rio de Janeiro, wherever it's
• 1:25:31
  supposed to be consumed. So Jen might actually make for
• 1:25:37
  make for a more diverse and more interesting matcha market in
• 1:25:43
  terms of the the tea production situation with the.
• 1:25:46
  Whole matcha popularity and matcha boom.
• 1:25:49
  Do you see farmers switching to more towards potential
• 1:25:52
  production or do you see that kind of popularity kind of
• 1:25:56
  transcend or cascade down to, you know, consumptions of sencha
• 1:26:00
  or other Japanese at least? How do you see the dynamic
• 1:26:02
  that's happening, right? I think a lot of things are
• 1:26:05
  happening at the same time. So it's a little hard to say
• 1:26:07
  that because. Of a we have BI think there's a
• 1:26:10
  lot of things, a lot of factors that we need to take into
• 1:26:13
  consideration. One thing is first and foremost,
• 1:26:15
  there is definitely a movement among tea farmers that consists
• 1:26:20
  of them trying to produce either a tincha or making anything
• 1:26:25
  that, you know, can be used for making a powdered version of
• 1:26:28
  green tea. So we don't necessarily need to
• 1:26:31
  restrict the discussion to traditional matcha, but you
• 1:26:33
  know, any, any, any kind of powdered green tea.
• 1:26:36
  So that's certainly happening. But I'm also sensing that, you
• 1:26:41
  know, I think because of the interest in not only matcha, but
• 1:26:45
  I think in Japan in general, Japanese food, Japanese culture,
• 1:26:49
  Asian culture, like in many not Asian countries, but also if
• 1:26:55
  you're in Asia, like I've been traveling to countries like
• 1:26:57
  Indonesia and Thailand to do tea T lectures and TT sessions and
• 1:27:02
  Japanese culture is extremely popular.
• 1:27:04
  Or that's my take on it anyway, after having visited a couple of
• 1:27:07
  times. And I think much is certainly
• 1:27:09
  popular, but I think a lot of people are looking for like the
• 1:27:11
  next thing, partly because there's a much, much shortage.
• 1:27:14
  So much is getting more expensive.
• 1:27:16
  And probably, I think because that's how we operate basically
• 1:27:19
  as humans, we something that's popular, then we move on to the
• 1:27:22
  next thing. And or like very often we
• 1:27:26
  explore a similar genre or you know, and I think the difference
• 1:27:30
  is of course, like it's of course that when it comes to
• 1:27:33
  matcha, you can drink it as a latte or you can mix it with
• 1:27:36
  sweets. You can't really do that with
• 1:27:38
  sencha, but or Cabo Cetera or Gilco or any, any of the leaf
• 1:27:41
  teas for that matter. So you need a teapot and it's
• 1:27:44
  like it's a different process. I think my take on it is that
• 1:27:47
  people that drink leaf tea are to a large degree different type
• 1:27:51
  of consumer or different type of tea person, but there's also a
• 1:27:56
  lot of overlapping going on there.
• 1:27:58
  So you can really say for for sure.
• 1:28:00
  And I mean, you have people like me, I've been drinking matcha
• 1:28:02
  for more than 20 years, but probably been below the radar.
• 1:28:06
  But you have those kind of people.
• 1:28:08
  I mean, I know I'm not alone here.
• 1:28:10
  So I would drink my matcha, you know, just whisk it and enjoy it
• 1:28:14
  as it is basically without any, you know, almond milk or
• 1:28:18
  whatever people use to mix with their matcha these days.
• 1:28:21
  But I think it's, I mean, there's an interest in, there's
• 1:28:27
  a growing interest in leaf cheese as well.
• 1:28:29
  And that's partly, partly, but not entirely fueled by the, the
• 1:28:33
  matcha, the matcha boom. So I'd say it's, it probably
• 1:28:36
  comes from many different directions.
• 1:28:38
  But but certainly, I mean, the popularity of matcha, because
• 1:28:41
  it's so ubiquitous, it's like so all over the place, you probably
• 1:28:46
  more likely to find people among those matcha drinkers that are
• 1:28:50
  like, hey, what's the next thing a lot of people are discovering,
• 1:28:53
  Hodge. I think that's probably next
• 1:28:55
  thing for a lot of people. Yeah.
• 1:28:58
  Although I do think the matcha. Trend.
• 1:29:02
  I think trend might almost be the wrong word.
• 1:29:04
  I think it's going to be a little more sticky.
• 1:29:06
  I think most I think you're absolutely right.
• 1:29:08
  Yeah, Yep, Yep, because it's someone.
• 1:29:11
  We interviewed Aaron. Who runs a matcha business,
• 1:29:15
  Matcha U in Australia said something that really changed my
• 1:29:18
  perspective. She doesn't like a lot of
• 1:29:20
  markets. And she said, like the number of
• 1:29:21
  young teenagers, especially teenage girls, coming up
• 1:29:25
  dragging their parents. Say, mom, dad, I heard about
• 1:29:27
  matcha. I want to try matcha.
• 1:29:29
  I saw it on social media. They're forming a very different
• 1:29:32
  relationship with caffeine at their most formative years.
• 1:29:35
  If you look at like becoming an adult, like one of the things
• 1:29:38
  that we do is we drink caffeinated beverages as at
• 1:29:42
  least marked adults, and they're totally skipping over coffee and
• 1:29:46
  they're gonna carry that habit into adulthood.
• 1:29:49
  And if you think about the easiest group of consumers to
• 1:29:51
  underestimate, it's this younger demographic who are totally
• 1:29:57
  skipping the coffee. And I really.
• 1:29:59
  Worry. That Japan and the Japanese tea
• 1:30:03
  industry isn't taking it seriously enough because the way
• 1:30:07
  it's presented to them are a bunch of, you know, TikTok
• 1:30:11
  girlies posting their beautiful drink.
• 1:30:14
  But I actually think there's a much deeper preference behind
• 1:30:18
  this. We'll call vanity consumption
• 1:30:20
  vanity and that you know, if they if people, if Japan can't
• 1:30:25
  keep up with supply, then it's a really big missed opportunity.
• 1:30:30
  I think you certainly have a point here.
• 1:30:31
  I mean, that's my feeling too, because I'm the.
• 1:30:34
  City from regions a lot and some of them are more keen on
• 1:30:39
  exporting and you know, some of them are more kind of in touch
• 1:30:42
  with reality if you like or you know, like current trends or see
• 1:30:47
  where things are going and leaf is getting more popular, popular
• 1:30:50
  too. But I think that you speak to a
• 1:30:52
  lot of farmers and people in the countryside in Japan, they, they
• 1:30:57
  are already, so especially the places where they make leaf tea.
• 1:31:01
  And I've heard this too from, from the Kansai region, for
• 1:31:03
  example, with a, you know, a lot of people have succeeded, you
• 1:31:06
  know, from producing matcha and matcha is really popular.
• 1:31:10
  So the, the farmers who didn't make matcha until now, they feel
• 1:31:13
  like losers, right? They're losing, I'm losing out
• 1:31:18
  or missing out on this, you know, great opportunity.
• 1:31:21
  And that's what we're saying right now.
• 1:31:22
  I think hold this is going to get more popular, tent is going
• 1:31:25
  to get more popular and we just don't see it right now because
• 1:31:29
  we're so focused on, you know, what's happening right now and
• 1:31:32
  what's big right now. But I think that as you
• 1:31:35
  mentioned, you know, the especially younger generations
• 1:31:37
  and that's something that I've felt too.
• 1:31:38
  Whenever I go overseas, I feel like my audience is I just
• 1:31:42
  turned 40 a couple of days ago. But you know, I've been drinking
• 1:31:46
  Japanese tea for 20 years now, happily and pleasantly surprised
• 1:31:50
  to see that a lot of 20 somethings are showing up and my
• 1:31:54
  tea events. And it's not something that I
• 1:31:57
  expected really. I feel like, you know, green tea
• 1:31:59
  is something that you discover, I don't know, maybe in your late
• 1:32:02
  20s or something. And, you know, after having
• 1:32:06
  couple years and there are many, there are many difference for
• 1:32:09
  different reasons for entering tea and especially green tea and
• 1:32:14
  long teas and, you know, poor those kind of specialty thing.
• 1:32:17
  But then that's kind of John Ross.
• 1:32:19
  But I think it could be, you know, for for health reasons,
• 1:32:21
  could be because you have an interest in, you know, Asian
• 1:32:23
  culture or whatever. But in any case of I felt that
• 1:32:26
  something that people, you know, discover when they're at least
• 1:32:29
  in their late 20s and you know, they have stable jobs, they got
• 1:32:32
  some money to spend, maybe they can travel and they find this
• 1:32:36
  new interest. But actually what I do see is
• 1:32:38
  that unexpectedly there are a lot of people in their twins or,
• 1:32:40
  you know, like young people. I think it's a very positive
• 1:32:43
  thing. And like you said, like or like
• 1:32:45
  what's the name again? Erin, the Australian lady that
• 1:32:48
  you talked about, how much are you?
• 1:32:50
  Yeah, I mean, she certainly has a point there if people.
• 1:32:53
  Are. Skipping coffee, I mean, people
• 1:32:56
  don't start drinking coffee when they're, you know, 15 or
• 1:33:00
  whatever and start drinking matcha instead.
• 1:33:03
  And we're going to have a completely different world in 10
• 1:33:06
  years from now because those people are going to be 2526
• 1:33:08
  something. And, you know, they will keep
• 1:33:11
  exploring the different teas out there.
• 1:33:13
  And, and it's certainly interesting.
• 1:33:16
  I think we're living in very interesting times.
• 1:33:18
  I remember when I had my second book published in Japan, the
• 1:33:23
  bilingual book about Japanese tea.
• 1:33:24
  It's a lot about, you know, queen to ours and different
• 1:33:27
  kinds of Japanese regions with a lot of maps and so forth.
• 1:33:30
  And you know, and. I got so.
• 1:33:32
  Much positive response for it by, you know, tea enthusiasts,
• 1:33:35
  but I can tell you there weren't a lot of them.
• 1:33:37
  It's really popular among people that are really into Japanese
• 1:33:40
  tea. But now I think it's very well
• 1:33:42
  spread. And now there's an Internet
• 1:33:43
  international version of it as well.
• 1:33:45
  They have presence in many different countries.
• 1:33:46
  But, you know, I feel like in a way, it was a good timing to
• 1:33:53
  write a book like that because now the world is turning, you
• 1:33:56
  know, and what has turned like in favor of Japanese tea.
• 1:33:59
  And you see a lot of young people feel that I didn't expect
• 1:34:03
  to get into Japanese tea at all in the 1st place.
• 1:34:05
  And I mean, I didn't know that I didn't see that one coming.
• 1:34:09
  And I think it's a very positive thing.
• 1:34:11
  So I mean, if my activities are are any any sign of good things
• 1:34:16
  happening, I'd say that you know, things like, well, if you
• 1:34:19
  look at the number of books sold, those kind of things, I
• 1:34:21
  feel like there's an interest out there.
• 1:34:23
  Certainly, definitely. So for for Japanese tea and it's
• 1:34:28
  such a interesting first hand experience.
• 1:34:31
  About this whole wave personally, the curiosity of.
• 1:34:35
  You know, T or knowledge? Yeah.
• 1:34:38
  I think, I think, you know, it's even a lot of my friends, they
• 1:34:40
  were like, yeah, it's a very nice book.
• 1:34:41
  That you wrote, but you know who's going to read this?
• 1:34:43
  Kind of like interesting. I had the exact opposite
• 1:34:47
  impression when I read. I read through.
• 1:34:48
  Both of your books and I was thinking, wow, this is fantastic
• 1:34:51
  information, but I wish it went 10 times deeper.
• 1:34:54
  Yeah, but I think, you know, that's going to start flipping.
• 1:34:57
  Wouldn't it be more people? Well, I can actually.
• 1:34:59
  Tell you a secret? Well, it's not going to be a
• 1:35:00
  secret. I totally hear in.
• 1:35:02
  The podcast, but I'm working on it.
• 1:35:06
  Yeah, very cool. Nice.
• 1:35:09
  Wonderful. Very excited for that.
• 1:35:11
  Maybe it's a complete stand. I mean, we can.
• 1:35:15
  We should definitely. Do this again, I'd be more than
• 1:35:17
  happy. To join you guys again if you,
• 1:35:19
  but we'd love that opportunity. Thank you.
• 1:35:21
  Yeah, it's we we learned so much from.
• 1:35:23
  Your perspective. I've been kind of.
• 1:35:24
  Incubating a few ideas in my head, and I really loved hearing
• 1:35:28
  your reaction to some of them. Thank you so much, Oscar, for
• 1:35:31
  coming. Yeah, thank you so much.
• 1:35:33
  And. I'll see you guys again.
• 1:35:35
  Really. Appreciate your time and thank.
• 1:35:37
  You to our listeners as well and if you enjoyed.
• 1:35:38
  This podcast, please consider sharing it with a friend and
• 1:35:41
  we'll see you on the next one. Thanks in the future.