Latest / Specialty Matcha Podcast / Reflections on Season 1 of the Specialty Matcha Podcast

Transcript

Reflections on Season 1 of the Specialty Matcha Podcast · Specialty Matcha Podcast

0:00
Hello and welcome to the 25th episode of the Specialty Matcha
0:03
Podcast. This is also the end of season
0:06
1. My name is Ryan and this is my
0:08
Coho Zunjun. Hello, hello.
0:10
And we're the Co founders of Sanko Macha products.
0:13
Yeah, we launched this podcast to discuss our learning journey
0:16
in Matcha, share startup stories and interview experts.
0:19
And today, with the 25th episode of this podcast, we are going to
0:25
end our wonderful journey of Season 1.
0:29
So we thought of no better way to do that than to bring on the
0:31
entire team. So we'd like to welcome Gwen
0:33
onto the podcast for the first time.
0:36
Hello, thank you for having me. Gwen's on the founding team and
0:39
handles the look and feel of everything sand called.
0:42
So you look at our website, Instagram, YouTube, everything
0:46
that all runs through Gwen and she keeps all the trains running
0:49
on time. And probably we'd have much less
0:51
content to share if it wasn't for Gwen.
0:53
Probably. So we wanted to talk about 3
0:57
different things in this podcast.
0:59
First, we realized that not everyone sort of knows what the
1:02
specialty podcast, Specialty Matching podcast is and the
1:06
broader company, Sanco, which publishes it.
1:08
So we wanted to talk a little bit about that.
1:10
We wanted to reintroduce ourselves, what our motivations
1:14
are and why we're even doing this.
1:16
And three, we wanted to reflect on all the lessons that we've
1:19
learned over the course of researching for all the
1:23
different episodes that we did, as well as all the interviews
1:26
that we did from experts that are already in the matcha
1:29
industry. So Zhongdin, you want to talk a
1:31
little bit about the company Sanco that we've all founded and
1:36
what our mission is? Yeah.
1:37
So we kind of saw the opportunity of Matcha before we
1:44
actually found the company. So before Zenko, Ryan and I both
1:48
work at a tech startups that specialize in using AI to model
1:53
human takes and we help a lot of these large companies to develop
1:58
new products in different regions around the world.
2:01
And it was through that journey that we really start to see
2:05
matcha being a flavor that's trending everywhere in
2:08
beverages, in snacks, in all kinds of food and beverage
2:12
complex. So that's when we saw the
2:14
opportunities and there's really Matcha was a pretty interesting
2:19
existence at the time that a lot of people like it.
2:23
But there's very little in innovation involving and there's
2:28
very little innovation in the preparation of matcha, in the
2:31
manufacturer of matcha, in the final consumption of matcha.
2:35
So we kind of saw these industry white space and we found the
2:38
Samco in order to to capture that.
2:41
Yeah, they put a little color on that, Sam saying around what we
2:45
were seeing at the time as kind of dissatisfied consumers was
2:50
like Matcha that had no story. You didn't know when it was
2:54
made, who made it, if it was made from a particular cultivar,
2:58
When it was milled. It was just kind of this weird
3:01
commodity product. Like, you could easily get a
3:03
matcha latte at a cafe, whether or not you're in Paris or New
3:07
York. Like, it's not like what we were
3:09
seeing in coffee. Where's this like explosion of a
3:12
specialty movement and realizing that one of the biggest quality
3:15
barriers to getting good macho was the ability to mill it
3:18
fresh. And that was really our first
3:21
problem space that founded the company.
3:24
So we're working on hardware now to give different people the
3:29
ability to mill matcha fresh anywhere and at scale.
3:35
If no, if you're not familiar with the way that matcha is
3:37
milled right now, it's all centrally milled in Japan on
3:40
large granite millstones that weigh about 100 lbs or 50 KGS a
3:45
piece. And by the time it gets to you,
3:47
it's usually if you have a really good vendor, maybe it's
3:51
three months. If you also have like are
3:53
working with a good company, maybe it's been milled 6 months,
3:56
it's been in powdered form, but most of what everyone's drinking
4:00
is over a year old and the color, the taste and the
4:03
nutrition all disappear and degrade and it's a much worse
4:06
product than it once was when it was ground fresh.
4:10
So we wanted to democratize matcha milling and are building
4:14
the entire company around that to bring better matcha to
4:16
everyone at scale. So that's sort of our mission.
4:19
And then you know, in the process, you know, discovering,
4:23
you know, all the different flavors available from different
4:25
matcha cultivars and the way the matcha leaves, it's called
4:29
tensha is produced can have many different flavors.
4:32
Right now it's very difficult to buy matcha leaves to mill into
4:35
powder because no one has really the capacity to mill matcha
4:39
fresh unless you import one of these industrial pieces of
4:42
equipment. So we're also Co working on
4:44
setting up a supply of these of tensha so that people have the
4:49
ability to make their own choices or do their own blending
4:52
etcetera to create really high quality products and to sort of
4:56
bring craft into the process of making matcha in places in the
5:01
world outside of Japan. And a similar movement that
5:04
we're seeing in in specialty coffee where people are roasting
5:08
it and blending it and adding, doing their own value add or
5:12
brewing their own beer or brewing their own wine or making
5:15
their own chocolate. And we want to bring that into
5:18
Matcha and create the infrastructure to make that all.
5:21
Possible, yeah. And really, you know, like for
5:24
for a lot of these traditional matcha making houses, you have
5:29
very few choices which are pre blend and you know they they
5:33
have preset tiers to tell you the quality and what you would
5:38
probably expect. And we kind of want to offer
5:42
really the the consumer freedom to choose your own path.
5:46
We want to offer products that would tell you the cultivar,
5:50
tell you the mailing dates, tell you the tawa and tell you where
5:52
it's from and tell you the process methodology and let you
5:56
to decide what do you like instead of pointing you
6:00
directions and tell you what's good or what's not good
6:04
essentially. Yeah, exactly.
6:05
So that's a bit of the mission of the broader company and what
6:09
we're doing. And we started this podcast one
6:11
because we realized we had a lot of knowledge gaps ourselves, but
6:14
we needed to do some learning. So it's a forcing function to do
6:19
research and sort of develop our own opinions on a lot of these
6:21
topics and then publishing them as a blog post and then record a
6:25
podcast about it. But also gave us the opportunity
6:28
to interview experts and to put that knowledge out into the
6:30
world and to kind of centralized and aggregate a lot of this
6:35
knowledge in English, which we, you know, really hope to
6:38
continue to do through the Specialty Monster podcast.
6:41
So if you're not already subscribed, please do subscribe
6:44
and like and comment. It really helps us know that
6:47
we're producing something that people actually like and want to
6:50
listen to and sort of gives us the signal to, you know, keep
6:53
doing this. So in Part 2, we wanted to
6:55
reintroduce ourselves a little bit.
6:57
Who are we? And you know, what are we doing
7:00
here? Why do we care about the world
7:02
is specialty matcha and making it better.
7:04
I guess some do you want to we'll start with you and then
7:07
we'll move to Gwen and then I'll go last around like, who are
7:10
you? What's your background and what
7:12
makes you so passionate about creating higher quality matcha
7:15
for the world? Hi, my name is Songjun and you
7:19
would hear Ryan and Gwen refer to me as Sam or Samuel
7:22
throughout the podcast. That's all me.
7:25
So as Uncle I in charge of all of the product development works
7:31
and related tasks. And you know, before joining
7:35
Sanko, Ryan and I actually met way back, so about a decade ago
7:42
when we were still at the Penn State Institute.
7:45
That was actually my first time not only meeting Ryan, but also
7:49
knowing about matcha. So at Penn State, we run this
7:53
institute that a kind of incorporate Chinese, Japanese
7:58
and the Korean tea ceremony all at once.
8:00
And we would routinely invite teachers from Omoto Senke and
8:05
UDA Senke tea ceremony schools to visit the university and
8:09
offer lessons. So that was a very, I guess,
8:14
traditional exposure to matcha. For the first time, I learned
8:17
about how to prepare matcha. I learned about all of the tea
8:21
ceremony culture, the history of matcha, and, you know, all of
8:25
the associated art centering and around channel you, you know,
8:29
the weight of tea in Japan. So like calligraphies and tabana
8:33
and all that. After graduating from Penn
8:36
State, Ryan and I both end up joining this startup, a
8:40
gastrograph, which we utilize artificial intelligence to model
8:44
human sensory experience and their perception, their
8:47
preference to help large companies to develop new
8:50
products. And from that angle, we start to
8:53
doing matcha from a very different perspective, Matcha as
8:59
a ingredient in a product, which it triggers a lot of human
9:04
perception and related preference onto this very thing
9:08
that that's very, very different perspective compared to our days
9:13
back in, in the team study. So this two kind of related, but
9:18
also unrelated exposure to the same thing really triggers my,
9:22
my interest in learning more about matcha.
9:24
So that's part of the reason why I agree so fast when Ryan
9:29
proposed the idea of founding Zango.
9:32
Awesome. Gwen, over to you, Gwen.
9:34
Yeah, Hi, I'm Gwen. I am usually a little more
9:37
behind the scenes editing and planning and keeping these two
9:41
in line, but I've been really excited to join a small team.
9:44
While we all have our specialties.
9:46
It's fun to be at such a small team and such a small company
9:48
because you all get to work together on pretty much
9:51
everything and learn as you go, which has been really fun.
9:54
I'm a little bit more of a tea novice, but it's been really
9:57
exciting for me to learn as I've been here from the podcast, from
10:02
the blogs, from our conversations offline and and
10:06
all the guests that we've had on the podcast.
10:08
Over to you, Ryan. Yeah, I'm Ryan.
10:11
And yeah, as as Youngjun mentioned, my journey and
10:14
interest in matcha started all the way back at the Tea
10:16
Institute at Penn State when both Zhongjun and I, Sam and I
10:20
were were students there. And we were both students of
10:23
Amosa Sangay. And it was a active Research
10:27
Institute. And one of the earliest pieces
10:30
of research to come out of that was applying some AI methods on
10:34
human sensory perception, which was later spun off into its own
10:37
company, Gastrograph. And I joined the founding team
10:41
at that company. And it was actually there that I
10:44
developed the love of specialty products.
10:46
So at the time, we were mostly trying to sell into craft
10:50
producers, craft beer, craft coffee and craft chocolate.
10:55
And I was hired as a as an intern after my freshman year.
11:01
And my job was solely to create content marketing to attract
11:06
craft producers to come to our website and then discover our
11:09
services. So one of my first projects were
11:12
like learning all about the craft of coffee, like where it
11:15
was come from, how it was processed, how you can over
11:18
under roast it, the way it gets blended and try to come up with
11:22
the right keywords to attract industry people to come read
11:26
about it. And I did that for a couple of
11:28
different craft industries. And later on, the company
11:30
evolved and we ended up selling to much larger companies.
11:34
But that was very formative for me and building up a framework
11:37
and knowledge structures around the way that consumers and
11:41
industry people view the depth and breadth that anyone category
11:46
has to offer. Right?
11:47
Coffee are not just coffee beans, they're the producers,
11:50
the roasters, and all of the stories behind what makes those
11:55
products special and as culturally rich as something
11:58
like a fine wine would be appreciated in Western culture.
12:02
These same things exist within tea, within chocolate, within
12:06
all sorts of other products. So very fascinated by this
12:09
concept. And one of the things that we
12:11
became students of was learning how consumers, how companies
12:16
built ladders for consumers. How do you get someone from
12:20
drinking a commodity product like instant coffee to ordering
12:26
an espresso or ordering a pour over, or then ordering like a
12:29
pour over that cost $15? What had to have happened along
12:34
their journey to get them to build the context and knowledge
12:37
to appreciate something like that?
12:40
And realized that a lot of these ladders also didn't exist within
12:42
Matcha. So that was hugely inspiring.
12:45
And then as the company got more advanced, you know, as young
12:49
June alluded to, we got to work with the matcha a little more on
12:52
the ingredient side and a little bit more at the large food and
12:55
beverage company scale where consumer preference was really
13:00
the center of all that type of product development.
13:03
So we did a lot of travel. I think I've been to over 20
13:06
countries doing consumer research for food and beverage
13:10
companies, understanding what flavors consumers like or
13:12
dislike, and then helping give feedback based on that data on
13:17
how to change the flavor of these products.
13:19
So we also come into this with the realm of like consumer
13:23
science and improving products that way, which is sort of
13:27
we're, we're both very much 1 foot in the old craft tradition,
13:31
tea ceremony Chanayo, because we've been educated that way.
13:34
And also one foot in the more advanced side of the food
13:37
industry and, and product development.
13:40
So that that's where our background comes in.
13:43
And we're using this podcast almost as a journal of our own
13:47
learnings in Matcha as we develop our own opinions about
13:51
the specialty matcha in general, and as we learn new things and
13:55
create, you know, more curiosity gaps for ourselves.
13:58
And we want to share a lot of that education with everyone
14:01
else too, which is why why we started this.
14:04
So using that as a segue, Gwen and Zhongjun, what have been
14:08
some of the highlights of Season 1 of the podcast from the
14:12
interviews that we've done or from the unique pieces that
14:17
we've published on specialty matcha as a broader concept?
14:21
I particularly liked having guests on.
14:24
I think having new perspectives has been really fun and it's
14:27
also really interesting to hear stories other people have had
14:31
and the knowledge that they can share with us and with with the
14:35
world and the different ideas from different people.
14:37
Yeah, I, I really enjoy the interviews too.
14:40
It's really not just finally, not just Ryan and I talking all
14:44
the time, but we can get to hear other people's perspective
14:47
throughout the way too, which was very refreshing.
14:50
And throughout the podcast Season 1, I think we we have
14:56
learned a lot. It's a really interesting
14:58
learning journey so far. I think some of the highlights
15:01
are how we trying to, you know really I guess as Ryan was
15:06
talking about like we were very deep in these sort of what we
15:12
call specialty product in other places like coffee, beer and
15:16
wine. And throughout the journey, as
15:18
we trying to put on similar lens from other specialty products
15:22
onto matcha and how we are trying to figure out what
15:26
exactly, for example, is ceremonial great matcha, How do
15:29
we define what's good quality, what's bad quality or what's
15:34
good matcha or what's bad matcha?
15:36
What does it mean if you referring to a product as good?
15:41
Is it just quality or is it just like you like it?
15:45
That's a that's a very different concept of when when we're
15:48
talking about something that's good.
15:49
So as we are trying to debunk that, I think we have a lot of
15:53
interesting findings for more details audience, you can try to
15:57
tap into that specific episode. And also, you know, like the
16:01
need of transparency, like as we were talking about all these
16:05
matcha, what's good matcha, what's bad matcha?
16:07
Like, how do you define that? Like who has the authority to
16:11
define what's good matcha or what's bad matcha?
16:13
What's matcha that's good for you, right?
16:16
For coffee or craft coffee or craft beer, as people moving
16:21
away from a big breweries, for smaller breweries, oftentimes
16:25
they tend not to really tell you what's good or what's bad or
16:28
what's mediocre. What what they're trying to do
16:31
is that they would preload you with a lot of information
16:35
related to the product. You know, what kind of pops,
16:39
what kind of malt, what kind of fermentation method, what's the
16:42
fermentation vessels and for coffee and for wine, you know,
16:46
similar things like all of the information relating to the
16:50
creation of the product in front of you.
16:52
They want to let you know and let you to decide, you know, if
16:56
you would like a IPA over stout over a amber, you know, what
17:02
kind of style that's really good for you is for you to decide
17:06
instead of, you know, telling you what's more premium, what's
17:10
more more expensive or more rare.
17:13
You know, rarity doesn't necessarily related to quality,
17:16
but that's, that's, that's something in the 1st place.
17:19
They of course tend to charge you more, but it doesn't really
17:22
mean that it's better or it's better for you.
17:25
Yeah, I mean, what's crazy is that the industry standard is
17:28
you literally give yourself your own grade and like everyone
17:31
gives like themselves an A+ or purposely make something that's
17:35
like AC and like E or F grade. Like meaning like I'm just going
17:40
to call this ceremonial or culinary or super ceremonial or
17:44
supercalifragilisticexpialidocious ceremonial grade.
17:48
It's just words. What are some questions that
17:51
you're hoping to answer in the next season of the podcast?
17:53
Something that I don't have a very firm understanding of that
17:57
I'm just very curious about are more about cultivars.
18:01
You can read about some baseline information online for
18:05
cultivars. So if anyone doesn't know,
18:08
cultivar stands for cultivated varietals.
18:10
And just like, you know, different apples, you can have
18:13
like different types of apples, jazz apple versus pink lady
18:17
versus red delicious, etcetera. Same existing tea in for matcha.
18:21
There's some common ones are like Asahi Abukita, Sami
18:24
Doherty, Oku Midori. And like you hear like the top
18:28
line level of like, OK, yeah, this one's usually vegetable.
18:31
This one's super umami and creamy, but like there's very
18:34
little nuance. And I think really curious, like
18:37
what is the distribution of flavor available in something
18:42
like Yabukita or Asahi, right? Like is one grown in one region
18:46
versus another drastically different?
18:49
Like how different are they? And what is the universe within
18:52
each of these? And then something else that I
18:54
really would like to have a better understanding of for the
18:57
next season is how people actually blend these.
19:01
Things. And what the framework is around
19:04
having 1 + 1 = 3 or how does like you have an end goal?
19:09
I want to create like, I don't know, a super refreshing macho
19:13
with a little bit of bitterness. How do you, how do you go from
19:16
that prompt to like knowing what to blend?
19:19
I'd really love to to learn more about that Sung Yun.
19:24
Yeah, this I guess will be our first time going to Japan with
19:29
the mission of learning more about matcha and all of the
19:32
first hand exposure to I guess to to the farming to the
19:37
manufacturer will probably bring a lot of new fresh information
19:42
and opinions for us to talk about.
19:46
Because so far we have taste matcha, we have milk matcha, but
19:50
not in Japan. We have been drinking a lot of
19:53
matcha, but we have never really touched a piece of green tea or
19:58
tea leaf in Japan that offers us this very down to earth
20:03
experience. I guess that would really change
20:05
a lot of things, yeah. No, absolutely.
20:08
Like we don't know what we don't know from like the actual
20:12
production and cultivation of tensha, which then gets milled
20:15
into Macha first hand. Like we've both been to Japan,
20:19
we've worked there, we've drink really consumers, in some cases
20:23
super consumers. But in terms of that whole
20:28
journey, we need to experience it ourselves first before we
20:32
probably even know what the right questions are to ask.
20:36
I guess it will be very interesting because it's, it's
20:39
not like Ryan, I have never been to a tea production place,
20:42
right? Like we've been to Korea, we've
20:44
been to China, mainland China, we've been to Taiwan, but we've
20:47
been seeing how tea are grown there.
20:50
It will be very interesting to compare the difference between
20:54
Japanese tea makings and tea making methodologies in other
20:58
places. I guess that will have a lot of
21:02
fresh observations, at least for me to be able to talk about in
21:07
the next season. What?
21:08
Have been some of the interesting contradictions that
21:12
we've noticed either in our own thought development as we, you
21:17
know, develop opinions and revise them with new data of
21:20
content that we've put out where you kind of look back and think,
21:23
Oh yeah, I had that wrong. Or between two different guests
21:26
that we invited on that might have had two different
21:28
perspectives on the same issue or have been some good like
21:32
contrast. Moment, I guess not necessarily
21:34
contrast, but a very refreshing point of view is that first, you
21:39
know, it was just Ryan and I, we've been talking about matcha
21:43
and as we inviting guests, they're also talking about
21:46
matcha. Matcha as the the leaf, the
21:49
matcha powder that goes into your drink.
21:52
But when we invited RV from Imperial Empirical Water, it was
21:57
the first time that I. It's kind of dumb, but you know,
22:00
the realizing that there are other ingredients in your matcha
22:04
other than matcha itself. There is water and water is not
22:07
just H2O. There's a lot of dissolved
22:10
minerals, things that are within the water that you consume that
22:14
will get mixed with your matcha that produce the ultimate, you
22:19
know, matcha that you're going to put in your mouth.
22:21
So it's not just the tea that you're drinking, but you're also
22:23
drinking the water. Yeah, I, I didn't agree with
22:26
that more after the episode we did with RB.
22:28
I I spend a lot of time living in France and there's a bottled
22:32
water brand that's marketed to help help you sleep.
22:36
So it has very magnesium heavy, which RB was telling us
22:40
accentuates umami. And I went out and this water
22:44
tastes disgusting, by the way, plain.
22:45
It's really you got to choke it down.
22:48
I was like, OK, I'm going to try to make my matcha with this.
22:51
Oh my word. It was so different when I was
22:55
comparing to drinking it before and after.
22:58
The degree to which it impacted the taste of matcha was wild to
23:04
me. I went from having a kind of
23:07
nice crisp, a little bitter, nice aromatic matcha to like an
23:11
umami bomb with no bitterness with just the water change that
23:16
that was wild to me. That really changed my
23:19
perspective too. Yeah, I mean, I guess I, I had
23:23
similar realization when I was drinking Chinese tea in the
23:27
past, but didn't really connect the dots.
23:30
But you know, before that in Chinese tea at least, you tend
23:35
to really brew the tea that that you consume with the water from
23:40
the similar, the same region, which tend to always produce the
23:44
best results. Which is a very, very
23:46
interesting thing to think about because, you know, like people
23:50
making those teas in different places, what they are available
23:54
is the water around them. And they will use those water to
23:58
brew their tea for themselves. And as they develop the
24:02
manufacturer, the production style of that specific tea, they
24:07
are will tend to optimize those processes with the water that
24:12
made available to them. Water is really a critical
24:15
factor to, to tea, not just, you know, in Chinese tea, but also I
24:20
guess now in Japanese tea as we observe too.
24:23
You know, we really urge everyone to go check out Arby's
24:27
website, Empirical Water. He publishes a lot of research
24:31
on tea and water and coffee and water.
24:33
And also his his product is amazing.
24:36
So it's definitely well worth checking Arby's website,
24:39
Empirical Water. Out kind of off of this as water
24:43
being such an important part of matcha and coffee and tea in
24:46
general. Why is it so misunderstood stuff
24:49
like this? Like why?
24:50
Why is there so much misinformation or lacking
24:53
information or contradictory information in the world of
24:55
matcha? Like why is this happening?
24:58
Yeah, I didn't know if there's so much contradictory
25:00
information, but water is very difficult to control.
25:05
It's really a pain to manipulate your own water chemistry and
25:09
like buy the different salts and then do the different recipes
25:13
and mixing it and diluting it. It's very labor intensive and
25:17
what RB does. So there's actually some
25:19
physical restraints, which is pretty interesting.
25:22
So, you know, if you want, for example, calcium carbonate,
25:26
which is chalk, doesn't dissolve in water very easily, right?
25:29
So you actually have to do a special process to lower the pH
25:32
to get that to dissolve if you want to attain certain water
25:36
recipes. So sometimes it's not even as
25:39
simple as mixing things together.
25:41
So very labor intensive. So I think because that
25:44
complexity was not abstracted away, it's very rare to see
25:50
companies do this. I've actually only been to one
25:54
cafe in my life. It's called Substance in Paris.
25:58
They make their own water from scratch by mixing different
26:02
salts together, but everyone else uses some type of
26:05
filtration and then maybe they re mineralize it a little bit,
26:10
but it's even within coffee. It's very uncommon to see this
26:15
being an engineered step, and I think it's just because it's so
26:17
complicated. Yeah, well, audience, if you
26:20
want to learn more about Arby's work and how it related to tea
26:24
and coffee, you can go check out the episode that was published
26:27
on June the 7th. You can learn more about water
26:29
chemistry and and all the interesting things related to
26:33
how RB develop its methodology to to really be able to
26:38
manipulate all the solvents and composition of the water that he
26:43
creates any other. Contrast moments that you guys
26:47
noticed. I have one if you guys don't.
26:49
What do you think, Ryan? So I find it very interesting
26:55
when we meet people from the industry who are Westerners from
27:00
the outside looking in, like people who live in the States
27:02
but on matcha companies and do direct sourcing versus people
27:06
that are in Japan, really deep in the industry who are inside
27:09
looking out. And people like Mark from Olika
27:14
and John from Johnny Matcha have really interesting perspectives
27:18
on preserving heritage farms and working with very traditional
27:21
producers and keeping the craft of traditional matcha alive from
27:26
the practitioners that are doing it in Japan.
27:29
And how more and more people are dropping out of the profession,
27:31
which, you know, very like very cool, wonderful mission and one
27:36
that we're 100% aligned with as well.
27:39
And it really struck me when Ian from you know me, who runs
27:42
basically a big marketplace for Japanese tea.
27:44
I think it's the largest marketplace for artisanal
27:46
Japanese green tea. And his explicit mission is to
27:51
basically be an online sales platform for small Japanese
27:54
producers. And I think they work with over
27:57
130. So he's really deep in the weeds
28:00
when it comes to artisanal producers.
28:02
And he feels like everyone's getting into matcha, and he's
28:05
like working with these people day in and day out.
28:07
And there's definitely something very interesting to be explored
28:10
there. I don't know if he's just
28:11
talking about the really commodity industrial matcha
28:15
products that are, you know, on automated farms and gigantic
28:19
factories, but you know that that that was a pretty
28:22
interesting contrast. So I'm interesting double
28:25
clicking into that one. Yeah, I, I, I'm so smart enough
28:30
from that. I, I'm very curious to talk to
28:34
all these new generation of tea farmers in Japan.
28:37
So that that will be something very interesting to learn about
28:42
because everybody's talking about, you know, how this is a
28:45
shrinking dining industry in Japan and there's all these
28:49
global demands elsewhere and you are having younger generations
28:54
not interested in matcha in Japan moving away from matcha or
28:58
tea to other products like coffee.
29:00
How are people going to sustain this?
29:03
Or like, because in a lot of these older or more traditional
29:08
industry in Japan, it's very generational.
29:11
It's a entire family for generations doing the same thing
29:16
from grandfather to father to son to grandson.
29:19
It will be very interesting to see how this technique is
29:23
passing down to the newer generation and how do they think
29:27
about all these new changes that are happening in Japan and also
29:30
outside of Japan. Yeah, I'd love to go to the
29:33
source on that. Like, so to put some color, some
29:36
statistics on what Sam was saying, I think in the 1980s
29:41
there were over 200,000 tea farms in Japan.
29:47
And the last census, which I think was 2020, they're 12,200
29:52
thousand to 12,000. So it's a really sharp decline.
29:58
And it's really easy to say, hey, you know, like this is
30:01
crazy, this is sad. All of this knowledge and art is
30:04
getting lost. And on the other side, these are
30:08
people with agency, right? You know, if it's more
30:10
profitable for them to farm mushrooms and lemons, which is
30:15
very true in a lot of macho areas where people are moving
30:18
away from tea. I mean, they have bills to pay.
30:21
You know, there's things that are outside of their control.
30:23
I know in Shizuoka, the largest tea producing prefecture after
30:27
the nuclear disaster in 2011, like, China completely banned
30:32
imports of Japanese products for fear of radiation and then kept
30:37
those policies around. And like, I think in the US,
30:40
too, we've banned some stuff for a little while over fears of
30:43
nuclear contamination. And it just wiped out that a lot
30:47
of tea farmers because demand for green tea fell and they had
30:50
to move to other products. And so like, you know, these are
30:53
real people with agency. And it's easy for us to say from
30:57
the outside like all this stuff is getting lost, but really it's
31:01
thousands of people making decisions that are best for
31:04
themselves. So I think sometimes all of this
31:07
gets a little overly romanticized.
31:09
I think a lot of this can be solved by just growing an
31:11
appreciation for specialty matcha outside of Japan.
31:14
Because the reality is this, most of the good product doesn't
31:17
leave Japan's borders. And by growing this movement of
31:21
specialty matcha right, we can create the demand to make it
31:24
such a attractive profession economically to preserve the
31:29
culture. Because if there's not enough
31:31
consumers to enjoy it, why should the culture exist in the
31:34
1st place? And if it's not self-sustaining?
31:37
Yeah, absolutely. And also part of the shrinkage
31:41
of all those tea production houses are consolidation too.
31:45
Larger houses merge smaller houses into even larger ones.
31:49
And you know, with the specialty matcha movement, I guess finally
31:53
we can have the opportunity to offer smaller producers a stage
31:58
for them, for them to shine too. So it's not just about the big
32:02
names. It's about, you know, all of
32:04
these local houses in different Tawas with growing different
32:07
types of cultivars, and we'll be able to taste the difference.
32:10
I think that that would be something really wonderful to
32:12
experience. It'd be really nice for us to
32:15
help, you know, if anything, at the end of the day, that we can
32:17
do to help save what is a slowly dying industry, at least from a
32:23
a Japanese market perspective. Very few Japanese people are
32:26
interested in tea. It's not really a thing
32:29
everyone's interested into. Coffee is.
32:31
If we can shine a big light on why matcha is special and what's
32:35
great about it across the cultivars, the producers, the
32:37
production methods and all of these, the craft of creating it
32:43
has historically been behind closed doors.
32:47
They're gate kept by these large traditional matcha houses that
32:52
don't tell you how they're blending or where they're tea
32:54
from or why anything special. They rely completely on their
32:57
brand. But by having a more organic
33:00
grounds up movement where we can and explain to people how
33:04
amazing hand picked tea is or how amazing tea is from a
33:08
certain area with an uji and the fact that they fertilized it
33:12
using natural fish and rice, right?
33:15
These are really interesting stories that can really shape
33:18
people's preferences and build demand for these products.
33:21
And historically that's all been abstracted away from the
33:25
consumer. That's not how it's been sold.
33:28
But if we apply these specialty principles that have been using
33:30
coffee and wine and chocolate, and we have a really great
33:34
thriving industry on both sides of these things, which is, you
33:38
know, a narrative and a conversation in the community
33:40
we'd like to be a part of, which is which is why we do this
33:43
podcast. So, Gwen, for the coming new
33:45
season, do you have anything that you want to see or hear
33:49
Ryan and I talk about or do? I mean, I have lots of things
33:53
that I think would be fun to talk about.
33:55
I think more guests will be really exciting.
33:57
I think having you guys traveling and all the plans for
34:01
Japan and what you're learning there will be really fun.
34:03
But I also think that'll be good to do a dive into the basics
34:07
like working on macho ratios and the temperature.
34:12
And I know that we've touched on those things a little bit, but I
34:15
think having a deeper understanding of things like
34:17
that also very interesting and helpful.
34:19
But we do have an Instagram for anyone that's listening and
34:21
wants to follow along for short clips and or to contact us.
34:25
That's probably the best way. And we'd love to hear from you
34:28
about guests you'd like to have on the podcast or topics that
34:31
you think we should cover. Yes, please.
34:33
Anyone listening, we are always looking for new guests, whatever
34:37
perspective they have. So that's if you know anyone,
34:41
even if they're just a super consumer and love Matcha, you
34:44
know, we'd love to talk about them and get their perspective
34:47
and how they fell in love with Matcha and sort of what they're
34:50
excited about that's happening now.
34:52
Please do. Warm introductions for guests
34:55
are very welcome. I also know just internally we
34:57
have a lot of stuff coming up and I'm very excited for that to
35:00
be shared and for us to be able to talk about it on the podcast.
35:04
Any spoiler alert? I don't know.
35:06
I know you've got the spoilers. So what Gwen's alluding to, one
35:10
of the things he's leading to is we're building a mill to mill
35:13
matcha fresh and we're on version 2 of that and we're
35:17
currently working out our go to market strategy for that.
35:21
For the first commercial production run.
35:24
Due to some constraints that we have being a tiny three person
35:28
company that's self funded, we're gonna have a very limited
35:32
first production run and we want to partner with specialty coffee
35:38
companies or specialty tea companies for the first release.
35:42
So if you know anyone that would be very interested in partnering
35:45
with us to having one of these matcha mills to mill matcha
35:48
fresh anywhere around the world where we can legally do business
35:52
as AUS company. But we would love an
35:54
introduction and are actively looking for the right partners
35:59
to have one of these mills. And we'll work with you to get
36:01
A10 shot supply and also potentially have that mill be as
36:06
a base that anyone who lives around you will have access to a
36:09
fresh milk matcha in a retail setting or potentially a direct
36:13
to consumer setting. So that would be wonderful.
36:17
If anyone's interested in that, please, please do reach out.
36:20
Yeah. We are also really looking for
36:23
for feedbacks too, you know, like this is the first
36:27
prototype, first machine that we ever built.
36:29
And of course, there will be some shortcomings.
36:32
And we'd love to learn from you about how you use the machine
36:37
and how you find it can be improved.
36:41
Yeah. And for this podcast in general
36:43
or any content we pick out, we we love feedback, good or bad,
36:49
only helps us get better over time.
36:51
We're very much try to put ourselves on the Kaizen, a
36:56
continuous cycle of self improvement.
36:59
All right, I guess we can wrap up.
37:00
Oh. I have one last good question
37:02
actually. Oh, let's do it.
37:03
I know you two met over tea, do you remember the first time you
37:08
each had matcha? First time having matcha.
37:13
I remember my first time having koicha.
37:15
That's. More if you'd rather.
37:18
Can you explain what koicha is to everyone?
37:19
Yeah, Koicha. Is it's this it's almost like a
37:24
matcha paste. It's it's how when in tea
37:27
ceremony sometimes people would put intentionally put much less
37:33
water into the matcha to make turn it into some sort of a pay,
37:37
usually for higher quality matcha in more special
37:41
occasions. So before that I only have had
37:44
usucha before and it was with Koike Sensen.
37:48
So they are Omena Cinque ceremony school in North America
37:53
and we were having tea in their tea house, headquarter tea house
37:57
in New York and we were playing a very interesting game in in
38:01
the tea that it's called Chaka Buki.
38:03
So basically we are tasting three sets of tea and they would
38:07
tell us the name of those teas and then we need to remember the
38:11
taste of those teas and then we are all gathered together at the
38:15
end having a little competition. So we are going to taste all
38:19
three teas again but in mixed order and there will be a fourth
38:23
tea introduced into the order. So not only we need to guess the
38:27
order of this new set up, but we also need to guess which one is
38:33
the new tea that we have not tasted before.
38:36
And they were all in quota format.
38:39
So we drank so much quota by the end of the of the game that that
38:45
that both Ryan and I were fell flying by the end of the
38:49
competition. But that was a very, very, very
38:52
funny event to attack. I guess, Ryan, you also remember
38:55
that. Oh yeah, my stomach has never
38:57
forgotten. It's very important not to go in
39:02
an empty stomach to a tea ceremony.
39:05
Indeed, indeed. That's why there's always
39:08
wagashi company with drinking tea in those tea ceremonies.
39:13
They taste good. Always tastes amazing.
39:16
What about you, Ryan? Yeah, my first matcha was in
39:21
high school, I think from a Teavana can, and I remember
39:24
thinking it was OK at the time it wasn't my favorite.
39:28
I really liked the way it made me feel.
39:30
So the energy profile of it I found very interesting.
39:34
But I didn't have matcha that I really enjoyed until I became an
39:38
A motosente student. I don't know who scheduled the
39:40
lessons, but all of the lessons as a as a college student and
39:44
state started at 9:00 AM on Saturday and Sunday mornings.
39:48
And there's nothing like sitting in Cesar for an hour and a half.
39:55
You can still taste the beer in your mouth before before I.
40:00
Don't know fear is the right emotion, but they're very vivid
40:05
memories and there's a lot of pleasure, like in forcing
40:09
yourself to wake up that early and sitting in seza and having,
40:13
you know, your three bites of wagashi.
40:16
Very kindly brought from like nini Moto kichuan or sometimes
40:21
the instructors made it themselves the day before.
40:24
Sweets were always amazing and then having an ice bowl of
40:29
usucha, it was very powerful. Sensory memory.
40:35
When was the first time having lunch?
40:37
Zombie made me my first matcha. I went down to visit and it was
40:40
I think a few months after I started working with you guys
40:44
and that's when I had my first matcha.
40:46
But you didn't have matcha before working at Sanco?
40:49
I don't. I don't think I did.
40:50
If I did, I don't remember it. It's very possible that I had,
40:54
but I don't think that I ever did.
40:56
At least nothing good. OK.
40:58
Not even the matcha latte. I don't think so.
41:01
I have so many allergies that I don't usually get lattes when
41:04
I'm out because they don't usually have an option that I
41:06
can. Have interesting How has your SO
41:10
after your first exposure to matcha?
41:12
How has your preference changed? Do you, do you like it and do do
41:17
you have any specific things that you like about it?
41:19
That's a really hard question for me to answer.
41:20
I don't know if I've had it consistently enough to really
41:23
state what my preferences are. I think visiting Ohika in
41:27
Lawrenceville and having some matcha from there is probably
41:30
best match I've had. But I've only done that once.
41:34
And I think Ryan, you had a can that we then had a couple of
41:37
times. So it's hard for me to to really
41:39
say because it hasn't been frequent enough.
41:41
We need to. Change that.
41:43
We need to change that to change that.
41:45
Yeah. Having fresh milk matcha from
41:47
Oyika was was something. Having fresh milk matcha in
41:51
general is mind blowing. Like it's, it's really sad that
41:55
that's not more accessible for people.
41:57
Maybe someday it will be it. Will be soon if.
42:01
Only I had my own meal here to work with.
42:06
You're on the lookout for more content from us.
42:08
Thank you for for listening and you have any episode topics
42:12
suggestions, please let us know and we'll see you on the next
42:17
one. Really appreciate the
42:18
listenership through the first season and can't wait to release
42:22
more content. Yeah, see you in the next
42:25
season. Wooch, goodbye.