Latest / Specialty Matcha Podcast / Tea farming, tencha processing, and cultivars with Pau from Tea Nursery

Transcript

Tea farming, tencha processing, and cultivars with Pau from Tea Nursery · Specialty Matcha Podcast

• 0:00
  Hello and welcome to the Specialty Match Podcast.
• 0:02
  My name is Ryan. This is Michael Ho Sungjun, who
• 0:04
  also goes by Sam. Hello.
• 0:05
  Hello. And we're the cofounders of
• 0:07
  Sanko Match Products. Yeah, we launched this podcast
• 0:10
  to discuss our learning journey, Matcha, share startup stories
• 0:13
  and interview experts. And today we have our old friend
• 0:16
  Pennsylvania from Tea Nursery joining us again.
• 0:19
  Welcome back, Pennsylvania. Hello guys, thank you for having
• 0:21
  me again. Thanks so much for coming back
• 0:23
  on. For anyone, any of our new
• 0:25
  listeners that didn't listen to your past interview episode,
• 0:29
  would love if you could sort of reintroduce yourself and where
• 0:32
  you're based and what your background is.
• 0:34
  Yeah. So my name is Pao.
• 0:36
  I'm born in Catalonia, in Spain. I work now in Wasuka in a tea
• 0:40
  farm in there. So I'm based in Kyoto, South of
• 0:44
  Kyoto region. Tea wise you probably have heard
• 0:48
  of Uji mostly, but was because a little bit more S close to Nara
• 0:51
  and my background is from coffee from coffee roasting.
• 0:55
  Many years later, I kind of like made the transition to the other
• 1:00
  side in a way. And then just before
• 1:02
  transitioning to the T side of things professionally, I also
• 1:06
  started a blog about TI wanted to learn more.
• 1:10
  And I just collect a lot of random notes and read a lot of
• 1:14
  scientific papers and just kept all the notes for myself.
• 1:17
  And at some point I just wanted to start publishing part of it.
• 1:21
  So that's, that's more or less like the, the broad strokes of
• 1:25
  my work in a way in, in T at least.
• 1:28
  Random notes. It's a really an understatement.
• 1:30
  It's such a digital goal mine. For anyone that's interested in
• 1:34
  like super in depth like knowledge about tea cultivars or
• 1:38
  tea farming techniques, definitely go check out Tea
• 1:40
  Nursery. It's.
• 1:42
  Such a wonderful place. It's also the perfect starting
• 1:44
  place for a rabbit hole research journey because you do such a
• 1:48
  good job with the references. So like it's.
• 1:51
  Thank you that, that this whole thing is very important to me
• 1:55
  because sometimes it's like like, yeah, this is like that.
• 1:58
  They're like, OK, where did you take the info?
• 2:02
  But unfortunately is, is also like, I need to do a better job
• 2:06
  because there is already like some articles where like 123
• 2:10
  links, they just die. And it's like maybe they change
• 2:13
  the URL or if it's a reference from a paper, of course it's,
• 2:17
  it's always there with a doy link.
• 2:19
  But sometimes like a block from a farmer just goes down and then
• 2:23
  just the link just disappears. So it's a little bit
• 2:25
  complicated, but I do my best for references is actually I
• 2:28
  that's how I start the articles in a way.
• 2:30
  There's a bunch of references and then start like putting it
• 2:33
  together a little bit, I think. I think it's very important to
• 2:36
  just like, fully understand it. And to double check, I mean,
• 2:39
  that's the worst part about learning anything about tea.
• 2:42
  It's like you kind of have to take someone's word for it at
• 2:44
  some point. And then, like, you have to
• 2:47
  like, reconfirm. Because even when we've talked
• 2:49
  to like, some farmers both in Japan but in other countries as
• 2:52
  well, tea farmers, you realize that some people have very
• 2:55
  strong opinions. And you're, like, taking it all
• 2:58
  in, like, yeah, yeah, yeah. And then, like, you go and talk
• 3:01
  to someone else and, like, they have a very different story.
• 3:05
  And you kind of have to do your own references to figure out
• 3:08
  what that's true. Yeah, I agree.
• 3:10
  I agree. That is actually like a very fun
• 3:12
  part of like the writing because sometimes you like have the
• 3:16
  opportunity to ask some people and some some of those people
• 3:18
  actually researchers. And it's like, I have this very
• 3:21
  specific question if you have the time and you would like to
• 3:25
  answer like here it is. They are like just like the most
• 3:29
  opinionated answer. It's like, oh, I didn't expect
• 3:31
  this from this person. And then you, you, you read his
• 3:34
  paper and you read his e-mail, and it's like two very different
• 3:37
  things. And it's like, oh, this is the
• 3:39
  opinion of this person. And this is actually what the
• 3:42
  data shows. It's like sometimes It's very
• 3:43
  interesting. Yeah.
• 3:44
  Actually, when I meet new tea people, that's like the quickest
• 3:47
  way I can categorize them at how long they've been learning about
• 3:50
  tea. Because sometimes, especially
• 3:52
  for new entrants, they learn so much more about tea than the
• 3:56
  average person that they start to really believe that they're
• 3:58
  an expert and they talk in absolutes.
• 4:01
  And then people who've been studying tea for a lot longer
• 4:03
  and have kind of like reality over time has caught up with
• 4:06
  them, realizing that like, you have to constantly revise your
• 4:11
  knowledge and frameworks like talk.
• 4:13
  They talk in a very different way.
• 4:16
  When when you notice that they use like a lot of hedging
• 4:20
  language, like very uncertain and like shakes their heads all
• 4:24
  the time, like you know you're talking to a more experienced
• 4:28
  tea people, you just get. Shown the door enough times,
• 4:32
  realizing or or like completely embarrassed by someone that
• 4:35
  knows way more than you enough times.
• 4:37
  And then it's then you realize that there's so much more
• 4:40
  context than anyone could ever learn in a lifetime.
• 4:43
  This stuff. I think, I think I think so,
• 4:45
  especially as I've read more and especially being more in the
• 4:49
  field like this is like my second full season in a way.
• 4:53
  Like you understand less of the specific when you understand
• 4:56
  more about the context. And I think sometimes we kind of
• 5:00
  start from the specific start from the rabbit hole, which I
• 5:02
  absolutely love. But it's like, oh, why, why are
• 5:05
  we actually doing this? Now?
• 5:06
  This is done by this, because then when you do this, this
• 5:09
  happens and then this happens and then this happens.
• 5:11
  And that's how you did it in the old time.
• 5:13
  Now I see. So the, the context is, is very
• 5:16
  important. And I think understanding like
• 5:18
  more and more every every month, every season that we that we go,
• 5:22
  it's like the small details, but they are like all like
• 5:26
  interwived in a very, very, very deep way.
• 5:29
  I think that's very interesting. That's super interesting.
• 5:32
  So how was the 2025 spring harvest season this year?
• 5:37
  In Wazuka, we heard that, you know, quality is super good.
• 5:40
  In Wuji this time we heard the production is slightly lower,
• 5:43
  but the quality is super high. So is that the same case also in
• 5:47
  your region, Paul? And did you learn anything new
• 5:50
  compared to last year? I would say so last year we
• 5:53
  started harvesting in the farm where I work, of course, like
• 5:58
  the 23rd of April. And this year we actually
• 6:02
  harvested on so the 1st of May, which was super cool because
• 6:06
  it's like super great and very important significant date about
• 6:12
  two years ago after or something you had to.
• 6:14
  Yeah, is the 88th night after spring.
• 6:19
  So that's like after the beginning of spring, 88 nights,
• 6:21
  and that's when you start the harvest.
• 6:24
  So usually the first or second of May is just like, I don't
• 6:27
  know, in Chinese it will be like the King Ming.
• 6:30
  It's like that point in time where it's either breaking Ming
• 6:33
  or post King Ming. So it's like kind of like that
• 6:36
  style. And of course in Kyoto
• 6:38
  Prefecture, it's kind of like hovers around that area in the
• 6:42
  South. They started much, much earlier
• 6:44
  than us, but two years ago it was very hot.
• 6:46
  So actually they started like the 15 or 16th of April, so two
• 6:50
  weeks before extremely hot this year, slightly later than last
• 6:55
  year. But also it was like a very cold
• 6:59
  winter, slightly longer cold winter and then it just rate a
• 7:05
  lot. The weather never really picked
• 7:08
  up temperature wise. I think that's that's where part
• 7:12
  of the increase in quality comes from.
• 7:15
  So he was OK. I think that at least at the
• 7:17
  beginning of the harvest, the quality was like very, very
• 7:20
  good. The teas I could try super
• 7:23
  great. But then during harvest we've
• 7:25
  got like a lot of rainy days. One day and a half rain, then
• 7:29
  you have to stop. Then you are one day growth late
• 7:32
  because the plant will not really grow that much when it's
• 7:35
  raining. But then after the rainy just
• 7:37
  like accelerates. So the last week of harvest they
• 7:41
  were like against the clock in a way, like you were like maybe a
• 7:45
  few fields like one or two days later that what could have been
• 7:49
  optimum at least visual visually wise.
• 7:52
  So I was talking while with one of our farmers and a couple of
• 7:56
  them were like the stems have grown not not too long or
• 7:59
  anything like that, but you can feel that they are slightly
• 8:02
  harder than yesterday or like 2 days ago.
• 8:05
  But it was raining so we could not do anything.
• 8:07
  So that was, that was a very, very interesting thing to see
• 8:11
  because I usually like, I just look at the leaves like that.
• 8:14
  They look good. Like, I don't know.
• 8:16
  I don't know what to tell you. They want to know.
• 8:18
  But if you take the, the stem count 3 leave, this is more or
• 8:21
  less where we want to cut. And you can feel how flexible
• 8:24
  they are. Like, oh, yeah, it actually has
• 8:25
  changed. Oh.
• 8:27
  Interesting. I was, I was very interesting.
• 8:30
  And then there was one section of the billet that had like a
• 8:32
  little bit of frost damage, nothing too bad, but we got in
• 8:37
  the afternoon. There is this alarm that sounds
• 8:39
  when there is frost expected during the night.
• 8:42
  Every couple days you will hear that like frost is coming
• 8:45
  tonight, like we hope nothing gonna happen because it was like
• 8:49
  2 days before harvest, something like that.
• 8:51
  It's like this, the critical, critical point.
• 8:54
  There was just a little bit of damage in a few areas, but
• 8:56
  that's it. So that was that was good.
• 8:58
  Would you guys like go turn on the fan?
• 9:01
  And they turn on automatically like.
• 9:03
  They turn on automatically. Yeah, I mean you, you put them
• 9:07
  to turn on automatically or just ignore even if it's like below
• 9:11
  certain temperature, just you just turn them off.
• 9:15
  And you can also they have like control panels, like there's
• 9:18
  like a thermometer, like only if it's below 5° or if it's below
• 9:23
  4° or something like that. So you can you have a little bit
• 9:26
  of control at least. And it was very funny.
• 9:30
  It was very funny because you could follow some of bazooka
• 9:34
  farmers in Instagram and they actually like taking pictures of
• 9:37
  their control panel for the father.
• 9:39
  Like, yeah, in this way we are turning it on.
• 9:41
  And in this one, maybe off because it's a little bit more
• 9:44
  like shaded. So maybe it doesn't need the
• 9:46
  cold air style. Like that's that's the content I
• 9:49
  want to see. Yeah.
• 9:51
  Perfect. Interesting algorithm.
• 9:55
  It was very fine. It was just like a metal box
• 9:58
  with like a knob that is like 1 until 10 or something like that.
• 10:02
  They're just like the farmers are just taking pictures of
• 10:04
  that. It's like it's super funny.
• 10:05
  I found it super funny. It's very wholesome.
• 10:08
  How does that system work? I would think that having like
• 10:12
  air blown at tea leaves when it's cool is going to cool them
• 10:16
  off more. You're getting rid of moisture,
• 10:20
  right? Well, you're moving air, like if
• 10:22
  you take a river for example, and it's like super cold in
• 10:26
  winter, like as long as the river flows, it will never fully
• 10:30
  freeze or it's going to be very difficult for it to freeze.
• 10:32
  Maybe on the sides you will have like a lot of ice, but the
• 10:35
  center part of it, the, the water will flow, right?
• 10:37
  So it's the same. But with air, like as long as
• 10:40
  the air is moving, the cold air will tend to sink.
• 10:42
  So the, the, the fans are like scraping that cold air and
• 10:46
  preventing it from settling and creating ice.
• 10:50
  Sometimes also like those fans are like, I don't know, maybe 5
• 10:53
  meters tall, 6 meters tall. So the air might be slightly
• 10:57
  hotter there. So they just moving the air and
• 11:00
  just raising the temperature maybe half a degree is enough to
• 11:04
  move the air away, move the humidity away.
• 11:07
  It would have like a lot of moisture in the ambient.
• 11:10
  It just like keeps it a little bit like moving.
• 11:12
  So it will still be maybe cold damage, but not like ice damage
• 11:18
  in a way. Interesting.
• 11:20
  But sometimes in certain parts of the mountain, if you know
• 11:22
  that the the the wind currents above the mountain are cold and
• 11:28
  you just turn on the fans, then you're injecting super cold air
• 11:31
  into on top of the plant. So that's when you just turn
• 11:34
  them off. So there is some sections where
• 11:36
  like we know that the how the wind comes like especially if
• 11:40
  you are at the top of a hill, it's just going to be cold.
• 11:44
  But if you know that it's like a very windy area, you might just
• 11:48
  check day by day, like, Oh yeah, it's going to be frost, but no
• 11:51
  wind. We're OK.
• 11:52
  It's going to be frost, but it's also going to be windy.
• 11:55
  Maybe let maybe let's just cross our fingers and some farmers,
• 12:00
  they can even use like roof, like the the roofs for shading.
• 12:04
  You can use that as a the frost prevention technique.
• 12:07
  Like I mean that's how they discovered that the shading
• 12:10
  improved flavor many, many years ago.
• 12:12
  And of course they didn't understand the chemical reasons,
• 12:15
  but. Yeah it's the asana originally
• 12:17
  was for anti frost. Exactly.
• 12:20
  So it's kind of the same idea, but just like with wind in a
• 12:24
  way. Very cool.
• 12:25
  It's pretty, pretty sophistic. I've never seen like fans like
• 12:28
  being used in farming like that. Like I think in vineyards
• 12:32
  sometimes they just like literally put like buckets with
• 12:35
  Bhutan on fire just to warm up the the field.
• 12:38
  Yeah, I've seen that there's like mountain candle like.
• 12:42
  Yeah, it's actually, it's actually very pretty.
• 12:43
  It's like, it's like, I know why you guys are doing it and I hope
• 12:46
  everything is going to be OK, but they look very pretty, yeah.
• 12:50
  It must be so much work like. Putting those out, I've actually
• 12:55
  heard of, you know, a very cold winter and like some very low
• 13:00
  temperature climate is very good for, you know, farming and
• 13:05
  certain crops because it kind of killed all the insects and
• 13:08
  insect lava in the soil. So is that the same case for tea
• 13:12
  too? Or have you noticed the
• 13:13
  difference? For insects above ground, I
• 13:16
  don't know. I think if you have problems
• 13:19
  with like nematodes and stuff, it's probably beneficial, but
• 13:23
  certain cultivars don't tolerate cold weather that well.
• 13:27
  Time Midori is extremely weak. Again, extremely.
• 13:30
  It's like very weak against cold weather.
• 13:33
  So it doesn't really doesn't really like it too much.
• 13:37
  Like we have one field with Time Midori and in winter I'm always
• 13:39
  like checking to see like, Oh yeah, actually you can just see
• 13:42
  the leaves just like peel away in a way with Coldwell.
• 13:46
  But in the South, like in Yama, for example, I think they had
• 13:49
  also like a little bit of frost this year in certain areas.
• 13:52
  So even in warmer regions you are you have the risk of this
• 13:56
  kind of things going on. I think.
• 13:58
  I think my insect, I mean above, above ground for sure.
• 14:02
  Like it just destroys everything.
• 14:04
  But also like is the mantis eggs are like in the Bush usually and
• 14:09
  they are late. They laid the eggs in autumn,
• 14:12
  late autumn. So I guess if they die during
• 14:14
  the winter, then you have problems in spring because they
• 14:17
  are very good predators of insects.
• 14:20
  So it's one of the best insecticides that you can use in
• 14:22
  my opinion. Of course, if they if they die
• 14:25
  then there is no one to police the fields.
• 14:29
  That's right, there are good insects and bad insects.
• 14:31
  Yeah, ladybugs, mantis, and I think there's a couple types of
• 14:36
  spiders that are OK as well. There's some spiders that are
• 14:40
  like, quite quite bad. Yeah, bad because they're
• 14:43
  poisonous or bad for. Other well, they lay they like
• 14:46
  they act like on the soft stems and they they just leave like
• 14:50
  underneath and they just like take the SAP of the of the leaf
• 14:55
  they produce like 1. Of the butts, yeah.
• 14:58
  It's like AI don't know like how do you say a blood sucker one of
• 15:04
  these leeches like glitches, but like 1mm, 1mm size type of thing
• 15:12
  is the rat rat spiders. Yeah, it's not not that good if
• 15:15
  it gets out of control. The the rat spiders.
• 15:18
  Yeah. It's super tiny.
• 15:20
  It's not really. Spider.
• 15:22
  It looks kind of like Mite I. Think.
• 15:25
  Yeah, it's a type of pests that infest not only tea, but also
• 15:30
  out of crops, too. They're yeah, pretty bad.
• 15:33
  Yeah, they love simulatory. It's very tasty.
• 15:35
  Cultivate. We do too.
• 15:38
  So when like a lot of people go to visit tea farms like us
• 15:42
  included, and other brand owners or people doing tea, various
• 15:47
  forms of tea tourism, like everyone has their rose colored
• 15:50
  glasses on, everyone's so happy to be there.
• 15:53
  It's like really like euphoric time.
• 15:55
  Like what's could you like help give everyone a picture of the
• 15:59
  nitty gritty like less romanticized version of tension
• 16:03
  processing and what that looks like?
• 16:05
  And like if we remove sort of the romantic antic filters of
• 16:09
  like a type of tea processing, like where is it Like where does
• 16:13
  it like suck to be a tea farmer at that time of year?
• 16:16
  Like how is like to get a little better sense of like what the
• 16:20
  actual day-to-day looks like? For the tension factory, I think
• 16:23
  that the worst part is for sure when they are operating it and
• 16:27
  those ovens are like at 300° each oven and you are next to
• 16:32
  the oven, you know, like that's that like just like a huge, huge
• 16:36
  room and just is just like very sweaty people, like just next to
• 16:40
  very hot stuff. And it's just like, yeah, this
• 16:43
  is, this is how we do it. Like a lot of sweat and physical
• 16:46
  effort steaming too. So a lot of the humidity is also
• 16:49
  like quite high in some parts of the factory.
• 16:52
  Sometimes it's quite, it's quite rough, especially like unloading
• 16:55
  as well. We use harvesting bags, so it's
• 16:58
  like maybe 20 kilos per bag, sometimes more, and you have to
• 17:02
  unload that from the short track, put it into the
• 17:06
  container, and then you have to kind of be on the short track
• 17:09
  and just pulling the bag and just letting the leaves into the
• 17:12
  container. Maybe every track is like 300
• 17:15
  kilos ish, sometimes 400 kilos of leaf that you are actively
• 17:21
  lifting above your head just to drop it into a container.
• 17:24
  So imagine doing that as your job for like many, many hours
• 17:28
  and then having to go inside of the room.
• 17:30
  Maybe it's like 40 something degrees in there sometimes.
• 17:34
  And then even if you are in the separating room where the the
• 17:37
  leaf and the stem, it's like gets dried at different in a
• 17:40
  different dryer, it's it's dusty, it's like it's dust
• 17:44
  everywhere. Everything is green or a shade
• 17:46
  of green. You are just like lifting 20
• 17:48
  kilos at the time, all the time, all night, basically a lot of
• 17:52
  effort. It's into the night too, right?
• 17:54
  Like what are the operating hours?
• 17:56
  Into factories usually like operate 24/7.
• 17:59
  It's like one of these. It's like a old style bread
• 18:03
  oven. Like once you turn them on, you
• 18:04
  just don't turn them off, you just keep going.
• 18:07
  Especially for tenta is like kind of like a little bit of a
• 18:11
  bottleneck. Usually you always have some
• 18:14
  leaf to go through. So those ovens are very
• 18:17
  difficult to heat up. Like it's just like a lot of
• 18:20
  calories that they that they take to heat them up.
• 18:23
  So they just, they just keep going.
• 18:25
  And there are some farmers that they harvest during the day and
• 18:27
  they work like part time in the Tenta factories in the evening
• 18:30
  sometimes if they have the time. So there's like a lot of a lot
• 18:34
  of that too. So everyone's just working like
• 18:36
  12 hour shifts or? 8 hours or more, Three teams or
• 18:40
  more or more. There is people working 1820
• 18:44
  hours per day. It's a hard job.
• 18:47
  What is the management structure of a tension factory?
• 18:51
  Do you have special people specialize to operate the
• 18:56
  facility or do the farmers themselves, you know, are kind
• 18:59
  of the operators or it's kind of like a mixture of the I?
• 19:03
  Think it's both. Of course there is always people
• 19:05
  that understand better the process and usually they work
• 19:09
  only on the Tenta factory. But if you work for a company
• 19:14
  that owns a Tenta factory, most likely you will be maybe
• 19:17
  harvesting all morning and then the afternoon you will be in the
• 19:21
  factory. So they can do kind of like
• 19:23
  both. The good thing, like in Tensor,
• 19:25
  there is less, of course, there is no rolling.
• 19:27
  So there is less decisions that you have to take as in like, oh,
• 19:31
  it's still wet, more rolling, more pressure, like let's move
• 19:34
  it to the next machine. Like it's just a steaming.
• 19:37
  Make sure that this cooked to the degree that you're looking
• 19:40
  for in the oven. There is things that you can
• 19:43
  adjust. That's the two main things.
• 19:45
  And then just make sure at the end that everything is dry,
• 19:48
  everything is well packed. The stems are separated
• 19:50
  correctly. Of course it is still going to
• 19:52
  be a rata, so it needs to go to refining factory.
• 19:55
  But those are the type of physicians.
• 19:57
  But there is there is farmers for example, that they might
• 20:01
  especially nowadays, they might have to send part of their
• 20:04
  production to a tension factory and part of the production to
• 20:07
  another tension factory. And it's like, yeah, I prefer
• 20:10
  how they work in this place or I prefer how the Tenta takes on
• 20:14
  that place. And that's, I think like very.
• 20:17
  I don't, I don't know, I don't have like a very good insight
• 20:19
  into that part because I've never I've seen tension
• 20:23
  factories and I've been there. But of course you are not
• 20:25
  spending six hours with them during one entire season.
• 20:29
  So the the the small adjustments that they that they do, I, I
• 20:33
  don't have like a lot of insight on on that, but that is
• 20:37
  definitely things going on like if it's a break oven or it's
• 20:40
  like a more modern metal last cutting edge technology or
• 20:44
  something. But generally in characterism.
• 20:46
  But this thing was because almost everything is a little
• 20:49
  bit more brick combination I would say.
• 20:53
  Interesting. We've heard that the infrared
• 20:55
  heating of these brick ovens really lend to that, like the
• 20:58
  taste of like Kyoto process, Kyoto Prefect.
• 21:01
  Yeah, when I was visiting Research Center in Shizuoka,
• 21:04
  they had like a machine. It was like 0% break.
• 21:07
  It was just all stainless steel or a variation of stainless
• 21:11
  steel. And we're like, OK, I'm like,
• 21:13
  what are you doing with it? Like, oh, there's a machine that
• 21:16
  they want us to try. And it's just like they do the
• 21:19
  refraction, but with just like inside of the machine with like
• 21:22
  maybe some coating and stuff like OK.
• 21:24
  Interesting. Because the oven was.
• 21:26
  Like create that infrared effect.
• 21:29
  Yeah, I don't know if like maybe they have like something inside
• 21:32
  or gas or like heavy oil or something like that.
• 21:35
  Well, like at a much, much higher temperature to achieve
• 21:38
  the same effect. I I don't know, but it was
• 21:41
  considerably small. It was like half the size of a
• 21:43
  brick oven too. So I found that like very, very,
• 21:46
  very interesting because those ovens are are quite long
• 21:50
  sometimes. That's very cool.
• 21:52
  You know, like tea industry is really a place in Japan that you
• 21:56
  can see like cutting edge modernism clash with traditional
• 22:00
  values and traditional technique.
• 22:02
  It's always interesting to see this kind of effect.
• 22:05
  Yeah, I think especially because I work in Kyoto, of course there
• 22:08
  is like very infrastructure that I don't know.
• 22:12
  There is some people that have a brick Owen from like 8090,
• 22:16
  hundred years ago. It's like, Oh my God, the
• 22:19
  factories are like legacy buildings in a way.
• 22:23
  And then you go on holidays to Shizuoka.
• 22:25
  I'm going to just say hi to this farmer.
• 22:28
  And you enter the the factories, like, wow, huge square building
• 22:35
  where you have a space in between the machines and you
• 22:37
  have machines are stuck on top of machines and like this so
• 22:41
  cool. They were like, yeah, well, I, I
• 22:44
  come from Kyoto. Like you should see our factory.
• 22:47
  It used to be an old lumberjack, you know, like it's like just
• 22:50
  like refurbished a little bit. How do you do it?
• 22:53
  I was like, I don't know. Yeah, it's, it's very
• 22:56
  interesting. Sometimes there's some factories
• 22:58
  out there. It's like, it's like a dream
• 23:00
  when when you compare to to Kyoto, like like machinery is
• 23:04
  different, the machines are the same, the concept of the
• 23:06
  machines is the same, but you can very clearly see this comes
• 23:10
  from a different time and place, I think.
• 23:12
  Yeah, we've seen some really old T processing equipment in Yame
• 23:17
  that still retained surprisingly, you know, similar
• 23:21
  details to a lot of these modern machines, but they are made out
• 23:24
  of wood and it's really cool to see kind of like the evolution
• 23:28
  or the lineage of all these, the T processing equipment.
• 23:32
  Work, we have a twisting machine.
• 23:33
  The the twisting rolling machine is the how do you say like
• 23:37
  foundry, foundry metal? It's not like a sheet of metal.
• 23:40
  It's like they they pour it into a mold probably it's like 3
• 23:43
  centimeter thick piece of chunk of metal for the roller.
• 23:47
  And then the entire base is just boot is like maybe like 70 or 80
• 23:52
  year old machine. And it has like the flywheel at
• 23:55
  the side when the they had these like belts on the roof usually
• 24:00
  to operate them. And then there's like an
• 24:02
  electric motor and it's like always like, you know, the
• 24:03
  electric motor came much later than the machine itself.
• 24:07
  They just like slapped it on the side, screw the switch on the
• 24:10
  side of the machine. But the machine used to be
• 24:12
  powered in a different way. So cool.
• 24:14
  They are so red, right? It's like 5K the.
• 24:17
  Power. Yeah, you can see like a huge
• 24:20
  wheel on the side. I was like, yeah, you don't use
• 24:22
  that anymore. Like they put like an extra gear
• 24:25
  that you can see. It's like a different material
• 24:27
  and an electric motor. Wow.
• 24:29
  It's very cool. It's like a 5K machine.
• 24:31
  It's super cute. It's a very nice size to just do
• 24:33
  tea for fun in a way like that, you know, in summer or
• 24:37
  something, a small Tesla or something.
• 24:39
  Very cool. You know, someone should really
• 24:41
  do a documentary of the, you know, on the evolution of tea
• 24:44
  processing machine in Japan. That will be something very
• 24:48
  interesting. I have a question, kind of a
• 24:50
  very nerdy question and something I've never really
• 24:53
  fully understood is where and how fertilizer is applied
• 24:58
  because it's really important. We recently tasted some samples
• 25:01
  of like no fertilizer and fertilizer, same cultivar, same
• 25:05
  region, same processing, same everything.
• 25:07
  And, like, I was shocked at the difference in taste.
• 25:11
  And it seems to be really driving, especially the umami,
• 25:14
  but a lot of the complexity as well, like is you spray it on
• 25:19
  the Bush, you spray it on the ground, you till it in the soil.
• 25:23
  Does it depend on if it's synthetic or natural or a mix in
• 25:28
  the way that you apply it? I have no like and when and how
• 25:31
  often. I have no, like, conception of
• 25:33
  how this is actually done. Yeah.
• 25:35
  Well, in I think independent of like if it's organic or
• 25:39
  synthetical, all those things is mainly like solid fertilizer
• 25:44
  like pellets or like rice husks or like canola.
• 25:48
  Acidola is just a chunk, a solid chunk of something and liquid
• 25:52
  version of it. And it is usually sprayed on the
• 25:56
  soil. OK.
• 25:57
  Or like kind of like not dumping because like it's not like
• 26:01
  you're going with a bucket and like there you go.
• 26:04
  I think it's spraying on the top.
• 26:06
  I think it's slightly different. I've never seen it for
• 26:08
  fertilizer, but I've seen it in coffee as in like for the for
• 26:13
  the leaf, like as a coating to protect the leaves, but not as a
• 26:16
  fertilizer. It's like more like against UV
• 26:19
  radiation or something like that.
• 26:21
  But usually liquid fertilizer is much more like all dissection
• 26:26
  needs help or something is going on or super, I don't know, high
• 26:30
  quality competition, great, great tea because it's like
• 26:33
  super fast absorption for the plant.
• 26:36
  Like the pellets usually like no, no, no, you just spray it on
• 26:40
  the, on the on the ground. The ones I have seen like maybe
• 26:43
  maybe there is some type of fertilizer that is sprayed on
• 26:46
  the leaf that I don't know because we don't really do that
• 26:51
  much. Our main farmer likes to do that
• 26:53
  alone because he just put some music and he's just like alone
• 26:56
  on the field. And sometimes you can see him
• 26:58
  singing and stuff. So he has he's like he's solo
• 27:03
  type. One of the few things that you
• 27:04
  can do alone in the field and just like chill.
• 27:07
  The the times I have done it is mostly pellets and it's like
• 27:10
  slow release. Like you throw it and it just
• 27:12
  like slowly get into the soil. Then most of the times it needs
• 27:16
  to be further breakdown by the microbes on the on the ground
• 27:21
  and then the plant can take it and absorb it.
• 27:24
  Especially for organic, I think that it's it takes like much,
• 27:27
  much longer like the degradation and then being able to be
• 27:31
  assimilated by the plant. But I think that the easiest way
• 27:35
  to the easiest way to understand the application is to start from
• 27:39
  the end of the season. In autumn you do the harvest.
• 27:42
  In autumn, forget about it is mostly banter.
• 27:44
  You do your trimming, that's probably one of the most
• 27:47
  important things that you have to do that prepares the canopy
• 27:49
  for spring already. And then you just like throw a
• 27:52
  bunch of fertilizer for the the winter just to support the
• 27:57
  pirate plant from all the three harvest.
• 28:00
  If you do 3 harvest, you're just fertilizing.
• 28:03
  But in like thinking long term like this is mostly for winter
• 28:07
  starch creation, like for the roots.
• 28:09
  Then the next one is list listing our region like of
• 28:13
  course is different region by region, but like early October,
• 28:17
  late November, you do that, then we move all the way to beginning
• 28:21
  of March, mid March. Then it's just like, do we just
• 28:25
  promote more quick absorbent fertilizers in a way it's more
• 28:29
  like for growth of the plant already growth of the leaf part
• 28:34
  and we get those first shoots and that's what we retrim middle
• 28:39
  of March. That just like takes mass,
• 28:42
  trashes the plant a little bit, promotes more branching.
• 28:45
  And then once you start to get the, the butts on the branches,
• 28:49
  the initial branches that you will actually harvest in, in
• 28:52
  spring, that's when you do the the other application like early
• 28:56
  April. I would say something like that.
• 28:58
  That's again quick absorption because you want that fertilizer
• 29:02
  to be absorbed and that's what's going to be on the flavor part
• 29:06
  of the application in a way. Here is where I've seen be used
• 29:10
  the liquid ones for your super high quality giacuros or Tenta
• 29:15
  competition or center competition, whatever they might
• 29:18
  choose. Like OK, this field, we use it
• 29:20
  for submitting to the competition.
• 29:21
  So they use this liquid super good fertilizer or something and
• 29:25
  they apply it only in certain areas or if they see some part
• 29:29
  of the field struggling, they might supplement a little bit
• 29:31
  more. OK, that's early April.
• 29:33
  Then you're just moving to harvest.
• 29:35
  You don't have time to do much more.
• 29:37
  There is shading to do as well. For example, if you're shading,
• 29:40
  then there is bunch of harvest, then there is trimming.
• 29:43
  So we already like late May, late May to June.
• 29:47
  Then you do summer fertilizer after the stress of the harvest
• 29:50
  and it starts to get hot and the plant is kind of like pushing to
• 29:54
  do a second growth around 50 days after the harvest, 50-60
• 29:57
  days after the harvest. That's when you have the summer
• 30:00
  hard 1. So this is more like slow
• 30:02
  release I would say support the plant after the stress, just
• 30:05
  give it more nutrients to compensate for the summer
• 30:09
  quality. And then you are already in
• 30:11
  autumn. So then you just harvest autumn
• 30:14
  and then you start the cycle again.
• 30:15
  To be fair, I've not done that much fertilization and we
• 30:19
  actually have one field where well now soon to be two fields
• 30:23
  where we do nothing. We just do the trimming.
• 30:27
  When you trim the Bush that is also kind of a fertilizer in a
• 30:30
  way. You just drop it into the floor
• 30:32
  and you just let it naturally compose.
• 30:34
  So that's the only fertilizer we use in that field.
• 30:37
  So the opportunities for me to learn these things, it's there,
• 30:42
  but the actual okay, let's go fertilize.
• 30:45
  Can you show me what is the mix stuff like We buy this, we put
• 30:49
  it there at this time. And then there is farmers where
• 30:52
  they do their own compose, they buy the ingredients and they do
• 30:56
  their own mixes or they ask a company to, okay, make me this
• 31:00
  formulation. There is farmers that sell
• 31:03
  fertilizers to other farmers and they like, I don't know, like
• 31:06
  quite fascinating. They have their own compost.
• 31:09
  They actually make compost for other farmers because they like
• 31:13
  the material or something. Interesting.
• 31:15
  Do they do people always use like local materials to make
• 31:18
  these? I'm.
• 31:19
  Not always, not always. I think that there's fertilizers
• 31:22
  for different things. So I think if you are more like
• 31:26
  super high quality tea, like something that you will do for
• 31:31
  competitions or stuff like that, tends to be more like super high
• 31:34
  grade on the synthetic side. Just because you are dosing just
• 31:38
  that element into the plant and it's like, oh, maybe this is for
• 31:41
  the roots or this is for the leaf or this is for growth or
• 31:44
  this is for whatever it might be.
• 31:47
  Very complicated. Yeah, I mean like the plant
• 31:50
  needs different different things at different periods of the of
• 31:52
  the year. So it's like, I don't know,
• 31:54
  taking vitamin supplements in human trials, some people need
• 31:57
  iron, some people need AB12 if you're vegan, for example.
• 32:01
  There's like different things. So it's kind of it's kind of the
• 32:04
  same. And sometimes understanding it
• 32:06
  is very complicated. The rice farmers that are
• 32:09
  actually tea farmers, they might use the rice has because they
• 32:12
  just have a lot of them. Why?
• 32:14
  Why shouldn't you just just use it?
• 32:17
  So there is there is like a lot of things that you can do.
• 32:19
  I guess if you are in an area where is it very easy for you to
• 32:22
  get fish bones, you can use that rapeseed oils canola seed like
• 32:27
  the the how do you say after pressing the canola seeds?
• 32:30
  There's also like a common material I guess bones and stuff
• 32:34
  like that too from ground bone bone meals called in English I
• 32:38
  think. For calciums, probably.
• 32:41
  Yeah, like shells, shells, shells and stuff like that.
• 32:44
  That oyster shells I've heard, I think.
• 32:47
  Yeah, there's many, many things that you can do.
• 32:49
  What are some of the physical signals of T plan that is
• 32:54
  undergoing some stress either from the environment, the
• 32:59
  climate or from shading? And what are the methods of
• 33:03
  farmers that usually kind of counter that kind of stress to
• 33:08
  help the plants? So I think there is a few signs
• 33:13
  on the spot that you can see what is more like damage stress.
• 33:17
  Like the shade is physically doing something to the plant.
• 33:21
  Like in the case of like doing direct contact, if you don't
• 33:25
  have it tight enough, there is a windstorm.
• 33:27
  It just hits the the the leaves. It might like RIP the leaves off
• 33:32
  or in summer, like the the material gets like super hot and
• 33:36
  it just like parching the leaf a little bit.
• 33:39
  So of course the the plant will suffer for those reasons.
• 33:42
  Most of the stress that I've seen is like from the year
• 33:47
  before is a problem that you the overdid something last year and
• 33:52
  the plant is recovering now. And one of the things is like
• 33:57
  the air trees, right? So the T plants are trees.
• 34:00
  The bottom side of the of the Bush never has leaf.
• 34:03
  Like once you get like 7-8 nine leaves down there is there is
• 34:08
  nothing. So the leaves just drop.
• 34:10
  So that natural. How how do you say it?
• 34:12
  The defoliation I think it's called in English like they just
• 34:16
  drop the leaves. If you overdo the shading, the
• 34:18
  the the leaves drop during the shading, you overdo it.
• 34:21
  If you shade direct contact 30 days you are potentially
• 34:26
  damaging the shoots on the top but the mother leaves at the
• 34:30
  bottom. They're dropping because they or
• 34:33
  they will. They're deeper than they are,
• 34:35
  like down the plant because it's shaded and they drop or they
• 34:39
  just drop for stress or? Yeah, it's like a, it creates a
• 34:44
  different timing on the plant. I would say if you do very long
• 34:47
  shading, the natural loss of the of the leaves happens later.
• 34:53
  Then you enter somewhere with less leaf that you would usually
• 34:57
  have in the in the canopy. Then you shade again in summer
• 35:00
  and you have again less leaf in autumn.
• 35:03
  And then in autumn you need to have enough canopy for it to
• 35:05
  survive winter. So if it has to recover through
• 35:09
  autumn and winter, then the next spring you don't have enough
• 35:12
  leaf to actually like have the same amount of production, if
• 35:14
  that makes sense. You're borrowing from the future
• 35:16
  basically because the management.
• 35:20
  Yeah. It's not like because you have
• 35:21
  harvested too much, which is also another problem.
• 35:24
  But like the shaving might give you a boost in quality of
• 35:29
  course, and also in yield in some cases.
• 35:31
  But that is at the expense of like draining the plant from
• 35:35
  energy that it will have used the next year because you are
• 35:38
  removing too many leaves. Then maybe you have, I don't
• 35:42
  know, let's say 30% left less leaf in autumn.
• 35:48
  It survives through the winter and then in the spring it
• 35:50
  doesn't have enough leave to make like a push up.
• 35:55
  It has first to make a few leaves, gather energy and then
• 35:59
  push up. So everything gonna be like gets
• 36:02
  too delayed the. Growth gets.
• 36:05
  Started. It's a little bit like that
• 36:08
  especially summer as well, like you get less leaf then you are
• 36:13
  shading way too long and it's hot and it's humid and maybe
• 36:16
  that is pests so you are losing leaf and you have like a
• 36:20
  potential outbreak or something because it's like a hot steamy.
• 36:24
  Room under the under the shade, right?
• 36:27
  Yeah. And then it's like, it's just
• 36:30
  like snowballs in a way or Yeah, especially in autumn.
• 36:35
  If you don't reach autumn with a healthy canopy, you have to you
• 36:39
  have to trim and then it just it just like shooting yourself on
• 36:43
  the on the foot a little bit. And also one thing that I don't
• 36:46
  know if it's going to happen next year, they worries me a
• 36:48
  little bit is like because there is so much tension production
• 36:51
  going on right now, usually would maybe rotate.
• 36:54
  So like we are shading this field, then the next year we
• 36:57
  will rotate, we shade another field and that one will
• 37:00
  naturally recover because it's more drained from energy.
• 37:03
  So let's let it recover. So now if you are shading both
• 37:06
  fields like this year, you might get like super high quality, a
• 37:09
  lot of yield. But next year I worry about we
• 37:13
  are going to have like a drop in quality and in yield like
• 37:16
  because this year I think average was like 12 to 15% less
• 37:21
  yield than compared to last year.
• 37:23
  So I think it was of course they do the average for prefecture
• 37:27
  wide. So I don't know exactly what
• 37:29
  they're they're looking at. So if on top of that every year
• 37:32
  we have less fields and on top of that we are always shading
• 37:36
  and not having a like a good rotation, I think it might be a
• 37:39
  little bit complicated. So there is things that you can
• 37:42
  do like the trimming helps, skipping summer helps, there is
• 37:48
  a push to do double shading spring and summer.
• 37:52
  And we've heard that that really like it forces the plants to do
• 37:55
  like an Iron Man or like a triple marathon a year like
• 38:00
  it's. Because the shaded.
• 38:02
  Cultivation is hard. Because all all the the starch
• 38:06
  is just drained from the plant all the the starch that they
• 38:10
  they used to as a main, I don't have a degree in agronomy or
• 38:14
  anything like that. So just please take everything
• 38:16
  with a spoonful of salt. But if we imagine start as the
• 38:21
  fuel and then you are growing the plant over shaving it and
• 38:25
  with 8085% less satellite and like the plant because of the
• 38:31
  shading is losing leaf. Like it's like everything is
• 38:33
  like stressing the plant. Then you give it like what 345
• 38:38
  weeks of rest and then you just shade it for another 20 days.
• 38:41
  And then it's like 40 something degrees and humidity through the
• 38:45
  roof and maybe there is some insects biting the plant.
• 38:48
  It's kind of kind of off for the plant, I think.
• 38:51
  And the energy reserves of the plant, they have a limit even
• 38:54
  with 30 utilization. Then you have to put more
• 38:57
  fertilizer to compensate. And then the plants just get
• 39:02
  dependent, you know, where they just get addicted to, to that,
• 39:06
  that rhythm. And cultivars don't have a
• 39:08
  taproot. So they, they have what they
• 39:10
  have on the surface. They they don't drill too much
• 39:13
  down. Do the natural fields that you
• 39:15
  guys have that you don't fertilize, do those grow
• 39:18
  taproots or deeper root structures?
• 39:20
  No, they're, they're cultivars. We have one that we are
• 39:23
  recovering right now that is a Zaida.
• 39:25
  I'm super excited to harvest it next year.
• 39:29
  But we had to just like it was like 2 meters tall or something
• 39:33
  like that. It was abandoned for slightly
• 39:37
  over slightly over a year. So we have we're diving under
• 39:40
  the plans just to cut them. And now it's starting to grow
• 39:43
  back. All of that is very tall.
• 39:46
  For Japan. Yeah, Yeah.
• 39:47
  Well, I mean, it was, it was abandoned.
• 39:49
  That's I've seen, I've seen taller.
• 39:52
  I was not so bad, but it's yeah, we started the process in
• 39:57
  January, late December. We just cut it down from 2
• 40:01
  meters, something down to like up to your knee more or less
• 40:05
  like 40 centimeters, 30 centimeters.
• 40:08
  And now it's starting to push up, but the design eye is like
• 40:11
  100 something years old Taproot. So it's just like, yeah, OK, I
• 40:17
  lost like 80% of my height, no problem.
• 40:20
  The thing that you were talking about with the shading and
• 40:22
  losing more and more of the mature leaves after each
• 40:26
  successive 1, is that the reason why we see longer shading times
• 40:30
  in Uji city? Like if you hear about producers
• 40:33
  in Goku Shaw or Shirakawa they do one harvest a year but I've
• 40:37
  noticed that the shading times are closer to like 40 days or
• 40:42
  4550. But I've noticed from in Mazuka
• 40:46
  and Uji Tawara they're usually around 3 weeks.
• 40:49
  And is it the reason is that they're doing 2 harvests so they
• 40:52
  literally can't, but the Uji producers can really push it
• 40:56
  because they're just doing 1? At least in Shirakawa they
• 40:59
  mostly use roof which is different because the plant has
• 41:03
  ventilation. They they use roof style
• 41:05
  shaving. Like the tunnel?
• 41:07
  Elevated tunnel. Whatever they use, the tunnel
• 41:09
  system they have, the plant doesn't have pressure on top of
• 41:13
  it. You're not creating this
• 41:14
  greenhouse effect. You are just like have a way
• 41:18
  better airflow for the farmer. I mean, I love roof style
• 41:21
  because you're on the shade harvesting, which is always,
• 41:25
  it's always, it was always nice, no.
• 41:27
  Absolutely cooler and. Yeah, and I mean, if you're
• 41:30
  already handpicking and you're having like super extra quality
• 41:35
  because of that, why bother harvesting in summer if you
• 41:38
  don't have to? I would say, okay, but in
• 41:41
  Wazooka there is many, many areas where we just cannot build
• 41:45
  roofs like we are, we are in the mountains like some, some fields
• 41:49
  are you are you are going to sleep like you're going to slip
• 41:52
  away with the harvesting machine that that's a that's a given.
• 41:55
  Like sometimes there is some people that I work with that
• 41:58
  wear like shoes with like the, the thing that you wear for the
• 42:02
  ice, like nails on the on the, on the boots, because it's, it's
• 42:05
  so steep. And if you, if you sleep, if
• 42:09
  you, if you fall with the harvesting machine, you are just
• 42:12
  going to do like, it's like when you go to the hairdresser and
• 42:15
  suddenly like, you could just have like a huge Nike symbol in
• 42:19
  the side of the, of your head suddenly.
• 42:20
  So that's a problem that maybe in Chirakawa is not that bad.
• 42:24
  I mean, it's, it's, it's the slope, but it's not like super,
• 42:27
  super steep. If you have like a lot of wind
• 42:31
  currents, the, the roof makes like a sail effect.
• 42:34
  So it might RIP the entire roof out if there is a windstorm.
• 42:38
  I mean also the the money investment, the metal pipes, the
• 42:42
  tension cables. Then you have to have these
• 42:45
  hooks to put clip the shapes to the hook and then just have them
• 42:48
  slide up and down. Next year you have to switch
• 42:51
  them up. So it's like a lot of work.
• 42:53
  But for the plant, I think it's slightly better.
• 42:55
  But they will try to compete for light.
• 42:57
  The the leaves grow thinner, they go wider, they go rounder
• 43:01
  as well as the usual shading talk flavor wise as well.
• 43:06
  But I think it's a slightly different mentality.
• 43:09
  In Wichita water for example, they have some mountainside as
• 43:13
  well, but their focus was more on Yokuro already.
• 43:16
  So they already are using like a lot of roof as well.
• 43:19
  In Wazooka I think it's more like ma was more cencha side of
• 43:24
  things. So the, the, the big tenta push
• 43:27
  came a little bit later. So just have direct contact.
• 43:32
  It's much easier to pull in and out.
• 43:34
  You don't have to do the roofs. You can just put those shades in
• 43:38
  another field next year and rotate like that.
• 43:41
  I guess I was OK. It's pretty, I mean it's pretty
• 43:43
  small if you size wise to Japan, but in in Kyoto we are the the
• 43:50
  biggest surface I think with like 555 hundred 60 hectares.
• 43:58
  I don't know if that's active hectares or like including
• 44:04
  abandoned fields, but it's it's quite a lot of area that is 90%
• 44:11
  on the mountains. So Paul, when we were walking
• 44:14
  the field in Wazuka, you were pointing at some of the bushes
• 44:17
  that have like white leaves in the field.
• 44:20
  And that was super interesting. And you told me about your
• 44:22
  experience of wanted to create a batch of tea with that specific
• 44:26
  type of a phenomena or genetic trace.
• 44:29
  And we have also learned that, you know, with some extreme
• 44:32
  shading, you can actually turn the tea leaf white to a certain
• 44:36
  point. So if you try any of those like
• 44:39
  white leaf tea, and if so, like you know how, how does how do
• 44:42
  they taste? I have tried.
• 44:44
  So like the one I showed you is a mutation is a branch that I
• 44:48
  don't know, something happened. The leaf is white, but only in
• 44:50
  spring, which is very interesting now.
• 44:52
  And now it's green and I lost it again.
• 44:54
  I don't know where it is anymore because a key print it and I was
• 44:57
  like, no, but yeah, it's only, it's only white.
• 45:01
  It's like a creamy white color in spring.
• 45:04
  Then the one that you are talking is like 100% shading.
• 45:09
  Usually it's like 85% maybe if you do double layers like 98,
• 45:15
  but that one is like as close to 100 as you can physically get
• 45:21
  and that just like picks the chronophile.
• 45:23
  But then once there is just not enough sunlight, the shading is
• 45:27
  very extensive, 2 weeks plus the chronophile just like gets like
• 45:32
  just dumped. Just there is no more
• 45:34
  chronophile there. It just, it just goes down a
• 45:37
  lot. Shading increases chronophile
• 45:40
  content both for A&B up to certain point and at some point
• 45:45
  when it's it's too prolonged shading at 100% shading, it just
• 45:50
  goes down actually. And that's what makes it go
• 45:53
  white. I think there is a few other
• 45:54
  vegetables where they do a lot of other things like a type of
• 45:58
  yeah, rhubarb that they grow indoors.
• 46:01
  Yeah, something, something like that.
• 46:02
  It's kind of the same idea. I I've tried both like yellow,
• 46:07
  white mutation cultivar. There's a guy that has three
• 46:11
  rows quite interesting. And the one that they do with
• 46:14
  this extreme shading get all the benefits from like morphinine,
• 46:19
  more amino acid content, all that just with like a very thin
• 46:23
  leaf than if the processing is quite it's very sweet.
• 46:26
  It has something different. I don't know.
• 46:27
  I think I think like level content and caffeine content
• 46:32
  also like gets like in a different balance that maybe we
• 46:35
  are not used to If you your point of reference is center.
• 46:39
  So it's kind of sweet, but it's lacking something in my opinion.
• 46:44
  I think I like center because the balance of sweetness and
• 46:48
  astringency is very nice and it's kind of like suddenly like
• 46:52
  for caboose, it's like you have a little bit less catechin, a
• 46:55
  little bit more amino, so it's like more sweet, less
• 46:57
  astringent. But on the white tea there is
• 46:59
  just a chunk of flavour that is just not there.
• 47:02
  You know, it's like you have carved out like with, I don't
• 47:05
  know, like a surgeon blade, this flavour out, it doesn't exist
• 47:08
  anymore. So it's like nice, but it lacks
• 47:10
  something in my opinion. It looks funny, which is always
• 47:13
  cool. It's very interesting tea, but I
• 47:16
  hope they don't do that too much of those plants because it looks
• 47:20
  brutal, like the type of shading, it's kind of
• 47:23
  interesting. What's your chamber for the
• 47:25
  plants? I think.
• 47:26
  I think they I read research paper that they recommended to
• 47:30
  do it with cultivars that are already like high levels of
• 47:35
  amino acids just to boost even more that brothiness into it
• 47:39
  some. Neurino 100% shaded.
• 47:42
  Neurino would be so cool. Why Scenarino like maybe, I
• 47:47
  don't know, perhaps. So it's like when when they talk
• 47:50
  about like high producing, I mean cultivators like Saamidori
• 47:55
  to Hikaru, all of those which at the same time are not the
• 47:59
  strongest ones, then you are like just shaving 100%, two
• 48:03
  weeks or three weeks. I don't know how that plant is
• 48:06
  going to do in a few years. It turned that into a matcha and
• 48:10
  it's like a white powder. Yeah, right.
• 48:12
  It will be very interesting to it will be very interesting to
• 48:15
  try. But also I think is like the
• 48:17
  yield also like how do you say when it's growing in those
• 48:21
  conditions there is branches that they just die like and then
• 48:24
  when when like you are harvesting, I think it's less
• 48:28
  than half of what caboose field will produce something like
• 48:34
  that. So center will produce certain
• 48:37
  amount, caboose will produce a slightly less tea, but this one
• 48:41
  is like less than half of that, which is like a huge loss.
• 48:45
  And of course, when you are harvesting, you might be
• 48:47
  harvesting the survivor leaves, but also like picking up the
• 48:51
  half that once. So I think I think you also have
• 48:54
  like to be like very, very, very careful when you harvest and
• 48:57
  when removing the shade as well, because you can RIP the leaves
• 49:00
  out. It's like very, very complicated
• 49:02
  to scale probably even if it's like super tasty.
• 49:06
  Might be a nice a challenge for new, I don't know, shading
• 49:10
  technology like tunnel shading or something.
• 49:13
  It's not not very common to do. Have you guys tried?
• 49:16
  No. No.
• 49:17
  Very curious though. We sought a kind of like a
• 49:21
  Japanese Kickstarter page of someone turning that they call
• 49:26
  it like Hakio Hakiocha right into a master.
• 49:30
  And that happened like back in 2018.
• 49:33
  So we missed it. So Paula, you shared a pretty
• 49:37
  interesting sample with us blind.
• 49:39
  You said you handed it to us. You said give it a try.
• 49:42
  Let me know what you think. So we we tasted it and I've
• 49:46
  since revisited it after knowing what it was.
• 49:49
  And I've noticed that it has a really interesting effect in the
• 49:54
  after taste and in the after cup.
• 49:56
  Because in Chinese tea, like if you drink like an oolong or
• 49:59
  roasted oolong or something, you finish it and then there's this
• 50:02
  wonderful roasted sweet fragrance that's left in the
• 50:05
  cup. And I had one this morning
• 50:07
  before this call and it had exact same flavor.
• 50:11
  It's this for anyone who's into like Taiwanese tea.
• 50:13
  It's just this Hong Shui kind of roasted note that you, you get.
• 50:19
  And I was getting it. It's the only time I've ever had
• 50:22
  it in matcha and Sam and I were guessing what it was and I think
• 50:25
  we were like half right. Could you share a little bit
• 50:28
  about this method? What it was was what it is, how
• 50:32
  it was made and like where like it came from.
• 50:35
  I like I've never heard of this like Nisha Matcha and Tensha
• 50:39
  refine. Well that I think is OK.
• 50:42
  So that tenta is until after harvesting.
• 50:46
  So it's pretty much the same machine, harvested, grown,
• 50:51
  shaded blah blah blah blah. But the interesting part starts
• 50:54
  in the post processing part. So you would start your Tenta
• 50:58
  processing steaming then. But the fly Nets or like just
• 51:02
  removing moisture, then just dry, dry, dry, dry, dry, dry,
• 51:06
  dry a little bit more, peel the stems away and you have the
• 51:09
  arata, maybe refine a little bit more.
• 51:11
  And then from there they move it to a Hoyt O so that the paper
• 51:15
  table. Maybe you have seen it in hand
• 51:17
  rolling the video. So it's like a washi, like a
• 51:19
  thick washi Japanese paper. It's like a table that is
• 51:24
  probably a little bit lower than it should be for your back.
• 51:28
  And then there is like usually like a metal plate below the
• 51:31
  paper and at the bottom of the tape, the table maybe like good
• 51:36
  30 centimeters down. There is a gas burner nowadays.
• 51:41
  So the the paper heats up to 80 to 100 up to hundred 10120 maybe
• 51:49
  if you really push for it in a good in a good paper and you can
• 51:53
  just in a way toast the tea. So those are usually the old
• 51:58
  method of like rolling centre by hand before machinery.
• 52:01
  But of course before centre was kind of developed like they had
• 52:05
  those kind of the same tools for tenta production.
• 52:09
  So all the the drying for Tenta, like of course, there was no,
• 52:13
  the modern Tenta open didn't exist at the time.
• 52:16
  So it was done kind of in this way.
• 52:18
  So it's like kind of combining both things that I'm just
• 52:22
  realizing now it might be a little bit confusing.
• 52:24
  Are you guys following me? Yeah, yeah.
• 52:26
  Yeah, OK. So the initial part, just like
• 52:29
  the more modern part, steaming, then a break open or something,
• 52:34
  then the steaming and then you get the Arata and then he uses
• 52:37
  the Hoyo. So he just puts it on and in
• 52:41
  center. This would be the firing step
• 52:43
  where you just like you're not roasting, but you're inducing
• 52:46
  fire to get develop, develop the flavor a little bit more.
• 52:49
  So he's doing that with a Hoyo and this guy in particular, he's
• 52:53
  from me as like, yeah, I don't think he's a particular
• 52:56
  technique from there. I think it's more like probably
• 52:59
  how they did it in the old times.
• 53:01
  There is some people that still use some Hoydos for finishing
• 53:05
  competition TS where I mean you have very low old output, but
• 53:11
  some of these old Hoydos are able to be used with coal as
• 53:16
  well. So all these like the part that
• 53:19
  you were saying to me about the, the, the oolong like charcoal
• 53:23
  roasted oolong part. I think I think it might come
• 53:27
  from there because some of these Hoyeros are like coal powered.
• 53:30
  It just kind of like induces a different something into a
• 53:33
  tensor, kind of like blending the old method with the new
• 53:37
  method and just the finishing, finishing it off in that in that
• 53:44
  way and just like slightly toasting in a way the tenter,
• 53:48
  but just very carefully. And while he's doing that, he
• 53:51
  might be able to adjust like, OK, we start from low temp to
• 53:55
  high temp or like from high temp to low temp and achieve
• 53:58
  different results at the same time.
• 54:00
  He's with like the usual thing like with chopsticks or with
• 54:03
  like tweezers or stem. All this one is yellow.
• 54:06
  All this leaf is whatever is too white his sleeve and just
• 54:11
  refined refining, refining, refining.
• 54:13
  And then you have this different way of heating and I guess like
• 54:16
  also the the paper will have to induce part of the flavor as
• 54:21
  well. Over time as you roast batches
• 54:24
  and batches and batches, that paper kind of gets some
• 54:26
  interesting flavor and then you just send it for grinding.
• 54:29
  Then it got to me. Then I put it probably nine
• 54:34
  months in a not refrigerated environment at all and then I
• 54:37
  give it to you. So it was probably not on on
• 54:40
  Optima optimum performance a flavor wise.
• 54:44
  But I just like this kind of processes like yeah, there is
• 54:47
  this old man, he just there just with his Hoido and it's his way
• 54:53
  of like forgetting about probably having to deal with
• 54:56
  something else. He's just there toasting away.
• 55:01
  It's pretty very. Cool.
• 55:02
  It's it has a very interesting kind of like a chocolate like
• 55:07
  dry cacao kind of flavor when we try it.
• 55:09
  It was a very interesting attention.
• 55:12
  I mean matcha that we have not had that kind of flavor profile
• 55:16
  from anywhere else before. Thing that this type of batches
• 55:20
  because you are doing so little and you can just like if you're
• 55:23
  using gas, you can just like regulate if you do it in a
• 55:26
  closed oven like you just put it comes in, comes out and you try
• 55:32
  before, afterwards, OK, too much heat too less heat or during
• 55:37
  processing, but these extra polishing and refinement, I
• 55:41
  don't know gives it different. It's arguably what macho closer
• 55:47
  to the what macho would have tasted like before the invention
• 55:50
  of these brick furnaces for the tensha ovens.
• 55:53
  Yeah, I would say so. It's the tools that they used
• 55:56
  for sure is like back to the past a little bit.
• 56:00
  Of course, you don't have maybe the period of waiting that they
• 56:06
  might have had in the old times. Because you go to the mountain,
• 56:09
  you pick by hand, you put it in a bamboo basket, you walk down.
• 56:14
  Of course, you might have had, I don't know, at that time maybe
• 56:17
  200 people just with Hoyos and maybe manual steamers and stuff
• 56:24
  like that. So for sure that there was like
• 56:26
  a little bit of withering and a little bit of like more, in my
• 56:30
  opinion, more interesting aromas probably being developed.
• 56:34
  And then you have this like fire coal probably at the time or
• 56:38
  boot of some sort that is your Hoji teta something I don't
• 56:42
  know. It's probably pretty
• 56:44
  interesting. Just for our curious listeners,
• 56:48
  if you ever wanted to see a physical hoilo, there was 1
• 56:51
  sitting in the Kambayashi museum in the Uji that you can check it
• 56:55
  out. Very cool and well.
• 56:57
  Preserved. So it's called Hoiro matcha.
• 57:01
  That's like, what? Is it even commercially
• 57:03
  available? I don't think it's called Hoiro
• 57:05
  Mata. Hoiro is just the table.
• 57:07
  Of the equipment. I was introduced to these by a
• 57:11
  good friend of mine. I was like just like OK this is
• 57:15
  very interesting let's try to to pull the string.
• 57:18
  It just, yeah, I don't know what you're talking about.
• 57:20
  This is just a special tent. I do from time to time.
• 57:23
  There is no special name. There is maybe not availability
• 57:28
  public forward. There's more of a thing that he
• 57:30
  does and he sells to a few people.
• 57:33
  You can go there and help him out and stuff like that.
• 57:36
  But it's not like a thing anymore, unfortunately.
• 57:40
  But I think the guys from Yoshida and in Uji, you know in
• 57:44
  the aura area, they have a Hoyt, a power, a coal powered Toyota
• 57:50
  and I think they use it. Not sure if for some of random
• 57:54
  Tenta, but for sure for a hand rolled Kokuru.
• 57:57
  I think that is done in the Hoira, but it's actually with
• 58:01
  charcoal. So it's the old hand rolled the
• 58:04
  style, but on top of that it is with charcoal.
• 58:07
  But I don't know the specific. I've never had the opportunity
• 58:11
  to to try it. But we went there to help him
• 58:13
  build the bamboo roof at this spring.
• 58:16
  And I was just like, do you have that Hoiro with the famous
• 58:20
  charcoal Hoiro thing or like, yeah, do you want to see it?
• 58:23
  Or like they just show me like it's slightly different from the
• 58:27
  from the modern ones. That's just my jump, you know,
• 58:31
  give me old tools. Pretty interesting.
• 58:33
  Do you think that someone that's something like people could do
• 58:36
  as more tea companies try to add value to the process, like
• 58:41
  milling it fresh, people are buying Ishu shoes.
• 58:43
  Could people in theory do this like light toasting to the
• 58:47
  tension they buy before milling it?
• 58:49
  Or is it like, is there a really strong learning curve?
• 58:53
  Is it? Is it a very difficult thing to?
• 58:55
  I think it's probably both, but when you buy Tenta at least for
• 59:01
  probably the usual, usual channels that Tenta has already
• 59:05
  been dried, probably fired in the specific regional
• 59:10
  preference. So you are kind of like re
• 59:14
  toasting on top of that, which might be interesting to do.
• 59:17
  Like I mean, there is no one stopping you other than you can
• 59:20
  only see the result if you have a grinder to grind in your place
• 59:25
  of. Like with coffee, like the final
• 59:27
  step of production is is just how do you say on the consumer
• 59:32
  city in a way or matter. Everything is done at the
• 59:38
  production place. It's like not that they are the
• 59:41
  coffee from Kenya is being roasted in Kenya and then
• 59:43
  shipped to you. Maybe, but most of the time you
• 59:46
  just ship it raw and then you roast it.
• 59:50
  It's for 10 days of already being like steamed it or the
• 59:56
  probably fire in the Yammer style or not fire it like in the
• 1:00:00
  Uji style for example. So you would be building on top
• 1:00:03
  of the work of someone else. So you can definitely can as
• 1:00:07
  long as you have a stone to be able to run it or send it back
• 1:00:10
  to Japan for grinding. I don't know, maybe why not I
• 1:00:13
  guess. But like, maybe that's just like
• 1:00:17
  my hot take on on this. It's just like sometimes it's
• 1:00:22
  just good to not have to leave your mark on the product and
• 1:00:27
  just let the product shine on its own.
• 1:00:29
  You know, like, I think as Western people, we always have
• 1:00:33
  this impulse of like, I want to do something to this product
• 1:00:37
  because, I don't know, as a coffee roaster, I can perfectly
• 1:00:41
  understand that. I want to be able to decide I'm
• 1:00:45
  going to roast it like this because this is how I think it
• 1:00:47
  should be done. I don't know, like, you have
• 1:00:50
  through specialists in this in Japan that they are, like, doing
• 1:00:54
  their own opinions about this. So you are like, kind of like
• 1:00:57
  cancelling them. Sure.
• 1:00:58
  Yeah. Yeah, yeah.
• 1:01:01
  My my English book of learning that and that word might be too
• 1:01:03
  strong, but sometimes it's just like, yeah, there is this guy in
• 1:01:07
  Japan. He has a hurry door.
• 1:01:08
  He can't or sit in there. It's a cool dude.
• 1:01:11
  Like, please enjoy, you know, like why should I just put one
• 1:01:16
  last stroke in a masterpiece? Like when the master has already
• 1:01:20
  done that? I would at the same time go for
• 1:01:23
  it. Like it's super.
• 1:01:24
  It's probably super far. I've I've I've taken Tenta from
• 1:01:28
  the factory and put it in a roster and like make Khoshi
• 1:01:30
  Tenta. I just don't have a grinder to
• 1:01:33
  to grind it when I did it like a year ago I would say, but it's
• 1:01:37
  definitely toast very different from Hojita, for example.
• 1:01:42
  It's like a very different, I don't know, thermal curve I
• 1:01:45
  would say. Interesting.
• 1:01:46
  Because the density and the cell walls are intact.
• 1:01:50
  And yeah, maybe it's just like my coffee roasting brain is
• 1:01:54
  like, why is this not happening? Why is not following this?
• 1:01:58
  Yeah, because one thing is being the other ones leave.
• 1:02:00
  Of course, it's gonna be roasting at different rates and
• 1:02:03
  it just takes a little bit to to switch up.
• 1:02:05
  But I think there is already some people roasting Hojita
• 1:02:09
  outside of the outside of Japan where they just buy banta or
• 1:02:12
  senta or kukita. They're roasting.
• 1:02:15
  So the next natural step would be to buy black tea, Japanese
• 1:02:19
  all along, even Taiwanese all along, and roasted closer to
• 1:02:24
  their final consumer. And maybe half.
• 1:02:26
  This is the one that we get, and this is the same one, but we
• 1:02:30
  just give it a little flair overall.
• 1:02:33
  Why not? So I can understand both.
• 1:02:35
  It's like my farmer tea farmer heart and my, I don't know,
• 1:02:42
  roasting nerd, like kind of colliding together.
• 1:02:45
  It's a little bit difficult sometimes, Yeah.
• 1:02:47
  That's interesting. It's two very different just
• 1:02:50
  like perspectives and approaches actually because I mean, a lot
• 1:02:53
  of it's just intention, right? Like the tension is like so
• 1:02:56
  close to a finished product other than the milling that like
• 1:03:00
  it is the finished work other than the milling and like then
• 1:03:04
  modifying it. It's like very different than
• 1:03:06
  green coffee, which. Yeah, it's.
• 1:03:08
  Not the finished at all because you can't even like consume it
• 1:03:12
  in that form. Yeah.
• 1:03:13
  And you know, the idea of roasting can really change the
• 1:03:17
  flavor profile of the Tancha. It's almost like, I would say,
• 1:03:20
  can be perceived as adding milk, you know, into matcha, right?
• 1:03:25
  It's it's you're. You're changing a lot of the
• 1:03:27
  original flavor that had been achieved with a lot of hard
• 1:03:32
  works. Yeah, like there was, there was
• 1:03:35
  a guy that, I don't remember who, but we were talking about
• 1:03:38
  roasting our level like, yeah, like if he also likes tea a lot.
• 1:03:43
  So he was like the end cup of tea is the heart of the Brewer
• 1:03:48
  in a way, right? Like they are brewing it, they
• 1:03:50
  are pouring their heart into it and that gets into the cup in
• 1:03:53
  coffee. The roaster is that person, not
• 1:03:57
  not the barista, of course, of course, too, but like the one
• 1:04:00
  that is making like 90% of the position is the roster.
• 1:04:03
  So in coffee, it's like the roster's heart is the roaster,
• 1:04:07
  but when you're brewing centre, it's like the Brewer is the.
• 1:04:10
  So it's like kind of like that with matches kind of like the
• 1:04:13
  same. I think like it's kind of an act
• 1:04:16
  of intention to me at least. Interesting.
• 1:04:19
  So very, very philosophical today.
• 1:04:21
  So we invited David from Tizumi on the podcast, I don't know,
• 1:04:26
  but 456 episodes ago, and he said something that like really
• 1:04:31
  just changed my perspective on Zai Rai.
• 1:04:33
  And it never occurred to me. You can basically have like
• 1:04:36
  different lineages of Zai Rai. And I think he was somewhere in
• 1:04:39
  Wazooka and he was saying that one of the tea farmers was like,
• 1:04:43
  yeah, these bushes are all Uji Zai Rai.
• 1:04:46
  And like, they're more umami in profile.
• 1:04:48
  And these are all Shizuoka Zai Rai, which are actually just the
• 1:04:52
  seeds of Yabukita, because back in the day it was way cheaper to
• 1:04:57
  take someone else's Yabukita seeds than to actually like
• 1:05:00
  grafts. Create new.
• 1:05:02
  Baby Yabukita plants and that there's a lot more nuance to the
• 1:05:06
  Zyrai conversation than what like most people generally talk
• 1:05:10
  about. We'd love to learn like more
• 1:05:12
  about that, what you've seen from farmers, what you've tasted
• 1:05:16
  and like, if and if there's any like preservation effort.
• 1:05:20
  I know that like apples, for example, there was some big
• 1:05:23
  team, I think at Cornell that went to like Kazakhstan, which
• 1:05:26
  is where I think apples were first cultivated.
• 1:05:28
  And they went and like collected tons of genetic, A genetic Bank
• 1:05:33
  of all these different apple seeds.
• 1:05:35
  And a lot of them got replanted, I think somewhere in New York
• 1:05:38
  State. And there's this huge like apple
• 1:05:41
  farm genetic Bank of things so that they can pull like
• 1:05:46
  different traits from different bushes, etcetera, so that those
• 1:05:49
  didn't get extinct. And I know that and David told
• 1:05:52
  us that 70% of or maybe it was higher than that, maybe 90% of
• 1:05:58
  Wazooka was all Zyra in the 70s and then it's just gotten ripped
• 1:06:02
  up. I mean before, like the official
• 1:06:05
  registration was in 1953, that was Benny Homare, Yaboukita and
• 1:06:13
  company. There's like 13 cultivars,
• 1:06:15
  something specific like, well, so you can say like probably
• 1:06:20
  until the twist, like everything was I right, Like everything was
• 1:06:25
  not, not I it was just tea was like tea.
• 1:06:27
  Was that like there was no concept of what do you mean
• 1:06:32
  preserve, like carrying the genetic material to to the other
• 1:06:37
  to the next one. You know, like what you plant
• 1:06:38
  seeds, you grow tea, you have tea and then you harvest.
• 1:06:41
  That's it. Like there was no this nuance of
• 1:06:44
  like, we can take this for these and propagate it and just make
• 1:06:48
  clones and have everything homogeneous in a way.
• 1:06:52
  And that just has many benefits for the farmers and my
• 1:06:57
  consistency wise, I would say. But of course, it takes out a
• 1:07:01
  lot of diversity as well. But I'm checking very fast here.
• 1:07:07
  Like my notes on the zai for example, Asahi Zai Asagiri, Zai
• 1:07:14
  Rai, Asatsuyu, excellent cultivar, Zai Rai, Benitsukuba
• 1:07:19
  for black tea, Zai Rai. It's like there is so many of
• 1:07:22
  them that they have the Goku super famous for Yokora for
• 1:07:26
  example. Also Mata is one of my favorite
• 1:07:28
  ones. Zai Rai, like what else?
• 1:07:32
  Some of them are seedlings from Yabukita, siblings from
• 1:07:35
  Samidori. But like we don't know the
• 1:07:38
  parent, like we know 1/2, we don't know the other half.
• 1:07:40
  So it just gets labeled as Yabukita and Zai Rai.
• 1:07:44
  So that's the the the fields that they were grown from seed,
• 1:07:48
  they are called Misho usually. So like I don't know Yabukita
• 1:07:52
  Misho. So it's like seedlings from
• 1:07:54
  Yabukita. So we know that 50% is Yabukita.
• 1:07:57
  We don't know the other half but probably the Yabukita dominant
• 1:08:03
  traits. They get carried to the sea so
• 1:08:05
  there has some semblance. For all these cultivars actually
• 1:08:09
  mainly have two origins, right? Like they're either coming
• 1:08:13
  straight from Zyrai and you propagate them or they are some
• 1:08:17
  sort of intentional breed of different, you know, trace of
• 1:08:20
  plants that they found it interesting.
• 1:08:21
  So like, do people still constantly trying to discover
• 1:08:25
  new like Zyrai and then replant them, replanting them as, you
• 1:08:29
  know, new cultivars? And also my question will be
• 1:08:33
  like, would it be more difficult nowadays?
• 1:08:35
  Because like you, you have less and less tie, right?
• 1:08:37
  And people are doing all these cultivar planning in all the
• 1:08:40
  regions. Yeah.
• 1:08:41
  OK, so well, there is, there is a lot of there's a lot to
• 1:08:46
  uncover there, I think. No, no, no, no problem.
• 1:08:48
  I just, I I'm just one to one thing like Zaire is 100% from
• 1:08:55
  seed. You can know one parent not know
• 1:08:59
  the other parent. Then it's like I don't know
• 1:09:02
  seedling from. If you know the usually you know
• 1:09:05
  the the the flower component, the flower parent you will know
• 1:09:09
  if it's Yabukita then into seedling from Yabukita.
• 1:09:13
  If you don't know the flower parent then it's just because
• 1:09:16
  then you just don't know anything about it.
• 1:09:19
  Does that make sense? But then cultivar doesn't need
• 1:09:23
  to be intentional. Like you're taking a yabuquita
• 1:09:26
  flower and asset to your poem and you're doing this this like
• 1:09:30
  the modern style of doing it. But there is still sometimes
• 1:09:33
  some cultivars that they'd allow.
• 1:09:34
  We took the seed from this field is the field with yabuquita and
• 1:09:38
  next to it there is something else.
• 1:09:40
  We planted this and this plant came out and it looks gorgeous.
• 1:09:43
  So they just selected it like that.
• 1:09:46
  So it can be just like by lottery, like genetic lottery as
• 1:09:51
  well. So that's what they do.
• 1:09:52
  On these seed banks that you, Ryan, were mentioning, they are
• 1:09:56
  actually not actual banks of seats.
• 1:09:58
  I've never heard of that for T Bushes.
• 1:10:01
  I'm sure they have seats on a seed bank for sure.
• 1:10:06
  OK. But not like probably like super
• 1:10:09
  public but what they do is like a listing.
• 1:10:13
  The few research centres I visited they always have one
• 1:10:16
  field where they have the cultivars that didn't make the
• 1:10:20
  cut in a way. So for every cultivar that gets
• 1:10:23
  registered, that might be like 56000 cultivars that didn't make
• 1:10:27
  the cut. And the final, the pre final
• 1:10:31
  selection might be around like 30.
• 1:10:34
  So from those studies, if they have one, OK, definitely we want
• 1:10:37
  to register this one. Sometimes they have two that
• 1:10:40
  they really like. And then let's say #3 #4 #5
• 1:10:44
  they're like, OK, we have done all the study.
• 1:10:46
  They are good, but not good enough.
• 1:10:47
  So let's plan them in AI, call them library fields.
• 1:10:51
  And they just have maybe like 3 or 4 plans with a tack of like
• 1:10:55
  this is 36-2 or whatever. OK, very similar.
• 1:11:00
  And it's like a field of Zaire, but where you have actually
• 1:11:03
  identified every single plant. OK, but they just didn't make
• 1:11:07
  the cut. But maybe some are yabuquita
• 1:11:11
  parents. Some of them are pure Zaire.
• 1:11:14
  Some of them is like, Oh yeah, in this one we actually radiate
• 1:11:17
  like a bunch of atoms into it until it the DNA broke down and
• 1:11:21
  a mutation happened and this thing came out.
• 1:11:23
  So there is there is six of those as well.
• 1:11:25
  Like, it's pretty, pretty interesting.
• 1:11:27
  Nowadays, nowadays all of the, you know, gardens and tea
• 1:11:31
  plantations are more homogenized because of all these cultivars.
• 1:11:35
  We are seeing less and less thyroid.
• 1:11:37
  And would it be difficult for people to, you know, find new
• 1:11:41
  interesting tasting, you know, new bushes?
• 1:11:44
  News IRI. Yeah, yeah.
• 1:11:46
  So for first, well, I don't know, I've seen this mention
• 1:11:50
  like first generation cultivar, second generation cultivar and I
• 1:11:54
  kind of like follow that. But like first generation will
• 1:11:56
  be your Yabukitas, like first time registrations and stuff
• 1:12:01
  like that. They were mainly just picking
• 1:12:03
  zai planting, see what works, see what doesn't work.
• 1:12:07
  And then the 4th generation cultivate.
• 1:12:09
  So the current ones are more like, no, we take this one, we
• 1:12:12
  take that one is very intentional.
• 1:12:14
  So zai is almost never used nowadays, but there is there is
• 1:12:18
  cases here and there like a farmer just makes seeds for fun
• 1:12:22
  and he might register a private cultivar but it's pretty rare.
• 1:12:26
  But sometimes they say like OK, we have this super tasty
• 1:12:30
  caltivar but is extremely weak against something let's say
• 1:12:35
  Saimidori for example, not super resistant to cold.
• 1:12:38
  So they might take a zai from Saitama, which is a very harsh
• 1:12:43
  weather area. And those bushes are naturally
• 1:12:46
  like selected by their their environment.
• 1:12:49
  So a lot of the cold resistant cultivars in Japan come from
• 1:12:53
  that area. So they might say like, OK,
• 1:12:54
  let's bring a bunch of Zaire pollen and put it into the
• 1:12:58
  Salmidori and see what what works.
• 1:13:02
  So that that's, that's one way to do it is a little bit less
• 1:13:05
  common nowadays because you already have like a pool of
• 1:13:08
  cultivars that there is like information about that you can
• 1:13:11
  say like, oh, actually like this one is cold resistant, but the
• 1:13:16
  the genetic trait is not dominant.
• 1:13:18
  So it might carry over. It might not carry over, but
• 1:13:21
  that one is also cold resistant and its trait is dominant.
• 1:13:26
  So there is a very high chance that the new plant will have
• 1:13:29
  some behavior like that as well. And with Zaire is like, OK,
• 1:13:33
  well, let's make 10,000. Maybe something magical happens
• 1:13:37
  and we end with Narino version 2.
• 1:13:40
  You know, you never know. So it's less less predictable.
• 1:13:43
  There's definitely things with that, but not so much nowadays.
• 1:13:47
  Or if they do like this experimental and stuff.
• 1:13:51
  The thing I think it's important to recover a little bit more
• 1:13:55
  design, right? And I think from people from
• 1:13:57
  like like us, like the the nervy cultural people like they are
• 1:14:01
  like now there's like a push for you cannot, you cannot
• 1:14:07
  understand cultivar as a consumer if you are not teach
• 1:14:11
  about Zaire in a way, right? It's like they go hand to hand.
• 1:14:14
  So there is going to be with time, maybe more people
• 1:14:17
  interested in Zaire and then maybe abandoned Zaire fields
• 1:14:20
  will come back online like the one we are recovering at work,
• 1:14:23
  for example, stuff like that. And then maybe there will be
• 1:14:28
  more incentive to talk about side eye and have more just
• 1:14:34
  genetic diversity, because I know I'm talking a lot about
• 1:14:37
  coffee in in this podcast. But like coffee has a problem on
• 1:14:41
  on its cultivars that the the genetic diversity is is
• 1:14:45
  supernatural. Like there is not a lot.
• 1:14:47
  The world coffee research organization is one of the
• 1:14:50
  things that they try to do is like put out coffee cultivars on
• 1:14:53
  there. But one of the problems that
• 1:14:55
  they have is like, I think there is like a, I can't remember,
• 1:14:58
  it's many years ago, but maybe like 1 to 3% diversity on
• 1:15:03
  variance. Like the plant is 97% the same
• 1:15:07
  something, it might be like 95, I don't know.
• 1:15:10
  But it's like something brutal. It's like there's only 1% of
• 1:15:13
  like variation exactly. And then with, with three, if we
• 1:15:17
  lose all these regionality, genetic, poor genetic
• 1:15:22
  regionality in the plant in the future, we might, we might have
• 1:15:26
  a little bit of trouble, yeah. Like the Cavendish banana too.
• 1:15:29
  And then coffee, coffee that that virus is like super like
• 1:15:34
  devastating, I've heard. Yeah, and especially because
• 1:15:37
  there is one key thing that you just cannot get when making
• 1:15:41
  cultivars. You don't have a taproot, you
• 1:15:43
  just don't. You are just missing missing a
• 1:15:46
  physical part of the plant like all that drill root.
• 1:15:51
  Why don't you have a tab root? Because you are taking a branch,
• 1:15:55
  you are just cutting. So it makes I think it's called
• 1:15:59
  in English Radisson. So it's like side roots but
• 1:16:02
  there is no one one tab root like 1.
• 1:16:07
  I don't know how to say like a mother route that just drills
• 1:16:10
  down. It doesn't grow like that.
• 1:16:12
  It only grows when you have a seat as far as my knowledge
• 1:16:17
  goes. So that's why many cultivars
• 1:16:20
  have like routing problems at the beginning when they are
• 1:16:23
  young is because the the rally cells is like a very weak
• 1:16:27
  system. Then once they are on the field
• 1:16:29
  they settle and like then they can get around.
• 1:16:33
  But you are you are losing access to deeper soil and
• 1:16:39
  probably the soil there has more extra moisture.
• 1:16:42
  So they are more resistant to draft.
• 1:16:44
  They they just get access to different minerality from the
• 1:16:48
  soil as well. So like like there is like a lot
• 1:16:50
  of a lot of things. So that's also why the Zaire
• 1:16:53
  eyes from different places have more expression in my opinion.
• 1:16:56
  I know in Taiwan erosion is a huge problem and I'm sure in
• 1:17:00
  Mazuka too, that with because I know that some of the really
• 1:17:04
  steep slopes, I think dialing in particular the highest, it's
• 1:17:07
  like 2000 plus meters in Taiwan. It's an environmental disaster
• 1:17:12
  because it's just mono crop of Chinchin Ulong cultivars and
• 1:17:16
  they get a big storm. There's a big and then like it's
• 1:17:19
  causing all these landslides because yeah, I but I never made
• 1:17:22
  the connection. So I guess there's there's no
• 1:17:24
  taproots and there's no. The, the, the, the, the plans
• 1:17:28
  are literally sitting on the soil.
• 1:17:30
  They are going, I don't know. I mean, they are, they are going
• 1:17:34
  deep. What, like 15 centimeters deep,
• 1:17:37
  20cm deep. Whoa.
• 1:17:38
  That's way less than I would have guessed.
• 1:17:40
  Like it's it's not, it's not a lot I would say.
• 1:17:43
  And especially if you are in a slope, there is really literally
• 1:17:46
  only like the upper side of the slope where the plant can really
• 1:17:50
  grip. The other one is just there.
• 1:17:52
  It's just like sitting there. And if you over fertilize the
• 1:17:56
  roots, there are there's no reason for the roots to go down.
• 1:18:00
  There's a reason for the roots to go up, right?
• 1:18:03
  In fact, there is, there is some cultivars that in nursery stage,
• 1:18:06
  they have to win to make like wind Breakers because the roots
• 1:18:10
  just like sit flat on this one. Like it's like you just place
• 1:18:15
  the plant. You don't plant the plant, you
• 1:18:17
  just place it. I was like, the roots just don't
• 1:18:20
  know where to go. I was like, are we sure this
• 1:18:22
  cultivar is it should be registered or something?
• 1:18:25
  We're like, yeah, it's actually very tasty.
• 1:18:26
  And actually all the tasty cultivars have some root
• 1:18:29
  problem. I don't know why.
• 1:18:31
  It's like you either have like a very good flavor or a very good
• 1:18:35
  root system, you know, like there's no in between.
• 1:18:38
  It's very funny. Just say idea because like I
• 1:18:41
  know in like grape they will graft some cultivars on top of
• 1:18:46
  like very old like root system from a different types of grape.
• 1:18:50
  I wonder if like people would do that for tea when you have the
• 1:18:53
  thyroid route and then you graph on top of it.
• 1:18:56
  They do that with coffee sometimes where they would plan
• 1:19:00
  robusta and then they will just chop it down and plant an Arabic
• 1:19:02
  on top of it, which is like very funny on tea.
• 1:19:05
  I've seen a paper they were trying to for cultivars like
• 1:19:10
  they don't do good route to just like just do crafting, But I I
• 1:19:16
  never seen anything. Yeah, definitely.
• 1:19:18
  This one is crafted because then it means that you can only
• 1:19:22
  propagate from that craft. You know what I mean?
• 1:19:25
  Like Yabukita is a tree. The original Yabukita is a tree
• 1:19:29
  with its stat root. You are just taking cuttings of
• 1:19:31
  that tree. If you craft, you have a tree
• 1:19:34
  that is something else and the crafted part.
• 1:19:36
  So like you are using the roots of another plant, but when you
• 1:19:42
  do the cuttings, you will still have the roots of the crafted
• 1:19:46
  part, not the one that you're using now.
• 1:19:48
  So you're not taking benefit from the better root system of
• 1:19:52
  the other plant, if that makes sense when you propagate.
• 1:19:54
  Or you can just like cut out of the branches of two original
• 1:19:57
  plant and then graph the cultivar on top.
• 1:20:00
  Of it yeah but like what I meant it's like it's difficult to for
• 1:20:03
  me to explain but like if you graft at least as far as my
• 1:20:07
  understanding goes you want to take like you would have to have
• 1:20:12
  a Zaire field and graft only Yaquita yeah but you would not
• 1:20:16
  be able to take cuttings of that cultivar grafted because then
• 1:20:20
  you will lose the the good root will not it will not translate
• 1:20:23
  to the to the children yeah it's getting too complicated I I lost
• 1:20:29
  you guys I'm sorry it's. It's alright.
• 1:20:31
  Probably makes more sense in my in my head, but yeah, I I think
• 1:20:35
  it's definitely a thing that you can do.
• 1:20:37
  I don't see much reason to do it.
• 1:20:40
  Yeah, Part I, I would say part of the difficulty is you because
• 1:20:45
  you graft a cultivar on top of a thyroid, but you won't
• 1:20:49
  necessarily be able to prevent the thyroid from shooting out
• 1:20:53
  its own branches. So you might end up having a
• 1:20:56
  mixture of thyroid and cultivar in the field which which can be
• 1:21:01
  that's. One thing and then every route
• 1:21:03
  from every tree will be different too.
• 1:21:05
  Yeah. Oh yeah, yeah, yeah, that too.
• 1:21:08
  Because in wine they plant, they know that is this variety and
• 1:21:11
  then they graft another variety. So they know all the roots are
• 1:21:15
  this type and all the top plant is this type.
• 1:21:17
  But with Zaire is just going to be every root is the the
• 1:21:20
  different 1. So you end up in the same place.
• 1:21:23
  But like the leaf part, at least it will behave something
• 1:21:26
  similar. I think it's interesting, but
• 1:21:29
  I've never never seen it in in in action.
• 1:21:32
  Only a couple papers here and there.
• 1:21:34
  Yeah, sorry, it was a very convoluted explanation.
• 1:21:37
  Do you know when they like RIP up these Zai Rai, old Zai Rai
• 1:21:40
  fields? Like I, I know like the
• 1:21:42
  Okonoyama Okono Yama tea garden from Hori Shimaya where the
• 1:21:47
  mother tree I think was like 400 years old.
• 1:21:50
  But I think that like little plot of land has been cultivated
• 1:21:53
  for like half a Millennium. And I'm assuming that's not all
• 1:21:56
  Zai Rai anymore. And when they ripped that up and
• 1:21:59
  planted cultivars, did one of like when a garden is that
• 1:22:03
  important, just like the prefectural Research Institute
• 1:22:07
  come in and like, save cuttings or seeds or like, you know, for
• 1:22:12
  something that's been cultivated for so long and you have that
• 1:22:15
  like little lineage of zyride. Yeah, it's so.
• 1:22:18
  Important where these cultivars are coming from, does that get
• 1:22:21
  saved or? Is I I hope, I hope it does.
• 1:22:25
  I hope it does, but I don't know to be honest.
• 1:22:29
  I know that for example, Asahi and all of this was farmers that
• 1:22:34
  they take from Zai like whatever they do their own cultivars,
• 1:22:39
  maybe for fun, maybe because they were just interested in
• 1:22:42
  developing something new. And then they were like, hey,
• 1:22:44
  this plan looks cool. I take all these notes, here it
• 1:22:48
  is. Please run tests and tell me if
• 1:22:50
  it could become a thing in a way.
• 1:22:53
  Or maybe they pass out and then there is someone just transfers
• 1:22:58
  those seedlings to the closer Research Center and they take
• 1:23:01
  care of them. So I think usually the cultivars
• 1:23:04
  from Kyoto when they don't get registered or before they get
• 1:23:08
  registered, they have kill can and then a number.
• 1:23:11
  So Kyoto is prefecture keto Ken number 126 or whatever.
• 1:23:16
  So Asahi and Ujikari and all of those, they have their own kyo
• 1:23:20
  Ken number in a way. But there is a few of them that
• 1:23:22
  is like Koyama. Koyama 69 I think is I said no,
• 1:23:28
  like Koyama number or whatever. It's Koyama is the the farmer
• 1:23:32
  that made the seedling, but he just transferred it or someone
• 1:23:36
  transferred it to the Research Center.
• 1:23:38
  So in the past they have moved that material when they brought
• 1:23:42
  seats from Sri Lanka or like India and stuff, they moved that
• 1:23:45
  material to the research centers.
• 1:23:47
  In the present time, if they recover from important fields, I
• 1:23:51
  hope they do, but I don't know. Is it's horrifying thought
• 1:23:55
  because like all these old tea farmers with all this, because
• 1:23:58
  we were talking with someone in Goku show and I think they were
• 1:24:02
  saying that everything was I right until like the 70s or 80s.
• 1:24:06
  And like, this is like Primo cultivated for who knows how
• 1:24:09
  long and it's family by family as everyone's moved to
• 1:24:12
  cultivars. Like all this genetic diversity.
• 1:24:16
  You really hope it didn't get lost.
• 1:24:18
  Yeah. And especially like, I mean, of
• 1:24:21
  course, it's your land. You can do whatever you we want
• 1:24:24
  with it. But like some of these like
• 1:24:27
  10/12/15 generation fields, especially I think in the case
• 1:24:33
  of Jimmy Yan, he is one of the seven famous fields of Fuji.
• 1:24:37
  Like was this like Chicago? I think it was the Chicago
• 1:24:41
  warlord. He said like yeah, 7 fields,
• 1:24:44
  top, top crop. Like there is like maybe even a
• 1:24:48
  deeper link to the past that should be like recognized as
• 1:24:53
  maybe, I don't know, like geographical denomination of
• 1:24:56
  source, just like we have like intangible human heritage.
• 1:25:02
  I don't know, like intangible or tangible Japanese site or
• 1:25:06
  something. So, yeah, it makes me a little
• 1:25:07
  bit sad when I, when I hear about these, these cases.
• 1:25:11
  I hope they they recover some of the material when when they do
• 1:25:15
  for sure. Yeah, I guess people at the time
• 1:25:17
  really viewed, you know, tea plant or cultivar very different
• 1:25:22
  way than we do nowadays. They don't necessarily see the
• 1:25:26
  value of like all these thyroid, you know, you have a very top
• 1:25:31
  selling new cultivars that can be sold for higher price and it
• 1:25:34
  tastes good. And you know, why not like
• 1:25:37
  similar things happened in in China too, like in Wui Shan,
• 1:25:41
  it's one of the most pristine woolen production region.
• 1:25:45
  And back in I think the seven, the 60s or the 70s, identical
• 1:25:51
  thing happened. Like they introduce all these
• 1:25:53
  like Stracian and roadway cultivar and they just like
• 1:25:56
  destroy all of the local bushes. They call it Thai Cha.
• 1:25:59
  It's the Chinese Thai right name for Thai right.
• 1:26:02
  And they plant all of these cultivars.
• 1:26:04
  And now they are trying to, like, rediscover all of these
• 1:26:07
  old, you know, local tea plants that kind of survive.
• 1:26:11
  From that's the thing like also sometimes they are not the
• 1:26:15
  farmers themselves choosing the cultivars.
• 1:26:18
  They just like get like like, I don't know, pressure market
• 1:26:21
  market pressure or like sometimes it's like a researcher
• 1:26:26
  from wherever is like, yeah, this cultivar good for this area
• 1:26:30
  you're doing Mata is a cultivar suited for Mata.
• 1:26:33
  And then what are you going to do is a specialist giving you
• 1:26:36
  like high level advice? Of course you're going to plant
• 1:26:39
  it. But then maybe 10 years later,
• 1:26:41
  you it's like, actually this cultivar was super weak against
• 1:26:44
  this thing. I just ravaged the entire the
• 1:26:47
  entire region for whatever. That's what's happening.
• 1:26:50
  Kagoshima with Yutaka Midori, like, yeah, yeah, this cultivar
• 1:26:53
  super good. Eight years later, everyone was
• 1:26:56
  on the on the rat because it didn't taste well.
• 1:26:59
  They had to figure something out.
• 1:27:01
  So there's like a lot of like drama.
• 1:27:03
  And then everyone went against the this scientist like, oh,
• 1:27:07
  hey, what do we do? Because it's the second most
• 1:27:10
  grown cultivar only in Kawashima, so it was like a huge
• 1:27:14
  loss for some farmers until they developed a way to process it
• 1:27:18
  and make it tasty. Interesting, interesting.
• 1:27:21
  But you know, it's like patching, maybe patching the,
• 1:27:25
  the, the cultivar genetic material.
• 1:27:28
  I don't know is, is, is like a little bit like like that.
• 1:27:30
  And for example, let's say that these matter super boom last for
• 1:27:36
  20 years. So people that are starting to
• 1:27:39
  replant now, they will get certain recommendations of like,
• 1:27:42
  oh, maybe you have to plan a Sahi if you want to do a hand
• 1:27:46
  picked line of matter and then whatever.
• 1:27:48
  It's like maybe they are not able to sell out.
• 1:27:51
  But actually I just want to have in Satsu 131 and do oolong about
• 1:27:56
  the market is pressuring you to have certain cultivars, not
• 1:28:00
  certain other things and that you just have like a loss of
• 1:28:04
  diversity on top of that I would say.
• 1:28:07
  That's a great point because like, like identical thing
• 1:28:10
  happening. We too, like people actually
• 1:28:12
  still plan some of the local cultivars.
• 1:28:14
  But the problem is like all these big companies of, you
• 1:28:17
  know, buyers, they would just not buy that cultivar.
• 1:28:20
  Like you end up planning some things that just cannot, won't
• 1:28:23
  be sold, like no one's buying them.
• 1:28:25
  So you kind of have to switch to this like more popular cultivar
• 1:28:30
  in order to survive. Really.
• 1:28:31
  Yeah, it's just a label. It's just a label problem like
• 1:28:34
  and I saw this in a lot of like people that are starting not not
• 1:28:39
  just matcha companies, but T companies in general is like,
• 1:28:42
  oh, is it organic? No, it's natural.
• 1:28:44
  So it's kind of organic. Can I label it as organic?
• 1:28:47
  Like no, it's natural. What are you looking for T that
• 1:28:50
  has an interesting history. Are you just like looking for a
• 1:28:53
  term to put on your website? Let's say, I don't know, random
• 1:28:57
  thing Asagiri Mata. What's that?
• 1:29:00
  Do you have a Sahih? Do you have a committee?
• 1:29:02
  No, OK, bye. It's like, well, OK, have you
• 1:29:04
  tried it? Like it's like they are.
• 1:29:07
  They are just like hunting for these terms.
• 1:29:09
  And. That's that's not good because
• 1:29:13
  then the consumers of that people, they will always see
• 1:29:16
  like with this single origin, sorry, single cultivar push that
• 1:29:20
  is always the same 5 to 7 cultivar names and then organic,
• 1:29:25
  yes, organic, no kind of relationship or blend.
• 1:29:28
  And it's like they're already like influencing a lot.
• 1:29:32
  And it's like that IS170160 registered cultivars in Japan.
• 1:29:38
  Like enjoy, you know, once would be more suited for one thing,
• 1:29:42
  one for the other is just enjoy the tea tapestry of genetic
• 1:29:48
  diversity, not like on what you want to put on your label
• 1:29:52
  because it's what you have learned from Instagram that is
• 1:29:56
  good. Like, I don't know.
• 1:29:57
  I just have like a lot of like very strong opinions about this.
• 1:30:03
  I love it. I mean it ultimately it's an
• 1:30:06
  access problem and it's an awareness problem.
• 1:30:09
  Yeah. Yeah, exactly.
• 1:30:10
  And also, if you sell leaf to a factory, you are not processing
• 1:30:15
  your own leaf. They they might just, you just
• 1:30:18
  don't have the choice to OK, what is this leave going to be
• 1:30:21
  used for? And if you work in a
• 1:30:23
  cooperative, they might actually enforce you like, no, you have
• 1:30:26
  to use this fertilizer. Even if you don't want to apply
• 1:30:29
  fertilizer, you have to apply this one.
• 1:30:32
  And it has to be this cultivar because everyone has to to be
• 1:30:37
  the same in certain products of the comparative.
• 1:30:39
  So they might actually like also like force you to do certain
• 1:30:43
  things. Like I know of a few farmers
• 1:30:44
  that have this problem. Like, yeah, in my day job, I
• 1:30:47
  have to do this. I have to do this cultivate.
• 1:30:49
  I have to do it this way. But then they are like doing
• 1:30:52
  like super crazy roasted black tea and camarita and like stuff
• 1:30:56
  like that on their free time. It's like a little rebellion.
• 1:31:00
  Like the pressure goes from many, many places and the
• 1:31:03
  farmers are they just like holding to like the last chain
• 1:31:09
  slide out to it like that. I'm sorry, I just had to.
• 1:31:12
  I just have to say it. Let it out, Pennsylvania.
• 1:31:15
  Let it out. I mean, this, there's so much
• 1:31:18
  innovation going on, just a matter of finding it and
• 1:31:21
  learning about it and giving everyone the context to
• 1:31:24
  appreciate it. So I'd love to taste all the
• 1:31:26
  genetic diversity. I just don't know where to buy
• 1:31:28
  it, like just as purely as a consumer or like what it is.
• 1:31:32
  Because like even some of the stuff on your blog, some of the
• 1:31:35
  cultivars I've never seen commercially available.
• 1:31:38
  And like, where are they going? Like, that's an interesting
• 1:31:41
  question. Like if it does go to like black
• 1:31:43
  tea or goes into oolong or goes into some senchas, do they just
• 1:31:48
  get where does that detail get lost on the way to the consumer?
• 1:31:53
  Like with all of these weird interesting new cultivars?
• 1:31:56
  Like is does it get lost, I guess at the cooperative level,
• 1:32:00
  at the blending level, rent level?
• 1:32:02
  Maybe the production is too low. Yeah, exactly.
• 1:32:05
  Like most of the farms, they just don't sell direct to
• 1:32:09
  consumer is a thing that has traditionally not happened is
• 1:32:12
  like a very recent thing. There is a few farmers here and
• 1:32:15
  there that they're like really pushing for it and they have of
• 1:32:17
  like weird names like even me, sometimes I, I read like I know
• 1:32:21
  that this cultivate exists is the first time I've ever seen it
• 1:32:24
  and the farmer itself was like, I've never seen it as a single
• 1:32:27
  cultivate. I've seen people that have it,
• 1:32:29
  but it gets into a Co-op product and it just gets planned and it
• 1:32:33
  just like it just gets lost to the consumer or sometimes it's
• 1:32:37
  just like contract sales to blending house or whatever.
• 1:32:41
  And then they just like loses the transparency there.
• 1:32:44
  In Japan, there is this tradition of like the, the, I
• 1:32:47
  don't know, the grower, the farmer grows, the blender
• 1:32:50
  blends, the wholesaler packs and the retailer sells like every,
• 1:32:55
  everyone does its job and it's a chain and you just follow the
• 1:32:58
  chain and keep going. And now it's kind of like
• 1:33:02
  breaking a little bit more and more, but not all the farms have
• 1:33:05
  the energy, the knowledge to do it.
• 1:33:08
  Maybe they do it in Japanese, but like they don't have the
• 1:33:10
  ability to do it in other language channels.
• 1:33:14
  For example, there was a guy in Shizuoka, he studied for two
• 1:33:18
  years in the States in agronomy school or something, something
• 1:33:23
  like that. So he speaks a little bit of
• 1:33:24
  English. Even so, his website is kind of
• 1:33:27
  like half English, half Japanese.
• 1:33:29
  Or he doesn't sell. He doesn't sell abroad, he
• 1:33:31
  doesn't ship abroad because just he doesn't really understand
• 1:33:35
  fully like export regulations and stuff like that.
• 1:33:38
  So there is like always like the missing piece And for most
• 1:33:42
  farmers it's always like they only speak Japanese.
• 1:33:45
  They have a phone number. If you know them, you can buy
• 1:33:47
  from them. They are not listed anywhere.
• 1:33:50
  They are just they just have maybe their shop, they sell some
• 1:33:55
  Shinta. They might be able to tell you
• 1:33:58
  what cultivar goes in what, but everything else they move it
• 1:34:01
  through the auction because they might get potentially less
• 1:34:05
  money, but it's like kind of like more safe crowd.
• 1:34:11
  I think as we go, maybe farmers will start to do direct to
• 1:34:15
  consumer maybe 1020% of their production and then maybe see
• 1:34:21
  how things go and then maybe year by year increase.
• 1:34:24
  But it's more like relatively young farmers or like now that
• 1:34:29
  some farmers are transitioning, if they have like inheritance
• 1:34:33
  going on, stuff like that, the young people might just push for
• 1:34:36
  it because their social media knowledge, Internet knowledge,
• 1:34:41
  they can do a simple website on their own or they have a friend
• 1:34:46
  that makes website because that's one of the interesting
• 1:34:50
  jobs out there that most people do.
• 1:34:53
  It will it's creating a new foundation for direct to
• 1:34:57
  consumer sales in farming in general.
• 1:34:59
  Like it's very interesting if you follow this couple months,
• 1:35:03
  I've been like super disconnected from the Instagram
• 1:35:06
  kind of things. But like the presence of farmers
• 1:35:11
  of Japanese farmers in Instagram selling their products is
• 1:35:14
  insane. It's like Peach farmers, grape
• 1:35:18
  farmers, strawberry farmers, onion farmers, They are they
• 1:35:21
  everyone is there. I think that's how they are
• 1:35:24
  discovering like the direct to consumer on the internal market.
• 1:35:28
  So once there is a little bit more of like a better
• 1:35:30
  translation tools maybe or someone from the government
• 1:35:34
  creates a platform to make easier, even easier like
• 1:35:37
  exports, maybe we will see a little bit more single origin,
• 1:35:42
  single farm, single culture, are these kind of terms popping up a
• 1:35:47
  little bit more? And then from there it just
• 1:35:49
  snowballs and snowballs and snowballs.
• 1:35:52
  Last year you wrote about like this very interesting article
• 1:35:55
  about, you know, the whole macho shortage situation.
• 1:35:58
  Can you share any updates on, you know, how does progressing
• 1:36:02
  and you know, how does changing the industry and what the
• 1:36:05
  government and tea farmers are doing right now in response?
• 1:36:08
  Do you see more people switching into macho production, tension
• 1:36:12
  production or, you know, shifting cultivars that being
• 1:36:16
  growing their field? Because I know that there are a
• 1:36:18
  lot of, you know, traditional like sencha or Gokul farmers
• 1:36:22
  start changing to, you know, farming tension.
• 1:36:25
  So Ma did this kind of like is a good question because it kind of
• 1:36:28
  connects to what we have been talking through the podcast and
• 1:36:32
  especially through the last through the last one.
• 1:36:35
  But when I brought that article, it was when I think just after
• 1:36:39
  Koyama input the famous now famous Instagram post like
• 1:36:44
  shortage here, problems, we're cutting limiting amounts and
• 1:36:48
  stuff like that. And everyone was like a little
• 1:36:50
  actually is happening. So I think I remember writing
• 1:36:53
  that article in maybe like 2 hours with like a very like hot
• 1:36:58
  headed like thing and then having to edit and edit and edit
• 1:37:01
  and edit. So yeah, there were like a lot
• 1:37:03
  of like feelings on that on that one I think.
• 1:37:06
  But I think I think it stands quite well.
• 1:37:11
  I would add like I didn't know, like let's imagine that Wazooka
• 1:37:15
  always shades 50% of their fields.
• 1:37:18
  That is including Caboose, Yokuro, Mata, stuff like that,
• 1:37:21
  right? I think it has definitely
• 1:37:23
  increased. I've seen more people shaving.
• 1:37:26
  I've also seen many more bundles of shading cloth before it's cut
• 1:37:32
  prepared for the field on Kay Torres just zipping in town as
• 1:37:37
  well. Like oh, this guy bought 2
• 1:37:38
  bundles of shading. This guy bought 1 bundle of
• 1:37:41
  shading. You know, you can see like who
• 1:37:43
  is going to shade more that year or has to renew some shades if
• 1:37:48
  it's a significant increase. Nothing extremely crazy, but
• 1:37:52
  definitely has gone up. And one of the interesting part
• 1:37:55
  is that, but everyone had to kind of like rush for the Tenta
• 1:37:59
  factory because of course they are already like kind of at
• 1:38:02
  capacity. The Wasuka has a lot of output
• 1:38:07
  for Tenta, but of course like nothing compared to other
• 1:38:12
  prefectures. So the factories are already
• 1:38:14
  small. There is not a lot of storage
• 1:38:16
  area. They were already like kind of
• 1:38:19
  like at the capacity in size ones.
• 1:38:21
  So how do you get more people to work the factory if it's a
• 1:38:27
  factory that runs for 20 hours or something like that and they
• 1:38:31
  kind of like refine during four hours and then the next morning
• 1:38:34
  they start again. So there's been a lot of longer
• 1:38:38
  waiting times for leave to be processed because you can just,
• 1:38:41
  you just have one speed. Like of course you can make it
• 1:38:44
  happen slightly faster but not significantly faster without
• 1:38:49
  having some quality problems perhaps.
• 1:38:51
  So you have withered matcha. Yeah, exactly.
• 1:38:54
  But I mean accidentally. Yeah, which might be an
• 1:38:58
  interesting flavor thing, but at the same time, like everyone is
• 1:39:03
  hungry for buying Tenta. Like the price like 3-4 times
• 1:39:08
  higher than last spring. So everyone was like, OK, we
• 1:39:13
  have to buy some tenta. What's going to be the price?
• 1:39:15
  The farmers didn't know. Then the the auction open, and
• 1:39:18
  then just like the price just through the roof.
• 1:39:20
  As you progress through the harvest season, of course, you
• 1:39:23
  get to the main part of the harvest and that's just the
• 1:39:26
  bottleneck. It's just like, OK, we have to
• 1:39:28
  harvest this field, but you have to actually call the Tenta
• 1:39:31
  factory before like, hey, can we bring leaf today?
• 1:39:34
  Are you full? Maybe we can take 3400 kilos.
• 1:39:37
  Don't bring the 600 that you would may be brought usually,
• 1:39:43
  which means that the next 200 kilos are harvested maybe one
• 1:39:48
  day later, which means bigger leaf, which means maybe less
• 1:39:52
  quality. So it's like it's like the
• 1:39:55
  problem we run out be. I mentioned in the beginning of
• 1:39:58
  the episode because it rained. It delays things one day, one
• 1:40:02
  day and 1/2. And then you have like certain
• 1:40:05
  laws of quality on top of that. You cannot bring that to the
• 1:40:07
  tension factory. Maybe you are three days late.
• 1:40:10
  So it's like complicated. And there is some farmers which
• 1:40:13
  very smart of them. They have been sending half
• 1:40:16
  tension one side, half tension on the other side.
• 1:40:19
  And then they just like pick and choose the factory that they
• 1:40:22
  like the most. And they try to bring more and
• 1:40:25
  more to that factory and use the other one as a supplement
• 1:40:28
  factory. Like Hedge which?
• 1:40:30
  Is very, very, very smart. Yeah.
• 1:40:33
  They're like, OK, so this is this is my leaf.
• 1:40:35
  They don't have don't have a say on how the denture is going to
• 1:40:38
  be processed. If you bring it to certain
• 1:40:41
  factories, right? They're just going to process it
• 1:40:43
  the way that they do and you get a product at the end and then
• 1:40:46
  you try they was like, well, this is not what I imagined, but
• 1:40:49
  this is what I got. But if you have different
• 1:40:52
  factories that you try and you're like, OK, well, let's try
• 1:40:55
  to make continue our relationship with this person or
• 1:40:58
  a little bit more with that one. At the same time, if you have to
• 1:41:02
  work with a different Tenta factory, they have their own old
• 1:41:05
  customers, like very long established relationships with
• 1:41:08
  other farmers. So most of the times they can
• 1:41:11
  just maybe welcome one more farmer, but maybe not three more
• 1:41:15
  farmers because they just don't have the containers for it.
• 1:41:18
  They maybe don't have the space to store that much Tenta.
• 1:41:21
  They don't have like many, many things.
• 1:41:24
  So it's a huge bottleneck. If you sell to the auction, once
• 1:41:28
  it gets to the auction, then the price is super high.
• 1:41:31
  Some lots made it slightly later to the auction.
• 1:41:34
  So some partners will call like like a big jump at the
• 1:41:37
  beginning. And luckily at least the price
• 1:41:39
  maintained very high through the season.
• 1:41:42
  So even though they had to harvest a few days later, price
• 1:41:46
  wise, probably OK for them I would say.
• 1:41:49
  So that's complicated. And then comes the problem with
• 1:41:52
  like, OK, now I got my Tenta after dealing with logistics on
• 1:41:57
  the Tenta factory, who's going to grind it?
• 1:42:01
  Because now the grinding facilities are like, yeah, we
• 1:42:05
  have 50 stones free to sell and grinding as a service, right?
• 1:42:10
  But now they are at capacities like, yeah, we cannot take more
• 1:42:13
  customers. They were actually we are
• 1:42:14
  shedding customers like a one year before when everything
• 1:42:17
  exploded like a from March. We can probably still work with
• 1:42:22
  you for the industrial grinding, but we cannot do stone grinding
• 1:42:25
  for you anymore because we need the stone for ourselves.
• 1:42:27
  I think they are all of them, all the all these factories they
• 1:42:31
  try to like connect you with someone else that might offer
• 1:42:34
  those services. But I've seen some things are
• 1:42:37
  being shipped quite far away to be ground and then shipped back
• 1:42:41
  to the farm when before maybe you would just drive to the next
• 1:42:44
  town where there is a grinding facility and you will just get
• 1:42:48
  it some days or weeks later. Ground us powder.
• 1:42:50
  Usually those facilities would also offer packing.
• 1:42:53
  So now for the pharmacies, they have to search for a Tenta
• 1:42:56
  factory, they have to search for a new running facility.
• 1:42:59
  And if the new people that they are working for, they don't have
• 1:43:02
  the format of packaging that they use or they don't offer
• 1:43:04
  packaging as a service. I think this is the thing that
• 1:43:07
  I've recovered probably this week is like how painful is to
• 1:43:12
  pack matter. We've heard it doesn't matter
• 1:43:15
  the bags of or teams is such a complicated process.
• 1:43:19
  If you are a small farm and you do like again, single origin,
• 1:43:23
  single cultivar things, it's not like you can use the very
• 1:43:27
  automated machinery because you have to clean between batches.
• 1:43:30
  So there is a like a loss of material there that you maybe
• 1:43:34
  cannot or don't want to to do. If you have kilos and kilos and
• 1:43:37
  kilos, you can just use machinery, but there is like a
• 1:43:40
  lot of handmade manual packing going on still.
• 1:43:43
  This is something I've really never got the insight into.
• 1:43:47
  And recently I've I've learned it the the hard way I would say.
• 1:43:52
  And just that just means that the lead times are insane.
• 1:43:56
  Like for the tension now we have moved past through that because
• 1:44:00
  the season is over. Now we move into summer tea,
• 1:44:03
  which some farmers have already started in was OK.
• 1:44:05
  So the tension factories are going to be again super busy.
• 1:44:09
  But then we have the grinding bottleneck.
• 1:44:11
  Maybe you will get your tea in two months because you have to
• 1:44:13
  wait rate for grinders to be available and that means that
• 1:44:17
  you, your product will reach the market September, November,
• 1:44:21
  that's very late. It can be a good thing, it can
• 1:44:24
  be a bad thing, I guess, depending on what's your
• 1:44:27
  strategy. But the bleak, the big blending
• 1:44:29
  houses are starting to release now.
• 1:44:31
  I think I've seen a couple super nice spring products coming out
• 1:44:36
  now and they have the capacity for it.
• 1:44:38
  But the usual farmers, I know that they do good matcha, but
• 1:44:44
  they are not super well known and it's not blended from houses
• 1:44:47
  or anything like that. It's like, yeah, we'll have when
• 1:44:49
  we will have stock, September, maybe October, we don't know.
• 1:44:53
  Literally because they can't grind it.
• 1:44:55
  Or we are. Or packing takes forever.
• 1:44:58
  Yeah, we're actually waiting for people to pack it.
• 1:45:01
  Like we can sell you a couple bucks to you as a retail
• 1:45:03
  customer, but if it's a wholesale that needs 70 kilos of
• 1:45:08
  matcha because everyone is trying to just get as much as
• 1:45:12
  possible, especially big accounts, they are just going
• 1:45:15
  for door by door almost like OK, do you have, I need 200 kilos,
• 1:45:20
  can you sell me 50? Yes, no.
• 1:45:22
  OK, can you sell me 100? Yes, no.
• 1:45:25
  And they just make decisions like this in a way like very
• 1:45:28
  simplified, right. But everyone is like kind of
• 1:45:31
  really, really struggling on the sourcing part, which puts more
• 1:45:34
  pressure on like we need to pack fast and just move product
• 1:45:39
  because some of these farms are operate.
• 1:45:42
  My farming is not super profitable.
• 1:45:45
  If you want to have a good product next year, you have to
• 1:45:48
  start making good trimming, good fertilization.
• 1:45:51
  And in some cases, if you work that way, end of summer,
• 1:45:54
  beginning of autumn, if you don't have the cash flow to buy
• 1:45:58
  amounts of the tools or fertilizers or materials that
• 1:46:02
  you need for next year, you are, you are like your hands are
• 1:46:05
  tight. You might not have enough cash
• 1:46:07
  flow to operate well for the next year because all your all,
• 1:46:11
  all your profit will come very late in the in the year, which
• 1:46:15
  means more depth to more farms that are already kind of in our
• 1:46:21
  situation. The winners win and the losers
• 1:46:23
  lose extra. Hard, yeah.
• 1:46:25
  I mean, like farming is almost no safety net.
• 1:46:30
  Like the government is there for weather damage and stuff like
• 1:46:34
  that, but I've not seen, I have never had to resort to those
• 1:46:41
  kind of things. And everything is in very
• 1:46:43
  particular speech and this helps and subsidies and stuff like
• 1:46:47
  that. Maybe I'm lacking a huge part of
• 1:46:50
  knowledge on that, so I'm sorry about that, but it's it's a very
• 1:46:54
  tricky situation. On top of that, where we talked
• 1:46:57
  at the beginning of the episode, long shading, maybe you don't do
• 1:47:01
  good rotation. So maybe next year it's going to
• 1:47:03
  be worse yield than this year. But this year we had low yield,
• 1:47:08
  super high quality, but maybe next year is going to be medium
• 1:47:11
  quality, even lower yield, kind of like brace, brace, brace
• 1:47:15
  yourself because this year has been confusing for everyone and
• 1:47:20
  a lot of adjustments. But the plans, I don't know how
• 1:47:23
  they will take it. And the infrastructure problem
• 1:47:26
  is going to still be there. 90% of the farms or wholesalers,
• 1:47:30
  they are also going through a rough patch where they might
• 1:47:33
  have the cash flow to like buy from farms that they have not
• 1:47:37
  worked from, but they are also like paying like insane amount
• 1:47:41
  of money for the same amount of material that they were buying
• 1:47:44
  last year. Yeah.
• 1:47:47
  Another, if that is going to be covered by consumers and them or
• 1:47:51
  only from the consumers, the matter price will go up.
• 1:47:54
  If your daily latte instead of being $7.00 is like $12.00, how
• 1:48:00
  many people are going to continue consumption or move to
• 1:48:04
  another drink or move to? It's like it's so complicated.
• 1:48:10
  Yeah, super fragile. Yeah.
• 1:48:12
  I feel like the price is going to be there anyway.
• 1:48:14
  So despite the shortage. Yeah, because I think, I think
• 1:48:19
  we're going to be seeing spring prices in summer leaf tea and I
• 1:48:25
  don't know yet because we have not started.
• 1:48:27
  We are getting some some people are getting some tension.
• 1:48:31
  I will like it's going to be interesting to see the shift in
• 1:48:35
  summer because that is not everyone loves right.
• 1:48:39
  Everyone loves spring match and super high grade matter.
• 1:48:42
  But like for latte, everything that runs to for export is
• 1:48:46
  probably part of summer or only summer tea.
• 1:48:50
  So that is maybe what is going to affect the your average
• 1:48:56
  consumer, someone that is already a little bit more into
• 1:48:59
  matter and they are sourcing a little bit more carefully.
• 1:49:01
  Where do they buy from stuff? It's more like the spring side,
• 1:49:05
  but like all your coffee shops for latte baking ingredients and
• 1:49:09
  stuff like that. The heat is going to come now in
• 1:49:12
  summer in my opinion, which means that they will get the tea
• 1:49:16
  maybe in December, which that's like super crazy, but maybe
• 1:49:20
  industrial grinding is not going to be a problem.
• 1:49:24
  It's gonna be interesting to see.
• 1:49:26
  So overall, I think that maybe with a few details that post
• 1:49:31
  still holds up relatively well I would say.
• 1:49:34
  Yeah, still very relevant. Recently, Yeah.
• 1:49:37
  Yeah, it rings. It rings very true from
• 1:49:39
  everything we're hearing. Yeah, I read it too when when we
• 1:49:43
  were organizing the the podcast because I was live.
• 1:49:45
  What did I say like 6 months ago?
• 1:49:49
  I don't remember. I just like send it to you.
• 1:49:51
  Then I published it and I then I just forgot about it.
• 1:49:54
  I was live. I think it's basic, one of the
• 1:49:57
  best or if not the best article on the macho shortage that's out
• 1:50:00
  there. I think I saw in your newsletter
• 1:50:02
  it's getting a lot of exposure, over 1000 views.
• 1:50:04
  Yeah, it's it's by far the most read article on the website,
• 1:50:09
  which I mean, it's not like a day thousands of people visiting
• 1:50:13
  my blog every day, but the. People who do are really either
• 1:50:18
  own tea businesses or really deep down a rabbit hole.
• 1:50:21
  Yeah, I think so. I think so, yeah.
• 1:50:24
  It's ranked by high, but it made me conceal.
• 1:50:28
  Should be to a Part 2 or like whatever.
• 1:50:32
  Like then I is like, I'm just going to be like very hot headed
• 1:50:35
  again. I don't just want to talk about
• 1:50:38
  matcha because certain of the similar problems exist for the
• 1:50:42
  center part and for all the things.
• 1:50:44
  And to be honest, my life from March until literally like last
• 1:50:49
  week was not nonexistent with the spring harvest university
• 1:50:53
  and like post harvest and then press summer harvest and start
• 1:50:57
  like that. So now it's like when I'm like
• 1:50:59
  turning the wheels or like, OK, now we can, we can write
• 1:51:02
  another, another article maybe. How do you say a postmortem of
• 1:51:06
  the of the spring harvest, something like that, something
• 1:51:10
  like that? Yeah, that would be fun to like.
• 1:51:13
  Well, we highly recommend our listeners to read that article.
• 1:51:16
  That's still super relevant nowadays.
• 1:51:20
  Thank you. Thank you so much, Pop, for
• 1:51:22
  coming on. It's a great note to end on and
• 1:51:25
  if dear listeners, if you enjoyed this, please consider
• 1:51:28
  sharing it with a friend and we'll see you on the next one.
• 1:51:30
  Thanks, Bob. Thank you.
• 1:51:31
  See you in the future. See you.