Latest / Specialty Matcha Podcast / Debate: What should Uji matcha be?

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Debate: What should Uji matcha be? · Specialty Matcha Podcast

• 0:06
  Hello and welcome to the Specialty Match Podcast.
• 0:08
  My name is Ryan. This is Michael Ho Zhongjun who
• 0:11
  also goes by Sam. Hello, hello.
• 0:12
  And we're the Co founders of Sanko Matcha Products.
• 0:15
  Yeah, we launched this podcast to discuss our learning journey,
• 0:17
  Matcha, share startup stories and interview experts.
• 0:20
  And today we are debating what should Uji Matcha be.
• 0:25
  So for those of you that haven't listened to our previous
• 0:28
  content, we have released a piece on what is and was Uji
• 0:33
  Matcha, which was an editorial conversation on A5 part Substack
• 0:37
  post that we did called Ujinomacha, the inconvenient
• 0:41
  truth behind Japan's most mythologized T label.
• 0:44
  So this is the end of the series of the deep dive that we have
• 0:49
  done on Ujimacha. Oh, I don't know Sam, do you
• 0:52
  take a side one way or the other for debating?
• 0:54
  Like what should Ujimacha be? Or are you?
• 0:58
  Yeah, it's so it's difficult. So before we start this podcast,
• 1:03
  Ryan and I were talking about the setup being like with flip a
• 1:06
  coin. And then each of us will
• 1:09
  literally pick a side and then debate over each other.
• 1:12
  But after some thoughts, you know it, I think it's much
• 1:15
  easier if we if we just talk over, you know, each other's
• 1:18
  point because at least for me, I can see like merits on both
• 1:23
  sides and also a lot of shortcomings too.
• 1:25
  So it's kind of complicated to unwrap.
• 1:28
  Before we dive into it, just to give everyone a brief summary of
• 1:32
  what's been said. First of all, just an
• 1:35
  acknowledgement. A lot of content is going to be
• 1:37
  repeated in this episode. We'd like to think that ideas
• 1:41
  get more refined, more articulate, and that we're able
• 1:45
  to synthesize these arguments better after we have made them X
• 1:49
  number of times. So heads up, there's not a whole
• 1:51
  lot of new information other than new and what we hope to be
• 1:55
  fresh framing of these issues. But the broader context is, is
• 1:59
  that Ujimacha, the provenance of T labeled as Ujimacha is really
• 2:06
  diverse. Some of it actually comes from
• 2:08
  Uji, Some of it comes from towns that are nearby Uji, but some
• 2:11
  people are willing to die on the hill.
• 2:14
  But it's also Uji or the Uji region.
• 2:17
  You have the trademark definition, which was
• 2:19
  established in 2004. And then you have sort of this
• 2:23
  expansive blend rule where you can take anything from the
• 2:27
  trademark definition zone. And so long as it's at least 50%
• 2:31
  of the material, you can blend in other tea and still call it
• 2:34
  an uji macha blet. So that's a lot of definitions
• 2:38
  that don't agree with each other.
• 2:39
  And you have the outro uji definition, which are frequently
• 2:45
  made by uji tea farmers that are literally in uji arguing that
• 2:49
  you know, it should really be uji grown tensha.
• 2:53
  That's right. And then you can add a, you can
• 2:55
  add a temporal layer on top of this and say, OK, this is the
• 3:00
  variety of the provenance that we see being labeled as Uji
• 3:04
  machi today, which legally, to the best of my knowledge,
• 3:08
  there's no reason why you couldn't import tensha from
• 3:12
  mainland China and have it be 1 of the components of a quote uji
• 3:16
  matcha blend. So the provenance could be a
• 3:19
  blend even coming from multiple countries today.
• 3:23
  That was almost certainly not the case 30 years ago.
• 3:25
  And then the further you wind back the clock, the definition
• 3:29
  of the OR the provenance of the T that was being labeled as
• 3:33
  Fujimacha has changed. But then you can go back and
• 3:37
  layer on various levels of historical argument about what
• 3:41
  Fujimacha was. And when you go backwards, then
• 3:45
  you can kind of project forward to what should it be, which is,
• 3:48
  you know, the conversation that we want to have now.
• 3:51
  That's right. So if we really rewind the clock
• 3:54
  back to, you know, the definition of modern matcha,
• 3:57
  which is, you know, has to be milled from tenta and tenta has
• 4:00
  to be cultivated under a shading condition.
• 4:04
  You know, the Uchi farmers had the most legit point.
• 4:07
  This type of tea that's very well defined can only be legally
• 4:12
  produced in Uchi back in the days that are supervised by all
• 4:17
  these chashis which were serving the shogunate at the time.
• 4:21
  So do you think we should pick their side by it?
• 4:25
  Well, yeah, you're right. Historically for hundreds of
• 4:27
  years, matcha and its current definition, which I guess we
• 4:31
  should define before we even we start talking, needing to be
• 4:35
  from shade grown Tansha, which is steamed de stemmed and
• 4:39
  deveined green tea that's been shaded, you know, only came from
• 4:43
  one town in Uji, but shaded cultivation was literally
• 4:47
  prevented anywhere else. And for hundreds of years, all,
• 4:51
  the, not only all the Fuji matcha in the world, all of the
• 4:55
  matcha in the world came from one town that was basically its
• 5:01
  own form of, had its own form of government protection,
• 5:05
  government controlled monopoly of state development.
• 5:09
  And then that's all slowly started to unwrap as the state
• 5:12
  literally changed as we moved into the Meiji period.
• 5:15
  And then things started to loosen up.
• 5:17
  And then it's gone through various waves of consumer bases
• 5:20
  too. The consumer base for matcha has
• 5:22
  changed meaningfully 3 times one being the elites of the Edo era.
• 5:27
  That huge change when the schools, particularly Arasenke
• 5:31
  Namoto senke gained a lot of ground, especially through the
• 5:35
  government campaign, good wives and wise mothers where it was
• 5:38
  taken up as part of bridal training and girls schools,
• 5:41
  education and etiquette. And then you could argue there's
• 5:44
  a quote, UN quote, 3rd wave of magic consumers being sort of
• 5:48
  global practitioner bait, global consumption base.
• 5:51
  We see today where you know, you can be in Paris, Dubai, New
• 5:55
  York, Santiago, Chile and you know, have a great matcha latte.
• 5:59
  So it's. Very top down movement if you
• 6:03
  think about it. But the last movement is like
• 6:07
  much more grassroots or you have a bunch of don't have all this
• 6:11
  context. Why not necessarily all the
• 6:13
  history or or the culture of it that are taking it up, which
• 6:18
  it's it's the world we live in now, but the way that Ujicha
• 6:22
  trait, the way this Ujicha name has evolved through the these
• 6:27
  levels of practitioner bases too.
• 6:29
  It's worth considering. And you know, Sam, this brings
• 6:31
  me back to exactly the the podcast episode that we adore so
• 6:35
  much. What do you care about?
• 6:37
  It's so perfectly on air. Or or who?
• 6:40
  Who do you identified you are? Because like, if you pick team
• 6:47
  Uji farmer and you literally will not be able to drink matcha
• 6:51
  or uji matcha ever again, that will go back to, you know, the
• 6:56
  Shogun appear it and those tea will certainly be reserved by a
• 7:01
  very, very, very small group of people.
• 7:04
  And and this will forever be a myth to the majority of the
• 7:08
  population. The fact that you are be able to
• 7:11
  drink Uji matcha or actual Uji matcha for that matter.
• 7:15
  Like you can you can still go to Uji and buy Oji chi man and a
• 7:19
  bunch of other producers in a fairly reasonable price.
• 7:23
  It's because we are having the current systems being set up in
• 7:27
  Japan. So like it's like, what do you
• 7:31
  care about? Actually, if you do end up
• 7:34
  picking the side and had have the ability to change the
• 7:37
  reality, then you are literally, you know, cutting yourself out
• 7:42
  from some delicious tea. Yeah, that's true.
• 7:46
  It was so exclusive for so long. Shawn are you?
• 7:49
  And Shawn are you? Narrative enthuse modern
• 7:53
  marketing brands all over the place.
• 7:55
  People talk about Ichigo, Ichi AE or One Moment, One Time.
• 7:58
  People talk about San, people talk about meditation.
• 8:01
  People talk about the beauty of simplicity and, and rusticity
• 8:05
  and sort of this dignified poverty look of wabi sabi.
• 8:11
  And you know, these intentions are all great, but the there's a
• 8:14
  huge reality is that, you know, during the formative years, the
• 8:19
  invention of essentially Uji Macha and during this period of
• 8:25
  state controlled monopoly, it was not for the every man or the
• 8:28
  every woman. You know, it was it was a highly
• 8:31
  exclusive tea. It was extremely expensive.
• 8:34
  And despite what these traditions say about
• 8:37
  inclusivity, and you know, everyone has to bow before going
• 8:41
  in the tea room's little door to show that everyone is equal in
• 8:44
  this tea room. And, you know, there's all sorts
• 8:47
  of these little stories in China you about, you know, peasants
• 8:50
  being invited or fisherman's being invited to, to come to tea
• 8:54
  ceremony. The, the reality on the ground
• 8:56
  is that it was, say, probably a very elitist and sexist
• 9:01
  institution or institutions or cultural practice is another way
• 9:05
  to put it. So if you purely care about
• 9:07
  accessibility inequality, you're right.
• 9:10
  We have never been in a better time for matcha.
• 9:13
  Like let's take a what is the most Uji matcha we can think of?
• 9:17
  For me, it's probably from Horisishimayan Okunuyama tea
• 9:23
  garden. Let's say the Okuniyama
• 9:25
  cultivar, which we we know comes from Uji native Zai Rai from a
• 9:28
  400 year old plant and where they have cuttings of this
• 9:32
  cultivar still grown. And one of the oldest known
• 9:36
  plots in Uji that date back to Ujisishimayan, the state
• 9:40
  controlled monopoly as part of one of the seven famous tea
• 9:44
  gardens of Uji. You can buy that tea at Horatio
• 9:47
  Saman. I think it's 35 or 40 bucks and
• 9:50
  I'm pretty sure you can buy it online.
• 9:51
  And anyone in the world, if you take into account shipping, you
• 9:56
  know, can buy access this tea for let's say between 50 to $100
• 10:01
  to their door, whether or not you live in Norway or South
• 10:05
  Africa or like anywhere. That is crazy, right?
• 10:10
  This accessibility, if you exist, in order to have consumed
• 10:15
  a product like this hundreds of years ago, you would have
• 10:19
  literally had to win the genetic lottery or what Warren Buffett
• 10:23
  would call the divine right of the womb.
• 10:26
  That you would, if I'd have been born a family in the right
• 10:29
  circumstances with enough money and good fortune.
• 10:33
  And I probably had to prepay for your tea to get it, as then
• 10:37
  tensha. And then you would have one of
• 10:39
  your servants mill it into matcha for you where you had
• 10:42
  your tea syrup, where you pretended to live in this
• 10:45
  dignified poverty. It's just not the realities of
• 10:49
  what this was. And just from an accessibility
• 10:52
  point of view, what Uji Matcha has turned into now is a
• 10:54
  beautiful thing, the fact that it's even accessible.
• 10:58
  But Sam, I feel like we're steering, of course, a little
• 11:01
  bit. So like if we were to debate,
• 11:03
  let's take the most conservative definition where Uji Macha needs
• 11:08
  to come from, Uji Gron Tancha, and the least conservative
• 11:11
  definition, which is Uji Macha is a processing culture.
• 11:15
  And a culture of processing tensha and blending it into a
• 11:19
  product and that theoretically, it can be made from, you know,
• 11:24
  other material. And a slightly more conservative
• 11:28
  definition might be the Yamashiro region or the towns
• 11:31
  that were more geographically close to Uji and that had
• 11:35
  supplied blend houses for let's say around 100 years because no
• 11:40
  one was growing potential there until around the 20th century.
• 11:44
  But they were supplying sentia and other teas that were
• 11:46
  purchased and blended by Unji Machika.
• 11:48
  So there is at least a culture of exchange going on within this
• 11:52
  Yamashiro region, which includes counties like JoJo, like Wazuka
• 11:57
  and like Kyoto Nabe, among others.
• 12:00
  And then the most expansive definition, which I feel like
• 12:03
  you and I like tend to lean towards sometimes when we talk
• 12:07
  through arguments in this podcast, that it's really just a
• 12:10
  processing culture. And that because matcha is not
• 12:12
  very terroir driven, which we can get into in a bit, it can
• 12:15
  theoretically be grown anywhere. And that all matcha after, you
• 12:20
  know, the fall of Edo, the fall of the Shogun, it's kind of
• 12:24
  Fujimacha, at least in spirit, because that's where that whole
• 12:28
  culture was originally invented anyway.
• 12:31
  So even these, you know, companies setting up in China.
• 12:33
  And Korea. Are some ways legacies of this
• 12:36
  quote Fujimacha tradition and have some claim the same way
• 12:40
  that these Yamashiro towns do or the prefectures bordering Kyoto
• 12:43
  prefecture like me A or Shiga etcetera?
• 12:48
  Yeah, or they can, they can be somehow linked back to, you
• 12:51
  know, UJI or company, key companies in WUJI, right.
• 12:54
  It's either through education or training or Commission or, you
• 13:00
  know, all these market procurement contracts and all
• 13:04
  that. And it's literally a organic
• 13:08
  expansion of UJI. That's, you know, that that's
• 13:13
  being called Uji matcha at large, but it's really a a wooji
• 13:17
  system, a wooji culture that we are seeing.
• 13:20
  But yeah, there are a lot of sites that you know, that a lot
• 13:24
  of different definitions we can explore.
• 13:26
  But I feel like that if you really care about these
• 13:31
  definitions and the truth of these claims behind anyone that
• 13:37
  made such a statement on either of these definitions, the only
• 13:42
  really traceable and verifiable definition will be the OGT
• 13:46
  farmers that you trust. Obviously because they are
• 13:49
  physically there, you can physically see all those teeth
• 13:52
  and all of the other definitions lacks a regulatory entity or
• 13:56
  very very verifiable truth. Like you know they tell you how
• 14:01
  much portion of their tea or blends that are.
• 14:03
  Infrequently they will tell you, but if they do are coming from,
• 14:07
  you know, some certain regions you know in Kyoto Prefecture.
• 14:11
  But how do you actually know that?
• 14:13
  There's no way you can really verify those information.
• 14:16
  If you look at my product positioning, people don't tell
• 14:19
  you what they believe the Uji Macha definition that they're
• 14:24
  using is, right. Some people, it's from Uji Gron
• 14:27
  Tansha, and sometimes they tell you that for other people, they
• 14:31
  say it's single origin. And you can tell that whoever is
• 14:34
  selling and marketing and positioning the product really
• 14:36
  has no clue about how complicated the network of
• 14:41
  provenance is for the Fuji Matcha label, right?
• 14:43
  Like honestly, our first trip into Japan, we were handed tons
• 14:47
  of priceless and like you go to producers in Yami, you go to
• 14:51
  producers in. Like Izuma, you go to producers
• 14:54
  in in in in Nara, for example, and you ask for a price list and
• 15:00
  somewhere on that price list is probably the terms Fujimacha or
• 15:04
  an even in Nishio, right? Everyone is selling this
• 15:06
  Fujimacha and all of the other tea on this price list.
• 15:09
  Yama Yama Kagoshima, Kagoshima Nara, Nara Nara probably comes
• 15:14
  from that place. And then you have this thing,
• 15:17
  right? It's it, it, it'd be so weird to
• 15:20
  go back and say, is this really from Uji Gran Tanja?
• 15:23
  And no one does that. No one thinks to ask that
• 15:25
  question, right? Most people go in with ears wide
• 15:29
  open, ready to believe whatever people tell them because they're
• 15:32
  a Japanese tea farmer. But the reality check that most
• 15:35
  people never get is typically what you hear is opinion and
• 15:39
  very strong perspective. And those people trying to sell
• 15:43
  that uji matcha are in the business of selling tea, right?
• 15:46
  And it was so weird when I was putting together this price list
• 15:50
  of tensha for people who are part of our beta program that
• 15:54
  have purchased the milk. I, I kept finding myself writing
• 15:57
  the sentence, this was labeled as Ujimacha, but it's actually
• 16:01
  from Fukuchiyama. And but it, you can technically
• 16:05
  label it and call it as Ujimacha and it would probably give you a
• 16:10
  marketing advantage because most consumers are only looking for
• 16:14
  Ujimacha. And this is the rules of the
• 16:16
  game that everyone else is playing and.
• 16:20
  You know, this is exactly why the this definition has expanded
• 16:25
  so much, because you can sell it better.
• 16:27
  It's all comes down to the business.
• 16:29
  It's like that one Chinese comedian who's in the States
• 16:33
  who's not very religious and a bunch of missionaries came up to
• 16:37
  him and says, do you believe in Jesus Christ?
• 16:40
  And he says no. And he says, but you know, if
• 16:43
  you don't believe in him, you know you'll go to hell.
• 16:45
  And he says, what about the people that live on an
• 16:48
  uninhabited island that have never heard of Jesus?
• 16:51
  Well, you know, they've never heard of him.
• 16:54
  They never had the opportunity and God will forgive them and
• 16:57
  they can go to heaven. And he said, then why did you
• 16:59
  tell me? And you know, whether or not
• 17:04
  you're Christian or whatever your religion is now with this
• 17:08
  Fujimacha thing, if you know the truth, I can say, oh, you know,
• 17:11
  this is labeled and sold as Ujimacha.
• 17:13
  This material actually comes from bazooka.
• 17:16
  If you want to play by the rules, right, everyone else is
• 17:19
  playing by you can label this as Uji Macha, but really it comes
• 17:22
  from Mazuka. And now that you know, you know
• 17:25
  that there's some level of intellectual dishonesty.
• 17:28
  You know that Uji is an actual town.
• 17:31
  You know that this hasn't actually grown in that town.
• 17:34
  You're being told you can sell it as Uji Macha, but really it's
• 17:37
  from this other place. And now that you know, right,
• 17:40
  are you going to label that as Uji Macha?
• 17:42
  I'd I'd feel a little dirty doing that now that I know if
• 17:46
  you really care about, you know, the product and transparency,
• 17:49
  But on the other side, it's you're like, is it fair to
• 17:53
  yourself in your business when you're in the business of
• 17:55
  selling tea to play by different rules, right?
• 17:58
  Especially if you're in a market that might be less educated,
• 18:01
  right? Maybe Ujimacha really does mean
• 18:03
  something, right? Being able to put that on your
• 18:06
  Cafe menu means something and means you can charge a higher
• 18:09
  price when no one has heard of Joe Yo or Wazuka or Uji Tawara,
• 18:15
  right? Like then, you know, why
• 18:17
  wouldn't you play by the rules of everyone else and the rules
• 18:20
  of everyone and else who honestly, they don't know, they
• 18:24
  don't really know where their tea comes from, they're told is
• 18:27
  blended by some blend master. And they should label ujimacha,
• 18:30
  right? Like, it's also kind of Fair for
• 18:33
  them to play by the rules that everyone else is, but at least
• 18:36
  then they're making a conscious decision and doing.
• 18:39
  Well, it's, it's, it's literally one of the definitions.
• 18:43
  Like they're there. I feel like really there's no
• 18:46
  right or wrong in here. It's just different consensus of
• 18:50
  different groups. And I think the, the only people
• 18:54
  with a legitimate reason to get frustrated are the tea farmers
• 18:59
  at that, that are actually in wuji making tea.
• 19:02
  And all of the other definitions are just really, I feel like
• 19:05
  loosely helped by consensus of different people for either, you
• 19:10
  know, commercial reasons or just purely, you know, inheritance of
• 19:16
  information or culture from their predecessors or, or from
• 19:20
  people that they learned he from.
• 19:21
  It's very complicated. Yes and no.
• 19:24
  I don't know, it depends too what you care about, right?
• 19:27
  If you care about flavor and sensory and the product
• 19:30
  experience and let's say let's take it from the viewpoint of a
• 19:34
  blind tasting, you know, knowing the region can give you some
• 19:38
  level of information. We say that matcha is not very
• 19:41
  terroir driven because matcha primarily is the flavor profile
• 19:46
  and quality is a result of human intervention.
• 19:49
  Shading is a huge homogenizer, especially for how long you
• 19:53
  shade it gets the shaded flavor, also known as olika.
• 19:57
  It boosts umami, blocks the pathway turn preventing sweet
• 20:02
  and savory amino acids into bitter and astringent catechins,
• 20:05
  right? And then the fertilizer in the
• 20:07
  ground is that umami kind of fueling, fueling the umami and
• 20:11
  fertilizer has a huge impact tasting unfertilized matcha and
• 20:15
  you've tasted matcha that tastes nothing like all the other
• 20:17
  matcha on the market really tastes drastically.
• 20:21
  It tastes more different than tea from two different places
• 20:24
  that have been fertilized typically.
• 20:26
  But there is a processing culture in these different
• 20:29
  places. For example, if you do have Uji
• 20:32
  grown tensha that's turned into Uji matcha, most of the farmers
• 20:37
  in Uji are practicing tazumi or handpicking.
• 20:40
  So there's a huge culture of that and it tells you that the
• 20:43
  quality is probably going to be higher.
• 20:45
  They're willing to spend much more money on fertilizers.
• 20:47
  Most of the farmers in Uji only do a single harvest.
• 20:50
  So when you shade a plant, you're essentially suffocating.
• 20:54
  So when you shade over the course of multiple times per
• 20:57
  year, over multiple seasons, it's very hard on the plant.
• 21:00
  So if you're only shading once a year like most Uji matcha
• 21:04
  farmers do, you tend to get even more higher quality from that
• 21:08
  first harvest. And most of them have very what
• 21:12
  we'll call luxury cultivars, cultivars that are a little more
• 21:15
  difficult to grow like Asahi, for example.
• 21:18
  So saying that, it does come from Uji gron Tansha.
• 21:20
  Well, the Terra war might not matter.
• 21:23
  The human part does matter. Suji san for a kala, say cha
• 21:27
  Horisi Sumayan, the Shimizu family, Taishi san are creating
• 21:32
  products using these methods that do result in higher
• 21:36
  quality, right? So if you look at the
• 21:38
  probability of of if you blindly taste Ujimacha from Ujigrown
• 21:43
  Tensha, the probability that it is higher quality, when you
• 21:46
  compare it to the average product coming out of the more
• 21:49
  industrial place like Wazooka, the probability is that the
• 21:52
  Wazooka average Wazooka tea is going to be lower and that the
• 21:56
  Uji 1 is higher. And it's not necessarily to war,
• 21:59
  but it's the processing culture that's happening in those
• 22:03
  places. So in that sense it does matter
• 22:06
  where you know knowing what the origin is.
• 22:09
  Well, you are proving that my points Ryan right.
• 22:12
  Like because I was saying that that, you know, the OG tea
• 22:15
  farmers are probably the only group that will be frustrated by
• 22:19
  the current status. But all the other definitions
• 22:23
  doesn't really matter. Like even even if you look at,
• 22:26
  you know, processing style, like Yamai has a unique processing
• 22:30
  style and, and all the other regions doesn't necessarily have
• 22:34
  a very unique well defined style that people can taste and
• 22:38
  immediately point AT. And, and also like, even with
• 22:43
  the participation of all the other regions and, and also for,
• 22:47
  for UGT farmers, like the, the chance of a lot of people
• 22:51
  tasting tea actually being made from Uji is still not that
• 22:57
  large. Because a lot of these
• 22:59
  productions actually goes to all the bland houses.
• 23:01
  And for all these poetic, poetic named cans that you can purchase
• 23:06
  from different tea brands, they all contain, you know, some
• 23:09
  amounts of Uji grown tenta from here and there.
• 23:12
  And, and, and how do we, you know, make sense out of that?
• 23:15
  Like do we consider that partially Uji or like if we
• 23:21
  really want to be team Uji tea farmers or do we just, you know,
• 23:25
  totally disregard them as as a wooji product and no matter how
• 23:29
  much percentage of wooji tea they contain?
• 23:32
  That is the trickiest 1 and actually the blunt houses.
• 23:35
  The existence of the blunt houses is where I get torn the
• 23:40
  most in this argument. We take most.
• 23:42
  Conservative definition or the least conservative definition?
• 23:46
  Because these blend houses once were making a truly single
• 23:51
  origin product that was uji matcha from uji grown tansha.
• 23:55
  And actually they weren't even making uji matcha.
• 23:58
  They were making uji tansha. And the Tansha got shipped
• 24:01
  everywhere. And you ground it yourself.
• 24:03
  It's the product, right? And that it's changed, right?
• 24:06
  It slowly expanded and expanded 1st to towns like Jo Yo and then
• 24:12
  later in the 70s expanded to places like seventies, 80s and
• 24:16
  90s into Wazuka and expanded more into other various places.
• 24:20
  And you know, it's a living culture they were adopting.
• 24:24
  You had all of these tea ceremony schools across Japan
• 24:28
  that aided good supply of G Macha from Earth Sanken and Moto
• 24:32
  Sanken. And they expanded and the
• 24:34
  Chashi's did their work in blending, creating these
• 24:37
  products, creating new products. And you can argue it's all part
• 24:40
  of a living tradition of Uji matcha that expanded and
• 24:44
  expanded and you know, to the point where actually most of
• 24:47
  their leaves can come from outside of Kyoto.
• 24:50
  And there's a joke that one of the major blend houses which
• 24:54
  will remain nameless is not headquartered in Uji but
• 24:57
  actually headquartered in MIE because so much of their supply
• 25:01
  comes from MIE prefecture, not from even Kyoto prefecture.
• 25:05
  So you know, the straw that broke the camels back and it's
• 25:09
  the sub stack article I'm working on now is the single
• 25:12
  estate idea that that's imported probably from the West.
• 25:16
  We don't know who it was, although we think we know who it
• 25:18
  was. But we don't want decided to
• 25:21
  sell single estate tea from Uji for the first time.
• 25:26
  And the thing that differentiates that tea the most
• 25:30
  is that it's the real thing from the actual place, right?
• 25:33
  That's the best way to sell. That's what makes that tea
• 25:36
  interesting. You taste the perspective of
• 25:38
  that one farmer and the most historical place for matcha in
• 25:42
  the entire world, and yet it's the pure and real site.
• 25:47
  And then now there's a narrative break because this didn't really
• 25:51
  exist. The single farmer idea, this
• 25:54
  level of vertical integration of a farmer selling the tea for
• 25:57
  themselves, right? It was always these blunt houses
• 26:01
  to the early 20th century, from before all the way up until now.
• 26:05
  And now you have two fundamentally incompatible
• 26:08
  narratives because now what do you do with all of this uji
• 26:12
  matcha from these blunt houses? And then to compound one to the
• 26:16
  point, you have other players that are coming into the space
• 26:21
  fully utilizing this very broad definition that was established
• 26:27
  in 2004 by the trademark that everything has to be processed
• 26:31
  in Kyoto but can come from any of the four prefectures, Nara,
• 26:34
  Shiga, Niye and Kyoto Prefecture.
• 26:37
  And now we start to see the large Nishio based companies who
• 26:40
  set up new factories in Kyoto Prefecture to literally now
• 26:45
  manufacture and origin to create Ujimacha.
• 26:50
  And the part that's disturbing to me is the way that more
• 26:54
  Ujimacha gets made is not through innovation.
• 26:56
  It's not through farmers reclaiming abandoned land or
• 27:00
  creating a new plot to grow more tea.
• 27:04
  It's by people utilizing and leveraging this loophole that
• 27:07
  exists. It's taking teeth that would
• 27:10
  have not been able to be labeled as Ujimacha, which can now be
• 27:14
  labeled as Ujimacha because we've gone 100 kilometers over
• 27:18
  the border and set up a factory there.
• 27:20
  Like that's the upsetting part. Now, how do you make distinguish
• 27:24
  between the 300 or 200 year old blind house from these people
• 27:28
  coming from a different place now utilizing this loophole
• 27:32
  essentially? And that's where I get hung up.
• 27:35
  Because if you only think about Yamamasa Koyamaya and Oruku
• 27:39
  Koyama and Ipodo, right, you think very differently than if
• 27:43
  you think about these new, newer players that want to come into
• 27:47
  this land grab. You know, utilizing the rules of
• 27:51
  the game that exist to create new Uji matcha.
• 27:55
  Yeah, I totally agree. It's very difficult because like
• 28:00
  for for all these native fake names, like, you know, Madoku or
• 28:04
  Yamamasa, they have some standards of doing things.
• 28:08
  You know, they, they, they do, they, they are aware of the
• 28:11
  loophole that they essentially actually created the loophole in
• 28:14
  the beginning. But but at least they have some
• 28:16
  standards of doing something. Although now we know that they
• 28:20
  their standards is losing a little bit as well after
• 28:23
  visiting some Infinity areas knowing that there are also
• 28:27
  suppliers to to these big brands.
• 28:30
  Yeah, from. Outside part of the traditional
• 28:33
  areas that they claim they they are.
• 28:36
  But, you know, at least we we can, I would say I would trust
• 28:41
  them more than some of these newcomers.
• 28:43
  But in nature they have no difference, right?
• 28:46
  It's just different levels of, you know, pushing the boundary
• 28:51
  to to how much further away and, and for for hundreds of years,
• 28:55
  though, I would say that thanks to these plant houses, that much
• 29:00
  has to exist to these days. You know, they figured out a way
• 29:04
  to make the whole system commercially viable so that, you
• 29:09
  know, this culture can actually survived instead of living in
• 29:13
  history textbooks and for so many years of them being a
• 29:17
  stable income for all these tea farmers, you know, they
• 29:21
  essentially stolen the the narrative of, you know, uji tea
• 29:26
  or uji Mata. They they are in control of the
• 29:28
  narrative. And you know, that's why, you
• 29:31
  know, the current system is so has so many definitions because
• 29:35
  there are so many tea houses doing things differently than
• 29:38
  each other. And, and the tea farmers have
• 29:41
  really no sayings of all these because, you know, they have to
• 29:44
  rely on them as they're so source of income.
• 29:48
  All these contract being signed or sometimes even no contract
• 29:51
  being signed, but in all these social engineering, they're
• 29:53
  being enforced into making sure that these tea farmers continue
• 29:58
  to be their almost surf like this is almost a serfdom in a in
• 30:03
  a way. Oh yeah, this goes back directly
• 30:05
  to feudal Japan, and that is easy to make.
• 30:10
  Yeah, yeah, yeah. And and now we finally have one
• 30:13
  tea farmer that does start to trying to break free from this
• 30:16
  system. And a boy to boy, they got so
• 30:19
  much push backs and punishment from all these people.
• 30:23
  It's a little bit difficult to fathom, but but you're
• 30:26
  absolutely right, you know, like that now there's a contradicting
• 30:30
  or competing a definition or a discourse that exist that's, you
• 30:35
  know, fighting back to this legacy definition of what
• 30:39
  Ujimacha is. It's fascinating to look at.
• 30:42
  It's painful also to look at and to be part of it.
• 30:46
  Yeah, I mean, you have the Ujimacha farmers themselves,
• 30:49
  which have their own set of incentives and going single
• 30:52
  origin, single estate back to what Ujimacha always was, by the
• 30:56
  way, for most of its history. You could argue that's the most
• 30:59
  authentic, but you could also argue that the Maruku's and the
• 31:03
  Yamamasas and you know, the Kambayashi's of the world making
• 31:08
  these blends are the most living tradition.
• 31:10
  If we think about what was sold as a product, they were the ones
• 31:15
  that originally owned the customer, a relationship and the
• 31:18
  history of blending and of processing right.
• 31:21
  Like and those living cultures are allowed to adapt.
• 31:25
  They should adapt. Otherwise they're dead right.
• 31:28
  It's, you know, very Japanese philosophy or especially around
• 31:33
  Chanel you that the a static and sterile tradition is not a
• 31:38
  tradition at all. It's an artifact, something
• 31:40
  that's in glass, something dead. And that change is an important
• 31:44
  part for any living tradition. So those two, you know, camps I
• 31:48
  think have a past. But then you could also argue
• 31:51
  that these new Ujimacha farmers essentially vertically
• 31:54
  integrating and going direct to consumer, more direct to other
• 31:57
  businesses is a revolution. It's a business model that
• 32:01
  literally did not exist before, right?
• 32:04
  It's pretty. It's a change in business model
• 32:07
  as much as it is anything. And if you don't sell your best
• 32:10
  material to the blend houses, then the blend houses have even
• 32:13
  less true Gucci tensha to make uji matcha, which you know it,
• 32:20
  there's a finite supply of. And then you have the players
• 32:23
  coming in that are just capitalizing on all of this
• 32:27
  change. Like in literally just set up a
• 32:29
  new factory in Kyoto. Theoretically, Zhongjun, you and
• 32:32
  I could go set up a new tension factor, probably be a lot of red
• 32:35
  tape. But theoretically we could go
• 32:37
  set up a new factory or partner with someone to create a new
• 32:41
  factory and start manufacturing Ujimacha by exclusively
• 32:44
  importing leaves from NIA and processing them and selling it
• 32:48
  to Ujimacha and having it be sold on by other brands as a
• 32:52
  single origin Ujimacha product. That has nothing to do with Uji,
• 32:56
  has nothing to do with Uji. Processing culture has nothing
• 32:59
  to do with anything. Oh yeah, we can just talk to the
• 33:02
  owner of the Caesarea and Uji Murdock and and he can help us.
• 33:08
  We can import 50% of our tension from Jiu Jiang China and have a
• 33:12
  blend in to to become an uji matcha blend which people get
• 33:16
  confused at which it's a horrible net, right?
• 33:19
  Because most uji matcha is a blend.
• 33:22
  Like a blend of what? Like in today's parlance for the
• 33:25
  the the average specialty matcha consumer, it just means that
• 33:29
  you're mixing cultivars and potentially mixing origins.
• 33:32
  So uji matcha blend horribly non descriptive name.
• 33:36
  Even with this new Nihontao Japanese tea or GI thing, you
• 33:41
  know, like I read through all the definitions of the policy
• 33:45
  and I think technically, you know, even though maybe the tea
• 33:50
  cannot be called as nihonta, it can still be called as wujita as
• 33:54
  long as it's being processed in the right way, regardless of the
• 33:57
  ingredients coming from elsewhere.
• 33:59
  It's a it's a little bit ridiculous.
• 34:01
  Well, not to mention too, something we forgot to mention
• 34:03
  on the GI by episode is that it doesn't include wakocha or black
• 34:08
  tea or red tea, depending on how you define that.
• 34:11
  And our buncha, and I think there's one other one too that
• 34:14
  I'm forgetting, which is super weird because our buncha is like
• 34:17
  the most Japanese thing ever. But you can argue I don't think
• 34:21
  any other countries are making our buncha.
• 34:24
  Like no culture of copying that tea.
• 34:29
  Actually, I really, I really have come to like a la buncha.
• 34:32
  I drink it more and more often. I actually just ran out.
• 34:34
  I find it really nice. Digestive tea good.
• 34:38
  For you, I was just going to say that I need a dedicated teapot
• 34:41
  for that tea. Yeah, it has some pretty
• 34:45
  interesting acidity you might not want to mix with some of
• 34:49
  your other tea wire. And after taste or after?
• 34:53
  Older. Let's just say it's complex,
• 34:55
  unlike many other people. Yeah, sorry.
• 34:57
  Go ahead, Ryan. Acquired takes, but really good.
• 35:00
  But OK, if we really zoom out now, let's put on another lens
• 35:03
  of what you care about and let's put ourselves in the shoes of
• 35:07
  people who only care about the organolytic or sensory
• 35:11
  experience of the product. And you know, this another way
• 35:14
  to put the let's let the product speak for itself, which is best
• 35:18
  done in a blind test, right? If you drink it knowing nothing
• 35:22
  about. And this by the way, goes into
• 35:24
  this whole camp of people who are like, let's stop worrying
• 35:27
  about these labels. Let's just appreciate the tea.
• 35:29
  OK, Let's just appreciate the tea in this example.
• 35:32
  I know for a fact that there are some tea in China that we have
• 35:36
  tasted that no one would think as a Chinese product, they would
• 35:39
  think it's Japanese quality. We have had uji matcha from uji
• 35:43
  grown tensha that tastes worse than tea than tensha that was
• 35:47
  milled into matcha in China that we tasted and that we've had
• 35:51
  some tea that was higher quality, at least from a blind
• 35:54
  tasting perspective. What we consider to be good by
• 35:57
  our own standard and by Japanese standards of what high quality
• 36:01
  matcha should be from material that wasn't even grown in Japan,
• 36:05
  let alone even in Japan. I've had Wazuka tea that I
• 36:07
  thought was better than matcha from Uji Gron Tancha, either
• 36:11
  because it was boring or because it had some sort of flaw.
• 36:13
  So if we only care about the product itself, you know, does
• 36:18
  these provenance even matter? Does this ujimacha Ness even
• 36:22
  matter? Right.
• 36:23
  Theoretically, Ujimacha could be considered a processing culture,
• 36:28
  and that processing culture could theoretically happen
• 36:31
  anywhere because there's so much human intervention.
• 36:33
  So can a tea grown in Hubei be Ujimacha?
• 36:37
  Can a tea grown in Mia be Ujimacha or the spirit of
• 36:41
  Ujimacha or Ujimacha style? And I think that's a fair
• 36:45
  consideration along the question of does that even matter that
• 36:49
  we're mislabeling the origin of all of this product?
• 36:53
  I think it's well from from a purely answering the question
• 36:57
  point of view, I think it doesn't matter, right?
• 36:59
  Like the quality is a good or similar enough to the point
• 37:03
  that, you know, it doesn't really affect people's ability
• 37:06
  to distinguish between the product.
• 37:10
  But but I think that in reality, it will be a terrible, almost
• 37:15
  stupid maneuver to labeled your product that's being produced
• 37:20
  elsewhere as OGT. That's you know, that, that,
• 37:24
  that you're essentially just putting yourself into this
• 37:27
  trying port of nameless producers and you know, and,
• 37:31
  and, and you are keep fostering this, this current status quo
• 37:36
  that's painful for a lot of people and especially for
• 37:39
  yourself. Like, because like I think a lot
• 37:42
  of people you know, regardless of which tea sectors you're
• 37:46
  coming from, either matcha or oolong or black tea or poor, the
• 37:52
  name of a origin is very important.
• 37:54
  It's, it's, it's essentially the, the, the core value or core
• 38:00
  aspect of your brand or sometimes it is your brand of
• 38:04
  your tea. And the earlier you can
• 38:07
  establish this consumer recognition of your brand, the
• 38:11
  better or the location, the better the geography, the
• 38:15
  better. So I think can you label it as
• 38:18
  Wichita? Yes, you can.
• 38:20
  Should you label it as Wichita? Absolutely not if you are
• 38:23
  actually producing some amazing tea.
• 38:26
  Yeah, because you're making a name for wherever you're from,
• 38:30
  and then you have this diversity of places and new processing
• 38:33
  cultures, new ways to differ outside of the sea.
• 38:37
  Because really, I think Muchi Macha and the broad definition
• 38:41
  just let's it what it's really doing.
• 38:44
  If you look at the like percentages of the number of the
• 38:46
  amount of tea that is labeled that way, it's elevating A
• 38:49
  mediocre product, that's what. I absolutely agree, absolutely
• 38:54
  agree. It's it's for a very few of
• 38:57
  people that's setting up a ginormously, ridiculously high
• 39:02
  standard so that lot of people can take it on a ride and start
• 39:06
  selling CDT to everybody. You can also argue it robs the
• 39:12
  luxury market to the Uji matcha farmer families.
• 39:15
  Now that sounds elitist, but let's compare this to wine for a
• 39:18
  second. If you take a bottle of Romani
• 39:21
  Conti or Chateau Lafitte Rothschild or any of these
• 39:25
  really cult classic wines, what wine has done is over many
• 39:30
  hundreds of years, developed a market of people who go deep on
• 39:34
  the subject, have tons of tasting experience and are
• 39:38
  willing to pay more for an elite thing.
• 39:40
  Now, the lions of this caliber, of which I've only ever had one
• 39:45
  that was very, we both, you know, got to taste through some
• 39:48
  very good fortune. It's very good.
• 39:50
  Is it $2000 a bottle good? No.
• 39:55
  Like honestly, on the average day I'm sure there's some
• 39:58
  natural wine producers. That are doing fantastic work
• 40:01
  for $50 a bottle producing wine that I would personally rather
• 40:06
  drink. But what elevates it to that
• 40:08
  price is the rarity, the scarcity, and the incredible
• 40:13
  history and the heritage of making it in those places.
• 40:17
  When you buy it, you're drinking something that heads of state
• 40:22
  have enjoyed that people who you know has been passed down from
• 40:26
  generation to generation. The people that get the best
• 40:30
  French oak barrels, that get the best analogist, that get the
• 40:35
  best blend masters. All of this perfection of craft
• 40:39
  that has happened and has been recognized for so long that
• 40:43
  demands this price you. That's this rich, deep culture
• 40:48
  that ends up getting supported. And Uji could so totally be
• 40:53
  that, right? There should be some matcha,
• 40:56
  some of the best. I was just explaining this to
• 40:58
  someone. I was at a wedding in France
• 41:01
  recently and someone was very interested in matcha and I was
• 41:04
  saying, you know, for maximum $250 you can get some of the for
• 41:09
  a 20 gram can, which you know, if you take 2 grams of serving,
• 41:12
  it's $25 a serving. You can literally have the best
• 41:16
  matcha in the world. Hanzu shaded handpicked uji
• 41:20
  native xyri cultivars slowly processed on a brick oven kiln,
• 41:25
  hand sorted individual leaves with chopsticks for this
• 41:28
  competition. Gray tea ground at 20 to 30
• 41:32
  grams per hour on a stone melt. That is crazy.
• 41:36
  That should be going for so much more money.
• 41:40
  And this, it having this expensive definition doesn't let
• 41:44
  this kind of luxury market evolve.
• 41:48
  Which, you know, it sounds very fufu or whatever, but it's
• 41:50
  really where a whole lot of culture lies, right?
• 41:54
  Like it's where like really, the art and the craft and the
• 41:57
  heritage merge and get preserved and have enough money to get
• 42:01
  preserved and to reinvest into creating this what would
• 42:06
  otherwise be not a very economically viable product.
• 42:10
  Well, then will certainly turn into something that you and I
• 42:15
  will probably not be able to frequently try or try at all for
• 42:20
  the sake of, you know, the, the, the sheer production of, of Ujit
• 42:24
  being so low. So true.
• 42:26
  Yeah, it's and I'm not. Specifically arguing for it, I'm
• 42:29
  exploring attention and an opportunity for the market to
• 42:33
  evolve in a certain way that it already exists in a different
• 42:36
  industry. That would by the way, probably
• 42:38
  be the best outcome for the uji matcha farming families that
• 42:43
  like the system already exists, it's just not valued the way
• 42:46
  that it should be. People aren't actually drinking
• 42:49
  uji matcha and it's just so no one knows this.
• 42:53
  And all of this tea is just incredibly cheap right now if
• 42:56
  you actually can find it in the right places.
• 42:59
  Yeah, and it would only happen if all these big plant houses
• 43:03
  just go bankrupt on, you know, next day and or the government
• 43:07
  just somehow grant the status to these tea farmers some so that
• 43:12
  they can operate on their own. You know, like the reality is
• 43:16
  that, you know, seeing how much punishment that one tea farmer
• 43:20
  that we were talking about trying to break free from the
• 43:23
  current system, it's scary for other people.
• 43:26
  It's it's terrifying, like to be cut off from a system that has
• 43:33
  been a reliable source of income for so many years, hundreds of
• 43:38
  years. Generations.
• 43:40
  Generations it's it's it's unimaginable probably for a lot
• 43:45
  of people. And and it's not purely A
• 43:48
  economical decisions, right. Like Japan is such a societal
• 43:53
  based culture that there are a lot of intangible strings that's
• 43:58
  held that's holding everybody almost like a puppet in the in
• 44:02
  day-to-day life. And and it's just not really a
• 44:06
  future that we can expect probably.
• 44:09
  Actually, I I have some pushback, let's say essentially
• 44:12
  what that world would look like of, you know, allowing the tea
• 44:16
  industry market matcha industry market to develop the equivalent
• 44:20
  of these, you know, very rare and sought after wine labels
• 44:26
  that are highly valued, that are, you know, willing to
• 44:29
  present a lot of money for a product that is indeed very
• 44:31
  special, is that it could still coexist.
• 44:34
  Like essentially if GI if Fujimacha got GI status and all
• 44:38
  Ujimacha that had the GI label had to come from Fuji grown
• 44:43
  tensha, there's no reason why the old blend houses who already
• 44:46
  have relationships with the Fujimacha farmers couldn't
• 44:50
  produce AGI blend of Ujimacha the same way that the yame
• 44:54
  Gokura producers, all the yame people you can buy Gokura from,
• 44:59
  they have their Han yame Gokura which is the GI certified one,
• 45:04
  which has all these different rules around the way it must be
• 45:06
  grown. That must be I think it has to
• 45:08
  be Han Zutana, the rice straw shaded with a a shelf canopy so
• 45:13
  there's no direct coverage. I think it has to be hand
• 45:16
  picked. There's a bunch of other rules
• 45:17
  too for the GI actually has to come from yame and then they
• 45:21
  have their quote yame go, which, you know, who knows what that
• 45:24
  actually means, May or may not come from Yami, certainly
• 45:27
  processed in a Yami style. And those products just coexist
• 45:31
  and the, you know, the Han Yami got Han Ujima, Han Ujimacha or
• 45:36
  genuine Ujimacha. Well, I think for the tea houses
• 45:39
  or the blend houses to, to, to move into that state, they
• 45:44
  because we, we, we almost need to think about Uji tea or Uji Ha
• 45:48
  as a name of a brand for all these tea houses or these plant
• 45:52
  houses. It's a brand that consumer
• 45:55
  recognized. It's a brand that they can for
• 45:57
  sure sell, sell their tea for a higher price.
• 46:00
  And it's it's also a brand that they created, arguably.
• 46:04
  Totally. And for them to continue to, you
• 46:08
  know, operate commercially in a sustainable manner, they either
• 46:13
  need to create a new term for the true Ujita.
• 46:16
  Maybe we can call it a home Wichita, or they need to give up
• 46:20
  Wichita and, and create a new term.
• 46:23
  You know, the this there. There's still a need of consumer
• 46:26
  recognition for a broad enough definition so that these tea
• 46:32
  houses can sell the mass market tea for a higher margin so that
• 46:36
  their business can be sustainable.
• 46:38
  We're talking about commodity products here.
• 46:40
  It's, you know, we're, they're still a very large group of
• 46:44
  consumers that doesn't really care about specialty.
• 46:47
  They just want to drink some delicious tea that has some name
• 46:50
  that they can, you know, recognize or they can, you know,
• 46:54
  gift, gift the tea as a gift for other people that other people
• 46:58
  can recognize. So there's a market need for
• 47:00
  that, for that demand. And, and it's just that the
• 47:03
  current system is, you know, hurting the true OG tea farmer
• 47:08
  because, you know, like they, they, they have been married
• 47:10
  into this system for so long. And this is right now the the
• 47:15
  only system that worked for everybody, yeah.
• 47:18
  Well, yeah, I agree with you. I mean it's a lot of the demand
• 47:22
  for uji matchas for people that don't really know the difference
• 47:26
  or re educating the market, especially the domestic market,
• 47:29
  you know, might be expensive, might have some trust issues.
• 47:32
  I mean, we've been told multiple times that the average person in
• 47:36
  Japan believes that Uji matcha comes from Uji.
• 47:39
  And they might know it's a blend of different leaves and that
• 47:42
  blend is expected to stay consistent.
• 47:44
  But I don't think but they realize the extent to which it's
• 47:46
  really the the provenance, the true provenance of the actual
• 47:50
  raw material does not come from that place.
• 47:53
  But OK, if you zoom out outside of the domestic market and even
• 47:58
  zoom out further from just these blind houses and let's say you
• 48:01
  have this with the perspective of someone and pick a random
• 48:05
  country trying to create a new matcha brand, which is happening
• 48:08
  all over the place. Basically every country on
• 48:11
  earth, there's a bunch of people trying to create their own
• 48:14
  matcha brand trying to source this.
• 48:16
  This creates such a level of confusion in this current system
• 48:21
  because if you do the math, about one in three cans of
• 48:23
  matcha produced in Japan can be called Ujimatcha.
• 48:27
  Which is crazy considering that Uji has only 35 farming families
• 48:31
  and everyone's applying the specialty framework on the
• 48:34
  single origin product coming from Uji.
• 48:37
  But it's not. And now you have a culture in
• 48:40
  context that is being exploited in Japan by actors that are from
• 48:45
  other places setting up across the border to get, quote UN
• 48:49
  quote, the right passport for the tea labeled as the thing.
• 48:54
  And then you have a bunch of people unintentionally
• 48:58
  exploiting the single origin concept or applying a single
• 49:02
  origin concept that just have no clue how complicated like this
• 49:07
  whole system is. And no one talks about what they
• 49:10
  believe Uji matcha to be right? Because really you need to
• 49:14
  believe someones beliefs first before you can understand what
• 49:18
  they're selling. So the more you know, the more
• 49:21
  you should distrust everyone's tea labeling.
• 49:25
  When I'm in Paris where I live and I find Ujimacha on the menu,
• 49:29
  I don't even bother asking any questions and I don't wonder it.
• 49:34
  Like I know it's not from Uji. I know the person behind the
• 49:39
  counter has no clue. The brand owner or the owner of
• 49:42
  the cafe has no clue. The person who sourced the
• 49:45
  product from the brand owner of Matcha probably also has no
• 49:49
  clue, right? Just like no one has a clue of
• 49:51
  where this product is actually coming from.
• 49:54
  And then you sit back and think to yourself, why can't we just
• 49:57
  call it by the thing where it's from?
• 50:00
  It is a blend of tea from these places.
• 50:02
  And this is the intention behind the blend when trying to get it
• 50:06
  to express this, this and this for this use case.
• 50:09
  This is a justification for why this product exists.
• 50:13
  And instead we're all focused on just slapping on this
• 50:16
  meaningless label because people want to authentic experience
• 50:20
  from the most historical place in Uji.
• 50:23
  Slapping on veil after veil, vanity metric after vanity
• 50:28
  metric, to create such a fantasy that is so disconnected from
• 50:32
  reality. It's robbing all of these other
• 50:35
  really interesting stories of the people who actually make the
• 50:40
  tea. All of these companies, all of
• 50:42
  this framing, quite frankly, excuse the language, all of this
• 50:45
  bullshit completely does not take into consideration the
• 50:49
  people who actually drink the tea and the people who actually
• 50:52
  make the tea. We're honoring some fantasy that
• 50:56
  we all want to project onto with this product.
• 50:59
  But if we really truly want to honor the people who make the
• 51:02
  tea, which come from all over Japan or other countries for
• 51:06
  that matter, and the people who are actually drinking the tea.
• 51:09
  And the biggest favor we can give the people actually
• 51:11
  drinking the tea are facts that cannot be manipulated.
• 51:15
  We're no longer calling it premium wine, premium matcha.
• 51:19
  A non manipulated fact is that it's Oku Midori cultivar.
• 51:24
  You know, make that up. That's not a story.
• 51:26
  It could be very great opportunity for storytelling and
• 51:30
  for, you know, education. And it's storytelling that once
• 51:34
  you learn, OK, I like Okumadori. It's the same way I like
• 51:37
  Chardonnay. I might go try something else.
• 51:40
  But you say, oh, I like this premium matcha.
• 51:41
  I want to go find another premium matcha.
• 51:44
  You didn't learn anything. You're not making the consumer
• 51:47
  better discovering what other things that they might actually
• 51:50
  like. And it's very selfish framing
• 51:52
  actually by all of these matcha companies by not talking about
• 51:55
  the region or the processing style or the fertilizing style.
• 51:59
  Even what type of tensha oven we recently learned has a huge
• 52:02
  impact. If you have one of these more
• 52:04
  mass produced tensha ovens, the simple tensha dryers, which are
• 52:08
  basically air fryers and Kagoshima, it leaves the green
• 52:12
  leaf almost like spicy green, like a dandelion leaf or
• 52:17
  arugula. Like it really doesn't have this
• 52:20
  complexity or sweetness that you get from, you know, radiant heat
• 52:24
  from a radiant tenta red brick oven, right?
• 52:28
  Like this? If you if you buy tea from that
• 52:31
  specific supplier and you do know these piece of information,
• 52:34
  do you share that to the consumer?
• 52:37
  Well, you could, I mean. That's a clear indicator of the
• 52:40
  lower, you know, quality. Or a great indicator of value.
• 52:45
  You know, this is a new I can let me try to sell it to you.
• 52:48
  The Japanese have invented a new innovation and processing
• 52:53
  technology for creating matcha that makes it even greener.
• 52:57
  It better preserves all of the chlorophyll and all of these
• 53:01
  compounds, giving you a beautiful green cup.
• 53:03
  It tends to be a little more bitter, a little more harsh, but
• 53:06
  actually it really balances out the moment that this hits milk.
• 53:10
  And we know that color is super important, but we also know that
• 53:13
  creating a balanced taste is super important, which is why we
• 53:17
  also used Oku Midori cultivar, which has naturally much higher
• 53:21
  chlorophyll content. And when it's shaded, it gets
• 53:23
  amplified. And when it goes through this
• 53:25
  type of drawing, it gets amplified.
• 53:27
  And not only that, it's actually much cheaper to make.
• 53:30
  And we can give you an Argentine mail back for 10 bucks.
• 53:34
  This is this is that, but in matcha format.
• 53:36
  This is how we can afford to give you these fantastic prices.
• 53:40
  Is it something that you're going to want to consume, you
• 53:42
  know, as an usacha? You know, maybe, yeah, I'll give
• 53:46
  it a month or two. It's going to blow off some of
• 53:48
  these greener notes. And, you know, maybe it's going
• 53:51
  to result in a more naturally balanced cup.
• 53:53
  But it's a fantastic product, and we can give it to you for 20
• 53:56
  bucks. But we also source this
• 53:58
  fantastic tea. It was grown in Uji Tawara.
• 54:01
  It was put on a traditional tensha oven radiant brick.
• 54:05
  It's going to be a little bit less green.
• 54:07
  It's also using a cultivar that's naturally a little more
• 54:09
  pale. But this tea is also really
• 54:12
  great for all of these other reasons.
• 54:14
  It's handpicked. Maybe it's a shelf shaded, maybe
• 54:16
  it was fertilized, maybe it was a matcha that wasn't fertilized
• 54:20
  and no pesticides at all, and it has a different framing to use
• 54:24
  it on. But all of this is not a made-up
• 54:26
  story. It's the truth about the way it
• 54:28
  was made. And you can spin it to be more
• 54:31
  or less romantic, right? But there's a time in the place.
• 54:33
  And what I don't want to see is someone who is trying to sell a
• 54:39
  $10 bottle of Malbec from Argentina and trying to pass it
• 54:43
  off as a top sentiment on Bordeaux, right?
• 54:47
  Which is kind of what's going on by everyone just slapping
• 54:50
  premium on. It's like literally forcing
• 54:53
  their consumers to pay an intelligence tax and a markup
• 54:56
  way larger than they realize. When you know if it's on
• 54:59
  objective facts, there's none of this manipulation that can be
• 55:03
  done. I totally agree.
• 55:05
  Totally agree. It's, it's just incredible
• 55:07
  difficult to, to change, right? Like there are a couple layers
• 55:11
  that we're, I think we're facing right here.
• 55:13
  First is the accessibility of information.
• 55:16
  Like I've heard a lot of these tea farmers, they just wouldn't
• 55:19
  tell you exactly what's going on.
• 55:21
  And you really have to pull the information from, from, from
• 55:24
  them as a brand owner or a product creator.
• 55:27
  And, and, and for so few of them that do end up sharing the
• 55:31
  information, it's, you know, one or two data points that people
• 55:35
  can use, But, you know, it's not enough to build up a, a large
• 55:39
  enough map for a system for, for, you know, consumers to
• 55:43
  really learn about the differences, at least not for
• 55:46
  now, for a lot of region. I would love to see that happen
• 55:49
  in the future. And and second, there isn't
• 55:52
  again, a regulatory entity or someone or some entity that the
• 55:56
  police, all these people hold, hold people accountable for
• 55:59
  their claims. It's just almost impossible to
• 56:02
  exist. And you like for, for a
• 56:04
  consumer, you, you really have to learn or pay all these
• 56:08
  tuitions by yourself to get, you know, to some experience level
• 56:12
  to be able to, you know, make a judgement by yourself.
• 56:16
  But there's no other ways to hold people accountable.
• 56:19
  And, and for now, you know, there's two competing
• 56:23
  narratives, right? There's, you know, all these
• 56:25
  either misinformed or ill informed brand owners or lazy
• 56:30
  brand owners or purely dishonest brand owners.
• 56:34
  Who's taking the right of this whole UGT bandwagon to trying to
• 56:40
  sell the tea for a higher margin, inferior tea for a
• 56:44
  higher margin. And there is this a specialty
• 56:47
  tea market or just tea brands that you are advocating for Ryan
• 56:52
  that's trying to tell a more complicated more honors the
• 56:56
  story about all these teas. But one party cannot shut the
• 57:00
  other party's mouth like it that there's no way you can just go
• 57:04
  there and sue them or like tell them to like, you know, stop
• 57:07
  doing what what they're doing. Like the specialty people cannot
• 57:11
  tell the commodity people what to do and the commodity people
• 57:15
  cannot tell the specialty people what to do.
• 57:17
  The only way now is that you, you, you spread enough awareness
• 57:22
  to win the competition of discourse of that consumer by
• 57:25
  the end of the day will vote with their own money and then
• 57:29
  one will eventually convert to the other.
• 57:32
  That's that's the only way now. Yeah, the court of public
• 57:36
  opinion. I mean, that's the real war that
• 57:39
  should be fought, right? That's winning hearts and minds.
• 57:42
  Yeah, yeah, yeah. So it takes all of us, the whole
• 57:46
  community to to do so. We, we shared our opinion and
• 57:49
  our view of what, you know, Wuji T or Macho should be.
• 57:54
  But you know, we don't we, we cannot hold anyone accountable.
• 57:57
  We, there's no one can do that. We we have to win the hearts of
• 58:02
  the consumers to to win this battle.
• 58:05
  Well, also, you know, just as a quick land acknowledgement too,
• 58:08
  is that we're not from Uji. We are not Japanese.
• 58:13
  We are not at least active China, you practitioners.
• 58:16
  We are people trying to build a business in the context of this
• 58:19
  industry and also try to build awareness for a lot of these
• 58:23
  topics through this podcast. But you know, we have a very
• 58:25
  different level of skin in the game than than other people do.
• 58:29
  And, you know, in a lot of ways, you can ask yourself, is this
• 58:34
  our battle to fight? And I don't know.
• 58:37
  I feel very conflicted about that.
• 58:39
  We are not uji matcha farmers. Our family livelihood does not
• 58:42
  depend on this. Quite frankly, our business does
• 58:45
  not depend on whether or not people are honest about
• 58:47
  labeling. You know where their tea comes
• 58:49
  from and how it gets called and the complications of it.
• 58:53
  I I mean if you are a but. Is it consumer?
• 58:55
  I deeply care. Yeah, yeah, yeah.
• 58:57
  And, and, and if you are a small business owner and like the only
• 59:01
  way for you to be able to sell your tea is to label your tea as
• 59:04
  Uchimacha. Like please do like don't kill
• 59:07
  your business. Don't like go bankrupt because
• 59:09
  of them. You can wait until the market is
• 59:11
  maturing enough, the specialty market is maturing enough in the
• 59:15
  future and then it's your decision to convert to that
• 59:18
  party or not. But if you are a large enough
• 59:21
  tea company, you have a healthy cash flow and you do have the
• 59:24
  capability of, you know, playing the game.
• 59:27
  I, we, we, we really hope that there will be more of you to,
• 59:31
  to, to do that, to, to, to inform the market, to educate
• 59:34
  the market, to move the market into a more, just a more
• 59:38
  interesting direction for everybody.
• 59:40
  Yeah, just a much more interesting direction than, you
• 59:44
  know, all of this tea getting dumped into one label that
• 59:47
  ignores all of the farmers who are actually doing the hard, the
• 59:51
  real work of bringing this product to market.
• 59:54
  Some of them want to be recognized, other others don't
• 59:57
  want to be recognized specifically.
• 59:59
  But, you know, unless people are pulling this out of these
• 1:00:03
  places, there's no reason for them to change or modify the
• 1:00:07
  status quo. Japanese farmers are aging.
• 1:00:10
  They have no succession plans. Taking on the risk of doing this
• 1:00:14
  is just so not worth it unless we make it worth it like.
• 1:00:19
  And it's very much a revolution because it's really setting up a
• 1:00:22
  new business model having the Ujimacha farming families, you
• 1:00:26
  know, sell less to wholesale, less blended products, more sell
• 1:00:30
  their own products that are actually from Ujigun Densha.
• 1:00:32
  And then all the Ujimacha supply regions also doing the same.
• 1:00:36
  And we see more and more of that even at the combini in the
• 1:00:39
  Lawson in Wazuka, the there's a whole little like table full of
• 1:00:44
  Wazuka, Wazuka, Wazuka tea, Wazuka tea.
• 1:00:47
  They're really leaning into that heart and the the local products
• 1:00:52
  that are actually from that place.
• 1:00:54
  Yeah. So, you know, we are starting to
• 1:00:56
  see this change. But still, so much tea just gets
• 1:01:00
  fun blended. And I think the first step is
• 1:01:02
  awareness. Like if you're going to label
• 1:01:05
  your tea as a matcha brand, as a single origin product, at least
• 1:01:09
  No whether and what the provenance of the T actually is,
• 1:01:13
  and you know what you're calling it and that that's the game that
• 1:01:16
  you're playing, right? And you know it's then you make
• 1:01:19
  your own judgment call. I'd love to see the world in the
• 1:01:22
  next 5 to 5 years shift from everyone not knowing to at least
• 1:01:27
  everyone knowing what they're doing.
• 1:01:31
  And then we start, I think this is going to be one person by
• 1:01:33
  person, farmer by farmer, you know, finding these farmers say
• 1:01:37
  we'd love to highlight you or we'd love to highlight this is a
• 1:01:39
  single origin product instead of just calling it this thing.
• 1:01:43
  And then you build, you know, these different identities for
• 1:01:46
  this product. Build up the fame of these
• 1:01:49
  different regions. Discover what's special.
• 1:01:51
  Tell the 1000 human stories that are all covered up by the two
• 1:01:54
  syllables on a label, which is uji, which is selling, you know,
• 1:01:58
  romance, fantasy of a place, the fantasy of an idea.
• 1:02:03
  We can start selling new romance and they they don't necessarily
• 1:02:07
  need to be a fantasy and all the places and people scattering
• 1:02:11
  around the world making wonderful products.
• 1:02:14
  They all have their own unique story to tell and, and and it it
• 1:02:18
  should be the new romance and these romance on this time have
• 1:02:23
  some ground truths that people can verify them trust.
• 1:02:26
  You know, I just thought of something.
• 1:02:28
  Fuji has like a 400 year head start in creating its brand and
• 1:02:33
  creating a name and building consensus that it's the good
• 1:02:37
  thing. And it was the only place in the
• 1:02:39
  world where macho was being made for hundreds of years because it
• 1:02:42
  was a state controlled monopoly. And you know, that processing
• 1:02:45
  culture and the culture of making it stayed concentrated.
• 1:02:49
  And it hasn't been in the last two decades.
• 1:02:52
  But these other regions are new macho growing regions.
• 1:02:56
  Nishio and the areas around IG, you know, have been doing it for
• 1:03:00
  maybe 120 years, maybe a little bit longer, maybe 140 years, but
• 1:03:05
  still pretty new in the grand history of macho, same thing.
• 1:03:09
  Wazooka, super new. JoJo is a little bit older.
• 1:03:13
  I think the oldest places in JoJo date back to the late
• 1:03:16
  1800s, but they just haven't had time or the opportunity to build
• 1:03:22
  up their name. Just I think as an artifact is
• 1:03:24
  Japanese society and the way these products were positioned
• 1:03:28
  and sold the top down this of the way, you know, Japanese
• 1:03:32
  culture operates. And they just haven't been given
• 1:03:35
  an opportunity to to shine a stage to to break free of that
• 1:03:40
  mold. And maybe it's just there isn't
• 1:03:42
  hasn't been enough time yet. Masai is so old, but at the same
• 1:03:45
  time so new for everybody. Yeah.
• 1:03:48
  And when you compare it to places like China across like
• 1:03:51
  the really large different categories, Oracle differences
• 1:03:54
  among the different tea like you have, you know, Phoenix mountain
• 1:03:58
  dancing, you have Uyan Cha different Fujian, you have poor
• 1:04:04
  from Yunnan, you have baicha white tea from fooding, right?
• 1:04:08
  All of these places have really long deep processing histories.
• 1:04:13
  When we think about T&T origin and the reality is from Macho,
• 1:04:17
  there's only one old T origin and it's Uji, and then
• 1:04:21
  everything else is less than 200 years old.
• 1:04:24
  Yame, Kagoshima, Aichi, even the matcha being grown in Korea or
• 1:04:30
  China. It just, it takes time for myths
• 1:04:33
  to develop and for consumer awareness to take place.
• 1:04:36
  And, but it can happen. And I hope it happens within
• 1:04:40
  this century. And it finally has the
• 1:04:42
  opportunity to happen because, you know, matcha has gone
• 1:04:46
  through its third wave of consumers.
• 1:04:48
  The first were, you know, the daimyo, the Shogun, the elites
• 1:04:52
  of feudalistic Japan. And then it switched to the tea
• 1:04:55
  ceremony practitioners, you know, that were all happening in
• 1:04:58
  Meiji post Meiji. And now much has gone from a
• 1:05:01
  really like obscure Japanese ceremonial ingredient to
• 1:05:07
  something that you find in every coffee shop in every and all
• 1:05:10
  these places around the world being represented in such
• 1:05:13
  diverse and new markets. It may be just it's just a
• 1:05:16
  matter of time. That's almost an inevitability
• 1:05:19
  as people go searching for more and more tea, more and more
• 1:05:22
  people. Even this last year, the
• 1:05:24
  difference between the harvest and 25 and 2026, just looking at
• 1:05:30
  it through Instagram is so different.
• 1:05:33
  It used to be so rare to see the inside of attention factory on
• 1:05:38
  social media. Now it's feel like it's
• 1:05:40
  everybody. Feels like every day someone
• 1:05:43
  posts a new picture with Suji San.
• 1:05:46
  It's like it's, it's, it's happening before our eyes.
• 1:05:49
  And these people, these brand founders, these markets care
• 1:05:52
  about very different things and idea of knowing where your food
• 1:05:55
  comes from is coming. And I, you know, even if you
• 1:05:58
  talked to us two years ago, we had no idea that most Uji matcha
• 1:06:04
  didn't come from Uji. This is a very new realization
• 1:06:08
  even for us. And it just maybe just takes
• 1:06:11
  time for this to spread and for people to realize and apply
• 1:06:14
  their own values. Maybe we're being a little too
• 1:06:17
  harsh because like, the distribution of information is
• 1:06:21
  still like, like it hasn't happened yet.
• 1:06:24
  And the quality from other regions too, like within Japan,
• 1:06:28
  the quality from different region has been rising.
• 1:06:31
  Even Kagoshima are making some pretty interesting tea.
• 1:06:34
  And outside of Japan, you know, Korea, China, that the quality
• 1:06:38
  of Chinese matcha, you know, has really significantly increased
• 1:06:43
  also right in front of us like compared to a few years ago.
• 1:06:46
  And now we just saw the India being part of the player as
• 1:06:51
  they're making their, their first auction level competition
• 1:06:56
  tea within their own country. It's fascinating to see this
• 1:07:00
  culture blossoming everywhere. And and we do hope, we do think
• 1:07:05
  that this is future hope. That's hopeful enough for us to
• 1:07:09
  to see see it unfold. Sam, I want to go philosophical
• 1:07:13
  moment, like what is the truth, right?
• 1:07:16
  Is truth what the Japanese trademark says is ujimacha?
• 1:07:22
  Is the truth about where the tea was grown?
• 1:07:25
  Is the truth what consumers belief in their own mind, right?
• 1:07:30
  If every American wakes up tomorrow and says I am not an
• 1:07:33
  American, is it still America? Is America not just one big
• 1:07:37
  collective belief in a place? Well, well, I, I think there's
• 1:07:42
  a, there's a tautology here, right?
• 1:07:44
  Like it's the truth in this sense is a abstract definition
• 1:07:50
  as well. And, and we are trying to
• 1:07:53
  explained a abstract definition using a, another abstract
• 1:07:57
  definition or explanation, which is the definition of the
• 1:08:02
  tautology. There's actually no truth here.
• 1:08:05
  If we want something that's, you know, that's, that's all.
• 1:08:09
  If there's the communious analysis.
• 1:08:11
  But I mean, you could also argue, and I agree to tautology,
• 1:08:15
  but you know, it depends on what lens, what abstract concept you
• 1:08:19
  are applying to another abstract concept.
• 1:08:21
  So let me take the abstract concept of perception.
• 1:08:25
  If perception is reality and most people in the world believe
• 1:08:30
  that Uji matcha is a particular thing right now, we've gone from
• 1:08:34
  awareness of people who even know what Uji matcha.
• 1:08:38
  But but let's say the Japan and a few extreme tea freaks and
• 1:08:43
  geeks like us abroad to now being hundreds of millions,
• 1:08:48
  maybe even billions of people. The perception by the raw
• 1:08:53
  numbers of what Fuji Matcha is in people's mind being written
• 1:08:59
  by the brand owners in each of these countries, which means we
• 1:09:03
  have an opportunity as a global specialty matcha Society of
• 1:09:08
  people spreading this culture to set the narrative which becomes
• 1:09:12
  the reality and most of the people's heads who are selling
• 1:09:17
  Fujimacha and consuming quote. But even for, from a perception
• 1:09:24
  point of view, like I don't think I have the definition for
• 1:09:28
  Wujimacha, the sheer difference between different matcha that's
• 1:09:34
  produced from Wuji is so large. It's, it's, it's enormous even
• 1:09:38
  from a taste perspective. Like we even had bad tasting
• 1:09:42
  Wuji tea that's actually from Wuji.
• 1:09:45
  And I, I think it's too difficult to, to defined this
• 1:09:49
  product in a way that everybody can understand geography, the
• 1:09:53
  physical location of these tea being grown.
• 1:09:55
  But for that to be verified, you have to, you know, see through
• 1:09:59
  the entire process. You have to pick tea with the
• 1:10:01
  farmers and see processed in the in the tension factory and then
• 1:10:05
  see that being shiaget separately from with all these
• 1:10:09
  other teas being shiaget at the same factory from other regions.
• 1:10:13
  And then it gets repackaged separately.
• 1:10:16
  And then that's your OGT. I feel like unless you really
• 1:10:19
  see through this entire process, there's, there's very little,
• 1:10:23
  you know, I would say trust that can be formed or, you know,
• 1:10:27
  verifiable experience being formed for everybody to to
• 1:10:32
  acknowledge, unless you know, it's really from a trustworthy
• 1:10:35
  source that you have personal relationships with.
• 1:10:39
  I mean yes and no. I mean even the chashi's right?
• 1:10:42
  Like get objective truth about the lots of tea that they're
• 1:10:45
  buying either direct from the farmers or even at auction.
• 1:10:49
  I mean, these lots are batched separately.
• 1:10:52
  And like, even if you go down one level in the industry, you
• 1:10:57
  know, further down the supply chain, further up the supply
• 1:11:00
  chain, depending on the direction, you know, they do
• 1:11:03
  know what they're working with. They know the cultivar, they
• 1:11:06
  know all the information about it and get to taste it.
• 1:11:09
  So it's just like if you pluck the tea out of the system when
• 1:11:13
  it's being sold at auction or being commissioned or contracts
• 1:11:18
  in place from these blend houses to the farmers, right, then you
• 1:11:22
  get to then you get to the to the source and could sell it as
• 1:11:26
  a specialty product, but verify provenance in all these details.
• 1:11:29
  But you know, the point is like it can't be made-up right when
• 1:11:32
  you have all of these objective truths.
• 1:11:34
  We're not talking about an abstract concept to describe
• 1:11:37
  another abstract concept, right? Like saying Uji Macha is from
• 1:11:41
  Uji Gron Tansha is just a objective fact.
• 1:11:44
  We don't have to get into the the spirit of blending and the
• 1:11:47
  culture of these blend houses or the legal definition, right?
• 1:11:52
  You can have the legal abstract concept to describe this
• 1:11:55
  abstract word. You can have the cultural
• 1:11:57
  abstract concept to describe this abstract word.
• 1:12:00
  You could have like, it's all these abstractions, as you're
• 1:12:03
  saying, and even the abstraction of consumer perceptions when
• 1:12:06
  people believe the folksonomy of a word the way it's, you know, a
• 1:12:11
  thing that lives inside the minds of everyday consumers.
• 1:12:14
  You could argue as the the truest reality because that's
• 1:12:18
  what everyone believes in, right?
• 1:12:20
  Like it's but you can't fight like this Yabukita cultivar.
• 1:12:26
  There's no stories involved there, right?
• 1:12:29
  There are some stories involving Yabukita.
• 1:12:32
  It's fascinating actually. But but I I guess my argument is
• 1:12:36
  that even with Ujita uji tea being browned in buji, it's
• 1:12:41
  still like so different from each other.
• 1:12:43
  There's so many different teas being grown in Guji that there's
• 1:12:46
  not a unique or or definable uginess that people can can
• 1:12:52
  point their fingers at. Not to mention for the current
• 1:12:54
  system, you know you are getting a lot of other teas being bland
• 1:12:58
  or being mixed into the UGI cha that's sitting in front of you.
• 1:13:02
  And for those people who bothered or has the capability
• 1:13:07
  to go so far to verify their tea actually being produced in UGI,
• 1:13:12
  there's still a lot of difference between all these
• 1:13:15
  teas and it takes a lot of time for anyone to get informed
• 1:13:20
  enough to be able to taste the uji Ness of is that actually
• 1:13:24
  exist. That's an interesting point
• 1:13:28
  because we do know that there is like direct cover machine
• 1:13:32
  harvested Yabukita in Uji like and that sits next to plots that
• 1:13:37
  are from like luxury cultivars that are handpicked and go
• 1:13:40
  through like crazy fertilizer regimens.
• 1:13:43
  There's some even in the same photo on the same plot of
• 1:13:46
  mountain where you see these two things next to each other.
• 1:13:49
  Even in yeah, very obvious different she dated.
• 1:13:52
  Very different, like trimming of the Bush.
• 1:13:54
  You can immediately tell the way it's intended to be picked by
• 1:13:57
  just looking at it. So you're right.
• 1:14:00
  But also, if you take the, you know, the average product of Uji
• 1:14:04
  is still elevated because it is where people are carrying on
• 1:14:07
  these traditions of higher labor methods of these endangered
• 1:14:11
  methods that aren't really just not that economically viable
• 1:14:14
  unless you, you know, are able to sell your tea for a higher
• 1:14:18
  price because it's a market that's willing to pay for it and
• 1:14:21
  a way that it wouldn't be, you know, if you're producing it in
• 1:14:24
  a new area that has less cache. So like, I mean, yes and no.
• 1:14:28
  If you look at the average quality from Mazooka versus from
• 1:14:30
  Uji, Uji will be on average, higher quality because they use
• 1:14:35
  more expensive, more laborious techniques that ends up
• 1:14:38
  produced. But their incentive models are
• 1:14:40
  different. You know, maybe they're trying
• 1:14:42
  to win competitions. They've also recently learned
• 1:14:45
  that a lot of the UG matcha farming families do not rely on
• 1:14:48
  tea as their sole source of income.
• 1:14:50
  So, you know, you're trying to win competitions or you're doing
• 1:14:54
  a very extreme philosophy of fertilizer or protecting
• 1:14:57
  endangered processing methods, right?
• 1:15:01
  Like you have very different incentive loops.
• 1:15:03
  And you are, if you're a new farmer in Wazucka that's trying
• 1:15:06
  to make a name for yourself that actually has to sell tea to make
• 1:15:09
  money. But like, you know, there's a
• 1:15:11
  huge piece of meal, let's just call it for what it is.
• 1:15:15
  But like, if you're right, it's all these tautologies of
• 1:15:17
  abstract concepts defining another abstract concept.
• 1:15:20
  And you have legal abstract concepts, you have cultural
• 1:15:23
  abstract concepts. You have like consumer reality,
• 1:15:26
  abstract concepts, historical. Here's here's another thought
• 1:15:31
  experiment so I think we can both agree on one verifiable
• 1:15:36
  truth is the geography right? The physical location that exist
• 1:15:41
  as a reality in this world that's that's touchable and
• 1:15:46
  doesn't move. What if someone for you know,
• 1:15:49
  some future policy change or figure out some guanxi to
• 1:15:52
  maneuvered from a different country that acquiring start
• 1:15:56
  acquiring tea plots in Wuji and start using their own
• 1:16:00
  interpretation and methods to produce tea with even non Wuji
• 1:16:04
  cultivar, But it's actually, you know, tenta made in Wuji.
• 1:16:08
  Like do we call that wujita? Yeah.
• 1:16:11
  Well, great question. What do you care about comes
• 1:16:15
  back to that? You care about the culture, you
• 1:16:17
  care about the consumer experience, Do you care about
• 1:16:20
  the legacy in history? And like you get a very
• 1:16:23
  different answer depending on what lens you apply.
• 1:16:26
  You know, I mean, like, it really could be a future like,
• 1:16:30
  like all these tea farmers are getting really old in Wuji.
• 1:16:34
  And you know, thanks to Taishi, who's, you know, making a lot of
• 1:16:39
  effort in making tea and also kids at the same time, there
• 1:16:44
  will be like very little people to take over in the future.
• 1:16:47
  That's like actually from Wuji. And there will be.
• 1:16:51
  Yeah, Gingeros sound. Yeah, if I were some younger Uji
• 1:16:55
  Macha farmers. But you know that there will be
• 1:16:57
  influx of people coming from other regions within Japan and
• 1:17:01
  maybe in the future outside of Japan to Uji to start farming
• 1:17:05
  and that could very possible to be a future.
• 1:17:09
  Yeah, very possible. It's especially with all of
• 1:17:12
  these abandoned plots. I think the the regulations make
• 1:17:15
  it very difficult, but theoretically not impossible
• 1:17:17
  which? And it could be like, and could
• 1:17:20
  be totally delicious too. Like think about Bison Nakamura.
• 1:17:24
  Like our friends study tea in Kagoshima and now he's making
• 1:17:28
  tea in in Uji and and some of his tea are really, really
• 1:17:32
  tasty. It's just doesn't taste quite
• 1:17:34
  like what you know traditional Wuji tea tastes like, but
• 1:17:37
  they're fantastic. Yeah, totally.
• 1:17:40
  Yeah. I don't know.
• 1:17:41
  That's such a good point. And then, you know, how does it
• 1:17:44
  live and evolve and what do we consider what's real and how
• 1:17:47
  does that reflect our own values?
• 1:17:49
  And you know, I don't know that it would spiritually be less
• 1:17:54
  Ujimacha than it would be if it was from multi generational
• 1:17:59
  family using uji native Zai Rai. And that's another interesting
• 1:18:04
  point too, is there's a uji Ness even with an uji, right?
• 1:18:08
  If you're using a cultivar like Gabu Kita that comes from
• 1:18:11
  Shizuoka Zai Rai, which, you know, was adapted from some form
• 1:18:16
  of natural selection with human intervention over, you know,
• 1:18:20
  hundreds of years within she's Woka to yield a very specific
• 1:18:24
  cultivar that's now being moved to Uji.
• 1:18:26
  That's less Uji than something that comes from the hundreds of
• 1:18:31
  years of Uji natives I right, like Uji Hakari or, or Tamidori
• 1:18:36
  or like Asahi, Narino, Okunuyama, all Uji natives.
• 1:18:41
  I right. So then it's yeah.
• 1:18:42
  Then it's Yabukita from that's grown in Uji.
• 1:18:45
  Really, Fujimacha, you put on the historical lens and the
• 1:18:49
  genetic lens, I'd say it's less Fujimacha, right?
• 1:18:52
  There's a Ujimacha NIS and that scale looks so different
• 1:18:56
  depending on what value system you project on top of it.
• 1:19:00
  Yeah, yeah. A fascinating topic.
• 1:19:03
  It is. It is.
• 1:19:04
  I don't think I have any answer to this.
• 1:19:07
  To believe in Ujimacha, you have to hold contradictions in your
• 1:19:12
  mind. No matter what position you're
• 1:19:14
  taking that you are dismissing another very valid narrative and
• 1:19:21
  that's just the reality. And you just have to accept that
• 1:19:25
  believing in uji matcha by any definition is to hold a
• 1:19:29
  contradiction in your mind. OK, my vote goes to the most
• 1:19:33
  tasty and the cheapest matcha on the table.
• 1:19:38
  And so Chinese matcha. Great.
• 1:19:40
  I'm taking it. Yeah, I only like Uji grade
• 1:19:45
  matcha from from Jijiang. Uji grade?
• 1:19:49
  Wow, that's new. No, not new, but I thought that
• 1:19:52
  was very clever from one of the Chinese matcha.
• 1:19:55
  That's true. That's true.
• 1:19:56
  A. Lot of them are talking about, a
• 1:19:58
  lot of them are talking about their being supplier to Uji tea
• 1:20:02
  companies. Yeah, that's that's hilarious.
• 1:20:06
  Yeah, well, I mean the reality of Uji Matcha is the definition
• 1:20:11
  has changed, the genetics have changed.
• 1:20:14
  I mean even the tea that's today and I'm writing a big sub stack
• 1:20:16
  post about it that I'm going to release and I'd like to record
• 1:20:19
  an episode on it if we haven't beat this UGI tea.
• 1:20:23
  Uji Macha horse to death is the move from Zyrai to cultivars is
• 1:20:27
  huge, right? The TV that was being consumed
• 1:20:30
  for hundreds of years that was Uji Macha completely died 50
• 1:20:34
  years ago when everyone switched to cultivars.
• 1:20:37
  It is just such a different, like I said, to a massive
• 1:20:40
  difference in the secondary and tertiary implications about the
• 1:20:43
  way it gets blended, the way taste gets homogenized, less
• 1:20:47
  genetic diversity, the fact that there doesn't no longer has a
• 1:20:50
  taproot like biologically physical, geologically huge
• 1:20:55
  plant differences, which are definitely going to result in
• 1:20:58
  differences in taste. The way fertilizer gets applied
• 1:21:01
  and absorbed, the way they get valued.
• 1:21:04
  You would have to value each individual Zyrite batch or
• 1:21:08
  Zyrite plot, you know, versus having semidori rates and
• 1:21:12
  Okumidori rates. And yes, there's going to be
• 1:21:14
  variation within those, but there's huge differences in the
• 1:21:17
  way those products get traded. And like that's probably only
• 1:21:20
  scratching the surface and not in fact every leaf of Fuji tea
• 1:21:26
  hits a conveyor belt. I to my knowledge, there's
• 1:21:29
  anyone doing truly hand processed tea the way that you
• 1:21:34
  see in the old pictures when you when you look at the way Uji
• 1:21:37
  matcha used to be produced back in the day before mechanization.
• 1:21:41
  So it's just gone through so many different changes.
• 1:21:44
  And as as Chinese tea drinkers, you know, they did the idea of
• 1:21:48
  older trees, older Arbor of being valued so differently back
• 1:21:52
  in the days versus now. It's also fascinating, like
• 1:21:55
  people actually do value older trees in Japan back in the days,
• 1:21:59
  but now it's all about young trees, robustness, vibrant
• 1:22:03
  taste, vibrant color, and then tree dyes.
• 1:22:07
  Wow, it's I really look forward to publishing that article which
• 1:22:12
  kind of deep dive into that and I feel like it's only scratching
• 1:22:15
  the surface. I think the next year project is
• 1:22:18
  I want to really do a comprehensive piece on the move
• 1:22:20
  from Zyretic cult of arts. I feel very passionate about
• 1:22:24
  that as someone who deeply cares about more natural ways of
• 1:22:27
  agriculture and tea farming, as someone that believes that older
• 1:22:30
  trees are generally higher quality, especially for Japanese
• 1:22:33
  tea. Honestly, if you taste 100 year
• 1:22:36
  old like sencha 100 year old trees and they make Sancha from
• 1:22:40
  it and it comes from Zai Rai so it has a top root it take and
• 1:22:44
  take boiling water tastes good like it's it really makes all of
• 1:22:49
  these other Japanese teas taste really weird like it can't take
• 1:22:53
  boiling water. They taste almost unnaturally
• 1:22:56
  umami. And when you go back to this
• 1:22:58
  more natural way of farming that was highly priced as little as
• 1:23:01
  70 years ago using old trees, it can it is just so much more
• 1:23:07
  interesting and complex, like what happened and why I.
• 1:23:10
  Feel like. Everyone quality change.
• 1:23:12
  Yeah, I feel like we really should talk to some researchers
• 1:23:16
  or historians in all these tea institutes in Japan to get more
• 1:23:20
  information from it. And I would love to see some goo
• 1:23:23
  shoes in in Japan. I still haven't seen many older
• 1:23:28
  trees in Japan, which is crazy. Yeah, we need to do that.
• 1:23:31
  Well, there's the Okunuyama mother plant.
• 1:23:34
  I don't know if we'll ever be allowed by Hari San to go visit
• 1:23:38
  it. I'd be incredibly grateful just
• 1:23:40
  to see it. Yeah.
• 1:23:43
  Although I'd be, I'd also understand if they want to keep
• 1:23:45
  it a bit of a secret, which one it is because it's sort of a
• 1:23:48
  national living treasure. In the same way that some of the
• 1:23:50
  older mother trees of in China are highly, highly, highly
• 1:23:54
  protected, some of them are certain have constant
• 1:23:56
  surveillance like the old Da Hong Pao trees.
• 1:23:59
  Like you can't get anywhere near those.
• 1:24:01
  You can see that, but you couldn't.
• 1:24:03
  You could never go walk up and touch one.
• 1:24:05
  But all these 100 year old trees in Feng Kong, in Weishan and in
• 1:24:11
  in Yunnan, you can, you can go see them and touch them and
• 1:24:14
  they're fascinating to, to see, to visit.
• 1:24:17
  And some of the other regions, that's true.
• 1:24:19
  You know, it's yeah, I would love to see that in Japan right
• 1:24:22
  now. I've only seen all these very
• 1:24:25
  short little garden bushes, which is a little sad.
• 1:24:29
  Yeah, I mean, the reality of most tea trees, if you think
• 1:24:32
  about the trees as a living being, the most of the tea trees
• 1:24:36
  that make matcha in Japan are literally work to death, put in
• 1:24:39
  incredibly unnatural environments with extremely high
• 1:24:43
  levels of pesticides, fertilizer and being shaded for very long
• 1:24:47
  periods of time, which would never naturally happen to that
• 1:24:50
  degree in nature, pushed to the very brink.
• 1:24:54
  It's that's just the reality of the life of those living beings.
• 1:24:58
  Not that I'm a supernaturalist, but what Uji Macha families
• 1:25:02
  discovered with the shaded cat cultivation, you know, 400 years
• 1:25:07
  ago or around 400 years ago, the exact date is unknown.
• 1:25:11
  Really is a pretty extreme and interesting way of agriculture.
• 1:25:16
  And what's even more a historical peculiarity or
• 1:25:20
  curiosity was the fact that it was a state controlled monopoly
• 1:25:23
  for hundreds of years. Then what is the most disturbing
• 1:25:27
  part to me deeply caring about genetic diversity, is that all
• 1:25:32
  the Uji natives, I right, we've talked to a lot of these Uji
• 1:25:35
  Macha farming families and they started to switch to cultivars
• 1:25:38
  around the 60s and 70s. I'm sure some of it was captured
• 1:25:41
  at the institute's, the genetic diversity, but there's no way
• 1:25:45
  that all of it was captured and you had hundreds of years of an
• 1:25:50
  unknown experiment of natural selection.
• 1:25:53
  If you have seed propagated tea, every plant is a little bit
• 1:25:56
  different in the same way that siblings are a little bit
• 1:25:58
  different. And the trees that were not able
• 1:26:00
  to take shaded cultivation died. The trees that were not able to
• 1:26:04
  take the weather and the climate died.
• 1:26:06
  The teas that were not able to survive high levels of
• 1:26:09
  fertilization, which they were doing back then, even back then
• 1:26:12
  from night soil, mostly from human feces, they died.
• 1:26:15
  So you have all of this sort of Darwinian or semi Darwinian
• 1:26:20
  process happening over hundreds of years.
• 1:26:23
  And all of this genetic legacy was ripped up, some of it saved
• 1:26:28
  at the Research Center, certainly not all of it.
• 1:26:30
  And now it's very sad. You see, cultivars from Uji
• 1:26:33
  native Xyride like Asahi can no longer sure, take the heat and
• 1:26:37
  the changing climate within Uji and how a lot of Asahi plants
• 1:26:42
  are not doing well when you go to visit actual Uji Macha
• 1:26:46
  farming families. And who knows what genetics,
• 1:26:49
  what traits, what genotypes and phenotypes existed among that
• 1:26:54
  native heirloom seed stock that are gone and you cannot just
• 1:26:59
  replace it. And I find that a great shame in
• 1:27:01
  the modernization. The same time I totally
• 1:27:05
  understand why everyone switched from Xyrai to cultivars.
• 1:27:08
  It's a huge difference and Uji is really a living culture.
• 1:27:12
  I mean if you put on like genetic history of Uji.
• 1:27:15
  I mean, unless you're having Uji native Xyrai, the cultivars, you
• 1:27:20
  know, are you really drinking Ujimatcha the way it was
• 1:27:22
  understood to be drank for all these years?
• 1:27:24
  There's another thing, you know, worth asking.
• 1:27:26
  There's just so many different lens you can put on this topic.
• 1:27:30
  And like we talked so much about Uji, but Uji really is where it
• 1:27:33
  stops and starts because that's where all this came from.
• 1:27:37
  And it's where and the only place that did it for hundreds
• 1:27:40
  of years. And it's really quite a
• 1:27:42
  beautiful thing that it still survives to this day.
• 1:27:45
  And when you apply those lenses on it, I do find myself getting
• 1:27:50
  offended how much mediocre tea and non uji grown tensha matcha
• 1:27:55
  can be labeled and take off take on this legacy that is still
• 1:28:00
  changing to this day. It's such a complicated.
• 1:28:04
  It's an interesting story full of drama too.
• 1:28:06
  Yeah, yeah. Love to see more of these drama
• 1:28:10
  happening in the future. It's really part of the culture
• 1:28:13
  too. And and if you, the more you
• 1:28:17
  understand, at least for me, the more I appreciate the the tea
• 1:28:21
  more. That's lying on my cup, Yeah.
• 1:28:24
  Whether or not it even comes from Uji, like I really
• 1:28:27
  appreciate like, you know, my tea coming from other places
• 1:28:30
  too. It's and all the work that has
• 1:28:33
  to get in to make this product like it's those are the real
• 1:28:37
  things we should be celebrating, not the fact that you have 100%
• 1:28:40
  me a Li slap Uji matcha in because it was done doing uji
• 1:28:44
  style processing somewhere in Kyoto Prefecture.
• 1:28:47
  We don't know where that has lost its provenance along the
• 1:28:50
  way. It's told some BS story that was
• 1:28:53
  stopped on the label, right? Like the really true,
• 1:28:56
  interesting stories of this human effort, the history, the
• 1:28:59
  legacy of what actually reflects the work of the people who got
• 1:29:05
  that tea into your cup. Yep, it really is a Symphony of
• 1:29:10
  two species. You know, it's a biological
• 1:29:12
  story of the tea plant, but also anthropological story of all
• 1:29:16
  these people getting involved into making this product.
• 1:29:19
  Totally and them Co involving together over hundreds of years
• 1:29:23
  in Uji, which is a very special culture which should be
• 1:29:27
  celebrated. But Yep, there's no one right
• 1:29:29
  answer. And this debate episode, I think
• 1:29:32
  we did the best job we could exploring the tension that
• 1:29:35
  exists here and giving, you know, really in good faith,
• 1:29:39
  trying to map out the different arguments that people are making
• 1:29:43
  for or against these different deaths.
• 1:29:45
  Yeah. Well, if you have any arguments
• 1:29:47
  or opinions, please share to us too, we would love to hear from
• 1:29:51
  you. Yeah, what are we missing in the
• 1:29:53
  story? Please reach out if you feel
• 1:29:55
  strongly disagree or can identify knowledge gaps even in
• 1:29:59
  our own thinking. We'd love to to follow up on
• 1:30:01
  that to explore this topic even further.
• 1:30:04
  Yeah. So this concludes the end of the
• 1:30:07
  this Uji Matcha series, the Uji no Matcha piece that we have
• 1:30:12
  released. We have some extension series,
• 1:30:15
  including on quote, what happened to all of Uji's old tea
• 1:30:19
  trees, and a couple others that are going to be released on our
• 1:30:21
  sub stack. We may or may not do a podcast
• 1:30:23
  episode about it, depending on how tired we are of saying the
• 1:30:26
  word Uji. And then I promise we will move
• 1:30:29
  on from this topic and find some very interesting things to think
• 1:30:32
  about and talk about as well. And we're going to have a lot
• 1:30:35
  more interview episodes coming up with some very fresh and
• 1:30:38
  interesting and unique perspectives, some from some
• 1:30:41
  wonderful friends and people we've met in the tea industry
• 1:30:45
  over the years. Awesome, awesome.
• 1:30:47
  So thank you so much for listening.
• 1:30:49
  If you enjoyed this, please consider sharing the front and
• 1:30:52
  we'll see you in the next one. Thanks.
• 1:30:54
  In the future.