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Notes at Origin: Toyota, Aichi · Specialty Matcha Podcast

0:06
Hello and welcome to Specialty Match Podcast.
0:08
My name is Ryan. This is my Coho Zongjun who also
0:11
goes by Sam. Hello, hello And we're the Co
0:13
founders of Sanko Matcha products.
0:15
Yeah, we'll launch this podcast to discuss our learning journey,
0:17
Matcha, share startup stories and interview experts.
0:21
Hello Ryan from the future here. You may have noticed that we
0:24
have not started season 5 with our Uji matcha piece yet,
0:30
partially because we had breaking news regarding the GI
0:33
and we wanted to get that out. And this recording is about the
0:36
T picking we did in Toyota Aichi, which we thought was
0:40
better to be released just after harvest season.
0:43
We are going to start releasing the Fujimacha research piece
0:47
over on our sub stack. If you haven't seen that yet,
0:49
I'll link it in the show notes where you can start reading.
0:53
It's in five different parts. And pretty soon we will launch
0:57
that series here on the podcast feed.
1:00
All right, thanks for listening back to the episode.
1:02
And we are in Toyota IG. Yeah.
1:05
So a town I didn't even know existed until about a year ago,
1:08
but. I guess we do know because,
1:11
like, it's Toyota. Ryan Toyota.
1:13
True, that's a factory town. Yeah, yeah.
1:16
It's actually has direct linkage with the car Toyota brand.
1:19
Yes, it does. And turns out that it used to
1:22
have a lot of T fields we've learned.
1:25
And as the manufacturing exploded, I think about 70 years
1:28
ago is when like it really started to hype up, Toyota was
1:32
buying a bunch of these different factories or Toyota is
1:36
buying up a bunch of these tea farms to reclaim that land to
1:39
move to manufacturing. So now there's actually not that
1:42
many places that grow tea letter grown Tancha here.
1:45
Yeah, there used to be a few 100 tea farmers in this region.
1:48
And now they're just a small handful.
1:50
Yeah, it's crazy, like a lot of these carts were built on.
1:54
Once was tea bushes. Yeah.
1:56
So if you're driving in a Toyota or listening to this in a
1:59
Toyota, but actually overtook some tea fields here in IT
2:03
prefecture. Yeah, same on you.
2:04
But it had some secondary implications too.
2:07
We learned is that with that local manufacturing, with that
2:11
local manufacturing scale up, it needed workers.
2:14
And what's interesting about T&T work is it's very seasonal.
2:18
Like you need someone to show up and pick tea from 6:00 in the
2:22
morning until 5:00 at night, but they're only doing that for
2:25
three weeks. So you need someone that not
2:28
only skilled to do it, that wants to do it, that's willing
2:31
to do it for the money that it. Pays and has the time to do it.
2:35
Has the time to do it in only a certain window of time.
2:39
And a lot of these manufacturing jobs really sucked all of the
2:43
oxygen out of the room when it came to the local labor supply
2:48
has historically been. So it is historically even been
2:52
difficult to find labor to pick tea if you're doing any hand
2:55
picking for Tizumi Tancha. Yeah, but.
2:58
Like, until like very recently, like, I mean, like we're talking
3:02
about Toyota building cars like this is like modern history. 50
3:05
years history, I think I wrote it somewhere.
3:08
So there's a couple interesting and unique things about this
3:11
region here in Ichi and I think it expands in Tunisia as well.
3:16
The other really famous tea producing region is that they
3:18
have local quarries or the stone, they have really nice
3:22
type of soft granite that's used to make ishusu and apparently
3:26
the one main quarry more, most of these Ishusus are made ran
3:30
out and there was a big stockpile of it and apparently
3:34
they've almost worked through all of that stockpile.
3:37
So this very specific type of local stone that everyone's
3:41
using for stone milling here is in very, very short supply this.
3:45
Is like easing clay a little bit.
3:47
Yeah, it sounds a lot like easing clay, actually.
3:49
Yeah, it has a really nice cold smooth texture, like a color
3:53
bluish hue. Yeah, the color of the stone
3:56
looks a little different than the ones we've seen in Kyoto and
3:59
Yame. So it's really, really unique
4:01
and interesting to learn about it.
4:02
The producer that we met here was saying that even getting
4:06
Medate or the refinishing of those stones for him takes
4:11
upwards of six months every for him.
4:14
He rotates the knot every three to four years and has them
4:18
resharpened that that's a three to six month process and that's
4:24
A and that's a six months and that's a six month process.
4:28
And part of what they do when they know that the stone needs
4:31
to be replaced, as this is kind of obvious and but it was less
4:34
obvious to us before we started asking some questions, is the
4:38
degree of undulation. So it's really unique about a
4:41
stone mill or an Ishiusu is that there's a wood post and the top
4:46
stone is rotating around that wood post.
4:49
And there always has to be some space between the post and the
4:52
other inner wall of the Ishiusu because that's, that's exactly
4:56
where the tent shot is going in to feed the machine.
4:58
But as you can imagine, you have all of this granite and
5:01
spinning, spinning, spinning, you're going to wear down that
5:03
wood over time. And the more you wear down that
5:06
wood, the more that space increases and it will undulate
5:10
more because the top stone isn't just rotating.
5:13
It's technically undulating around, it's orbiting around the
5:18
it's orbiting around the post. And so those also get replaced
5:21
every three to four years. And one of the ways that you can
5:24
identify that stone requires medate is if it's degree of
5:29
undulation is very, very high. So it's actually not necessarily
5:33
a good thing. Apparently it doesn't affect
5:35
quality too much. We didn't get a very, we didn't
5:38
get a very definitive answer when we were asking about
5:40
quality differences as it continues to go, but that was
5:44
pretty interesting to learn. So Ryan, it's a little bit crazy
5:48
that we are in Season 5 now and after being to so many places,
5:53
actually seeing so many tension farming and potential
5:57
facilities, tension gardens, this is actually our first time
6:00
seeing a tension factory in action.
6:02
In action, we've seen tension processing equipment in a bunch
6:06
of places, but we've never actually seen it being used.
6:10
We haven't seen it moving. And that was quite the
6:13
experience. Yeah.
6:15
And that room was incredibly hot.
6:17
Free sauna. It was like a sauna, sauna and
6:20
steam room combined. Yeah, very good for my skin,
6:23
for. Everyone's skin, well everyone
6:26
was drenched who was looking at it earlier today because they
6:29
both steam and in the same room where they have the tension oven
6:34
and it's a radiant style tension oven using red bricks.
6:39
But the excitement was incredibly real and seeing all
6:42
of these machine moving, seeing all the steams coming out from
6:47
the machine, seeing all of these butterfly gnat and all of these
6:50
teal believes flying, there was something magical about it.
6:53
And that was very cool. So Ryan, why, why don't you
6:57
share to our audience, like, why are we here in the first place?
7:00
Yeah, we are very grateful. We're joining the trip that Koto
7:03
tea space Kun Pop and Yusuke Son have organized from their a tea
7:07
house and tea brand in Bangkok, Thailand.
7:10
And we've met with them on and off and they were really kind
7:12
earlier this year to invite us on their trip to meet Suji Son.
7:16
I mean, they were like, hey, we're going to IT2.
7:18
We're going to go pick tea for three days.
7:20
We set up this arrangement which is an exchange with a local
7:23
tension farmer here because there's a lot of Labor shortage
7:26
problems. So they kind of negotiated or
7:29
maybe negotiates to business see of the term.
7:32
They talk with them to make an exchange that will pick T here
7:36
in Toyota IG. And in exchange, we get some
7:39
free education system behind the scenes access and look to
7:43
understand what the process is going on.
7:45
So there's a really international group here.
7:48
It's a really fun Group, A mixture of Thai people, some
7:53
people from Laos, Indonesia, US and Belgium, and English is sort
7:57
of the lingua franca of the group and.
8:00
And the very large age gap. Yeah, where the youngest person
8:03
I think is 19 years old and then it goes all the way up.
8:07
So it's in a really like interesting group of we all
8:10
share this this thing in common. Yeah, to the same passion.
8:13
Yeah, we. Love it matcha.
8:14
We love tea and everyone loves other types of tea too.
8:17
There's a lot of gold food child drinkers here.
8:19
Everyone's really willing to like carve out, you know, their
8:22
free time, probably some working or some holiday time to come
8:27
pick tea, which is literally backbreaking labor for three
8:30
days to really get an immersive experience end to end.
8:34
Literally are doing everything from like, like smelling the
8:37
fertilizer in the ground as we're picking tea and like all
8:41
that musty smell that you get in a tea garden all the way through
8:46
enjoying a bowl of matcha and seeing every single process end
8:49
to end circle, full circle. And we're really, really
8:53
grateful for this invitation. Actually, we're quite tired and
8:56
we're recording this at the end of the day.
8:58
If our voice doesn't sound as enthusiastic as it should be,
9:01
it's because my back really hurts.
9:03
I can feel well, every single muscle in my back.
9:06
But it's been great fun and so much positive energy.
9:09
They did a really wonderful job curating a nice group of people.
9:12
Just we're picking tea for five hours after lunch today and just
9:16
so much chit chats karaoke. In the tea field.
9:20
In the tea field, I hope we weren't bothering the grandmas
9:24
and grandpas around us, the Japanese grandma grandpas around
9:27
us picking tea. I think they were all secretly
9:30
enjoying. Probably like sneaking a smile
9:32
under their breath as people were screaming Ruby Chan for
9:38
like the 20th time. It was.
9:41
It was really lovely, spirit in the air.
9:44
But you know, like this tea picking recession, think it's a
9:49
little bit different than our other experience in the way that
9:53
I think we really end up helping them like instead of like adding
9:57
more, you know, energy or attention to the farmers to like
10:01
kind of quote UN quote educate us.
10:03
So taking care of us. Yeah, we're still like 20 people
10:06
in total, including Kun Pop and News Que Salon, and they also
10:09
brought their staff with them as well.
10:11
And huge props to them for bringing their staff here and
10:14
doing this and seeing everything first hand.
10:16
That's one of the most unusual things about koto tea spaces You
10:19
can walk in and no matter who you talk to, but they are
10:23
actually an expert and they've actually been to the places
10:26
where they're sourcing their tea from and like have such deep
10:29
knowledge, which makes it a really unique experience.
10:32
And that's most people's first exposure and they've gotten
10:36
people into tea through that. Like you, you go, you sit down,
10:39
you have a bowl of sencha or you, you have a pot of sencha or
10:42
go Coro or order a matcha. And then you just learn more.
10:46
It's like these access points to go down the rabbit hole.
10:49
But if you're talking to someone who's just like telling you how
10:51
it's a secret mythical herb versus like the nitty gritty of
10:54
the agriculture, right? You select for a really
10:57
interesting group of people. And I think that really
10:59
reflected in the community that they've cultivated for people
11:02
who are willing to, to to spend the money to come out here and
11:06
the time and the time to come and do this.
11:08
So it's been really cool. So there's a couple of unique
11:11
things about Toyota and IT specifically and that I think
11:15
you're worth mentioning before we start digging into some of
11:17
the details that we've learned and we've learned a lot.
11:19
And we're really grateful for use case on for all the
11:22
translation work that he's been doing.
11:24
So we can basically have a dialogue with the farmer
11:26
directly. So one of the things is that
11:29
there's a lot of local oil pressing, and the reason that
11:32
that matters is canola oils or rapeseed oil makes fantastic
11:37
fertilizer. It's really amino acid rich,
11:40
especially when applied before harvest.
11:42
And in modern days, all of these rapeseed oils are kind of
11:46
removed through a chemical process.
11:48
So the leftover kind of like do not have anything, you know,
11:52
valuable. But in Toyota IT they're still
11:55
using this traditional oil pressing mechanism which the
11:59
residual of the oil pressed content is it's still incredibly
12:02
nutritionally rich, so. Free of chemicals.
12:07
And free of chemicals. So people are using it, you
12:09
know, as wonderful fertilizer from the tea.
12:12
And similar story with the Honzu shading.
12:14
I don't believe there's any Honzu Reichstra shading here in
12:17
IG, or at least not in Toyota. And I heard in Nishio it's too
12:20
windy, it just blows off. So it's very difficult to know
12:23
that an issue I've heard. And Watsuka too.
12:25
And. Mazuka, But I think some people,
12:27
there are some people doing it in Mazuka, but I think
12:29
apparently it's difficult. But sourcing rice straw that's
12:33
free of pesticides and free of crap basically is very difficult
12:37
when you're putting it over tea, we've heard.
12:40
We also learned that one very interesting fact about Hangzhou
12:44
and also like rice straw is that it help really helps maintain
12:47
the humidity or moisture content within the tea garden.
12:50
So we kind of see that, you know, being laid out on the
12:53
ground all the time to protect the root system and also the
12:57
moisture content in the soil. But when they when it's elevated
13:01
as Tana, it also kind of contained the moisture in the
13:04
air too. So it really helps to regulate
13:07
the microclimate in the garden. And apparently for Sami Dori S
13:12
AM I Sami Dori? It is very important for
13:16
quality. And so with this one farmer
13:18
does, it's so unique. We've never heard of it.
13:20
We've never seen it until 2 days ago is that they have a
13:23
sprinkler system? Like a literal sprinkler system
13:25
that you'd have indoor for fire prevention to mist kind of for
13:30
the Sami dori to mimic the moisture in the air that you
13:34
would get over over Hanzo. Which is really interesting
13:37
technique I'd never heard of. And there's another interesting
13:40
kind of feature about that practice is that apparently some
13:44
of the fertilizers will leave some minerals on the surface of
13:47
the leaf that will kind of taste bitter and this sprinkler system
13:51
will flush out of the mineral away.
13:54
Giving it a light car wash. Yeah, kind of like that.
13:56
And apparently makes the tea taste better.
13:59
So in Toyota, most of the soil is clay type soil, which means
14:03
that the fertilizer retention is very high, but that comes at the
14:07
expense of drainage. You have higher.
14:09
I mean it makes sense, right? If you have a denser sponge,
14:11
you're going to hold the fertilizer there longer, but
14:14
you're removing less moisture. So they have a gigantic channel
14:18
at the end of the tea garden. I think it's like 3 meters deep
14:21
or something but helps with like a normal agricultural or like
14:25
flood drain channel to help with drainage.
14:28
And inside underneath the tea garden, they buried a number of
14:32
pipes to increase the drainage and all of the pipes will like
14:37
funnel all the way to the channel at the end to kind of
14:40
increase the soils drainage capability.
14:43
Another thing that this farmer done does, it's very unique from
14:46
an infrastructure point of view, is 3 layer shading.
14:49
I've heard of triple shading with Suchi song, but I've never
14:52
actually heard of triple shading using a white timer.
14:57
So they use one white tonna and two black tonnas.
15:00
And when they're pulled back, it makes for a very interesting
15:03
like checkerboard picture because some of the tea was
15:06
already picked by the time they got there.
15:07
So they pulled them back a bit and it looks really cool.
15:10
But I actually don't know why specifically they needed a white
15:13
one. But when you do the math of how
15:15
much everything's getting covered when you have all three
15:18
at once, it's about 99% light coverage.
15:23
So the history of tea in Toyota is interesting.
15:27
It actually started back in the Edo period and it wasn't until
15:30
Meiji that the Edo era monopoly on shaded cultivation broke
15:35
where other producers started to make ten shot.
15:37
So supposedly the first ten shot producers and matcha producers
15:42
in Toyota IT or just after Meiji.
15:45
But today I think there's very, very few.
15:47
I think it's less than a dozen 10 jet producers here in Toyota,
15:50
maybe even less than five if I remember correctly.
15:53
My note says there are only two. Only two.
15:56
There we go. Used to be 700. 700 tea.
15:59
Tea. Farmers.
16:00
Tea farmers. OK, but now there are only two.
16:03
Oh wow interesting only two left doing 10 shop.
16:06
Yeah, and actually what's very interesting is that back in the
16:10
days, most of these teas were machine harvest because there
16:14
were just so many productions. But now people can actually do
16:17
hand picking because there's so little tea left.
16:20
It's one interesting, you know, side effect of this shrinkage,
16:23
which for better or worse reason, I don't know.
16:27
Yeah, I don't know. Certainly makes for some very
16:29
delicious tea, all this tazumi tea, but certainly is also back
16:33
breaking labor. Must be very hard to coordinate.
16:35
It's it. This is a problem in all, like
16:38
all handpicked tea producing countries actually, but it's
16:41
especially bad in Japan. It's not very pleasant work.
16:45
Very few young people want to do it.
16:46
Everyone who's do it is older. You have to have a lot of free
16:49
time, but the people that do do it are very effective.
16:52
Yeah. Very skilled.
16:54
So the on average our group today picked about 1.5 KGS of
16:59
wet leaf in five hours. Yesterday 85 year old grandpa
17:05
picked 7. KG in the afternoon.
17:07
In the same amount of time he was, what is that, four times
17:12
faster than us? Which is a crazy thought.
17:15
Good for him. Good for him, good for Uncle,
17:18
but he's also like 85 and this is really a dying art.
17:22
So if you do drink true tazumi tea, you should really savor
17:26
that cup and anyone there's also, you know, this really
17:30
bothers me. There's a lot of mislabeling.
17:31
There's a really prominent UK matcha brown probably everyone's
17:35
heard of when they have their when I certainly is fake uji
17:40
matcha. And like on the back it has all
17:42
the buzzwords hand picked from the hills just off of uji blah
17:47
blah blah. And you know it costs like 12
17:50
lbs for a 30 grand bag. Bullshit.
17:53
Like we should not be abusing this.
17:56
I've even seen it at a pretty prominent cafe in Hong Kong to
18:00
where you know, they they have this whole diagram on the board
18:03
and say that all their match has hand picked the price that
18:06
they're serving it at. The likelihood that that's true,
18:08
that they're using that for their matcha latte is is almost
18:11
zero. And anyone counting these little
18:14
walking harvester machines where someones on each side of the row
18:18
is handpicked, that is just, that's ridiculous.
18:21
Maybe the matcha latte is handpicked on the counter to
18:23
you. Or maybe they handpicked it by
18:25
hand, selecting that matcha they point.
18:28
That's the one. I want OK consumer.
18:30
Handpicked, handpicked. No or, or the the barista or
18:33
something, whoever's creating these recipes, you know this
18:36
term they should be abused. That's right.
18:39
So there's also a lot of talk about using fertilizer.
18:42
So this is a very organic farm focusing much more on organic
18:46
fertilizers and long term they don't use any synthetic
18:49
synthetic fertilizer here and actually all of their tensha is
18:53
EU exportable. And for the deliciousness, it is
18:56
really like cream of the crop when it comes to EU exportable
19:00
low pesticide residue matcha. And one of the things is in the
19:04
summer they try to use very calcium rich fertilizers
19:07
including fish meal and even meat meal like the bone some
19:12
that come from meat waste products.
19:13
And they have a custom fertilizer recipe that they use
19:16
and work with. Yeah, that was very interesting
19:18
because all of these farmers, they work with their local
19:21
fertilizer company to do custom blending.
19:24
And the companies will really have a track record of your, you
19:27
know, past blending history and they will work with you
19:31
depending on what kind of fatigue you're growing and also
19:34
the matter this year. And they also apply it at
19:36
different times and they kind of calibrate it because there's
19:38
different degradation rates or different decomposition rates of
19:43
these some of these fertilizer materials.
19:45
So you don't just apply everything all at once.
19:48
I mean, you have to be careful about some dosage.
19:49
So like rapeseed cakes pressings in particular produce a lot of
19:53
gas, which damaged the roots. And we know that's a problem
19:56
with some other fertilizers that we covered on our episode with
19:59
Suji sound, what's called next level specialty.
20:01
But here we were also learning same problem.
20:04
You, it really is. You're like a chef, almost.
20:06
You're like a personal chef in terms of applying fertilizer to
20:10
the plants. Yeah.
20:11
And the the the method that they used to cope with that is that
20:15
they applied rapeseed during spring when tea plants have the
20:19
best kind of growth at the time to come to overcome this burn.
20:24
Yeah, they need to be strong. Shady, shady cultivation is very
20:26
difficult on plants. But you're you're starving them
20:29
of light, which is something they need to live.
20:32
You can't indefinitely shade a plant, so you need to have
20:35
really strong Hardy plans to put up with this type of thing.
20:38
So it's actually maybe a better analogy is a, it's a, it's not a
20:42
personal chef. It's more like a personal
20:44
dietitian really have to think about the long term health of
20:48
the plants to. Bodybuilder coach.
20:50
Yeah, bodybuilding code. Well, maybe Suji Son's a
20:52
bodybuilding coach and this farmer is the longevity coach
20:56
because we know Suji Son's tea trees only live to about 20 or
21:00
25 and then he replaces them. But it's just difference in
21:03
philosophy really just two very different methods.
21:07
So this farmer in particular doesn't submit anything to
21:09
competition that's not commercially available, where a
21:12
lot of farmers, especially in the class of CG Sun create
21:16
competition products that are really not commercially
21:19
available or if they are, it's incredibly small quantities.
21:22
And where this farmer only submits what he actually sells
21:25
to the competition isn't have a special quote UN quote
21:28
competition grade. And it's a different philosophy.
21:31
It's pretty interesting actually seeing the differences between
21:33
this farmer and to decide and what they're optimizing for and
21:36
how they optimize for that. And the outcome of the
21:39
optimization? And the outcome and, you know,
21:41
both are delicious. I mean, Suji son is definitely
21:44
more rich and umami, just like with classical Japanese sense of
21:49
quality. But this matcha is really good
21:52
still. Like the umami is a little less,
21:54
but there's a lot of complexity that he actually introduces in
21:58
other ways. And the most unique thing about
22:00
this, I don't know if anyone else is doing it in Japan, is
22:04
that he Withers his tancha. So after harvest, it actually
22:08
goes into a cold space where it's humidity controlled and a
22:12
cold Withers overnight, which is extremely unusual for green tea
22:17
processing for tancha. You do hear about this in
22:20
Taiwan. There's a lot of Taiwan,
22:22
Taiwanese high mountain oolong, like dao shencha.
22:24
Those leaves, after they're picked, they go straight into a
22:27
cold space where the humidity is controlled, typically like a
22:30
gigantic refrigerator, essentially to keep them super
22:33
green, to suck out just enough moisture, but not too much to
22:37
sit into wither. And it gives it this really
22:40
interesting fragrance. So his tensha, his matcha has
22:44
this, what I keep referring to as a baojong note.
22:47
A baojong is a very, very, very, very green style of oolong
22:53
produced in the north of Taiwan. When you taste that thousand
22:57
note. And if you've never had this, I
22:59
really recommend you go to a vendor like Taiwanese Tea Crafts
23:03
or Stefan Ehrlare or Eco Cha and try a Taiwanese balzone just to
23:08
get that reference note. But he, they have this
23:11
wonderful, it's kind of floral and sweet and very distinctive
23:16
and adds this complexity that I've never, it's really hard to
23:19
come by in matcha, which is something very unique to this
23:22
particular producer, which is exciting to see.
23:25
Yeah, it's like not a traditional method.
23:27
Yeah, I mean traditionally actually this will consider as a
23:30
flaw. Probably.
23:32
For a lot of these more traditional grading system, but
23:35
for producers here it's innovation and for consumers
23:39
this is wonderful and unique experience.
23:42
Creative agency and really create something that tastes
23:45
very different. And then they have a red brick
23:47
tensure style oven which radiates a lot of, as we felt
23:51
earlier, different. It has five different layers of
23:53
conveyor belts, man, As it goes down, the temperature kind of
23:57
descends. So the first toast as it goes
23:59
across the first layer. I have it written down somewhere
24:02
here. It was 167°.
24:04
Oh, there we go. And the second layer goes down
24:07
to 110. There we go.
24:09
And they also have these little vents at the top where they can
24:13
like some of the moisture so it doesn't get a second steaming.
24:17
Yeah, which we painfully found about in our little Shiman or
24:21
Kimon Tanchai experience. We're using some of these
24:25
Chinese roaster to try to roast Tanchai and just traps so much
24:29
moisture inside. Ends up being, you know, kind of
24:32
like a second steam. We also learned a lot more about
24:34
steaming and how steaming gets controlled.
24:37
So essentially this gigantic tube Tumblr, continuous Tumblr
24:41
that the T falls through, you can actually adjust the angle,
24:44
which I didn't realize, which totally effects how quickly the
24:48
T moves through it. So if it's more flat, it moves
24:51
much more slowly, and if it's a more vertical angle, the tea
24:55
will go through much faster. And then you can also control
24:58
the steam and the airflow that's going through it.
25:01
It's very important because different cultivar actually
25:04
needs different steaming time and for kind of like tougher
25:09
more fibrous cultivar like assets to you needs about 25
25:13
seconds. And for more delicate cultivars
25:15
like Asahi, usually people will do under 20 seconds of steaming.
25:20
So we got to try some fresh steamed leaves coming right out
25:24
of the steamer and I was just taken back.
25:26
It was I said to you cultivar and it was so it was like taking
25:31
a piece of like blanched spinach out is about this texture.
25:34
It's very tender and soft and it.
25:37
Doesn't have the spinach. Flavor, Yeah, no spinach flavor,
25:40
but the same like texture, mushiness kind of texture.
25:44
Maybe it's a little more put together.
25:45
The Omani was just striking. There was a slight bitterness
25:50
and then wow, the after taste after taste was so sweet and
25:55
umami and lingering in a way that was kind of a surprise.
25:59
When you're eating something that's like a green leafy
26:01
vegetable like thing, it would normally be like in food like
26:06
where you would encounter a warm, steamed, tender leafy
26:10
vegetable which was really cool. So after the steaming, the
26:13
leaves gets blown into kind of what we called a butterfly net
26:18
kind of container. And the fan, the Tumblr fan kind
26:22
of blows away all of the moisture from the surface of the
26:25
leaf and then it gets sent into the tension oven, which, you
26:30
know, the tension gets roasted for five layers and then it gets
26:33
really, really, really crisp. And it was stared that the
26:37
tension would turn to below like 5% moisture.
26:41
And it's almost like a potato chip.
26:43
And so we got to try some and there was a little bit of miss
26:45
picking on our first day. So they separated out some
26:48
mature leaves that kind of made it through the process for
26:51
banja. But it was a really interesting
26:53
comparison. We picked Asahi yesterday and we
26:56
got to try proper young tender leaf Asahi and through the same
27:01
process we got to try older mature leaves which should not
27:05
have been picked and were saved for banja after having gone
27:09
through that tension processing. So they were technically our
27:12
attention or RHA or crude tension before the de stemming
27:16
and deveining process. Wow a taste difference between a
27:21
young tender leaf and it's umami Ness and the mature leaves to
27:27
puncture leaves was like they're not even the same product.
27:31
And actually use case on when we were picking tea today was
27:34
talking about Asahi cultivar. Someone who was in the tea
27:37
picking group was complaining that they recently had an Asahi
27:40
and that didn't taste any good and they're like oh I thought
27:42
this was a good cultivar. You know why?
27:45
Why wasn't my Asahi sample good that I bought from, I forget
27:49
which tea house in Bangkok? And he is like, yeah, you know
27:51
what? Asahi actually doesn't taste
27:53
very good inherently. But Asahi is really good at
27:57
absorbing fertilizer. Yeah.
27:59
And he is like, an art in a science.
28:01
It's like, I don't know, cooking with something like tofu, right?
28:04
Tofu can just be incredibly bland.
28:06
But if you really know how to cook it and add flavor.
28:08
To it like. It's like a canvas to paint on
28:12
top of. Gray analogy, or maybe like a
28:14
spongy tofu? A spongy tofu.
28:17
Absorb all of the flavor from, you know, whatever the saucy end
28:20
up adding into it. So the reason why Asahi is so
28:22
good at absorbing fertilizer is that its root doesn't go down to
28:27
the ground. It spreads and it's best spreads
28:29
very shallowly. So it's kind of like a white net
28:34
that, you know, the T plane cast onto the soil to kind of trap as
28:37
much fertilizer as possible. Apparently some rooting problems
28:41
too because it does that, but it makes it particularly well
28:44
suited for shaded cultivation and naturally high levels of
28:48
umami when it is and and amino acids when it is properly
28:52
fertilized. Or apparently other cultivars
28:55
like Uji Uji, like Uji Hikari I use case I'm gonna say are
29:01
inherently just tastes better, like decent fertilizer, no
29:05
fertilizer. Some for a lot of fertilizer
29:07
like still tastes better than the Sahi does.
29:10
It's not fertilized. I believe that, I mean we tried
29:12
some of the unfertilized organic Asahi.
29:16
And it wasn't very good. It did.
29:17
Not taste like you know the Asahi would remember.
29:19
Like has a fancy name and a very fancy price tags because it
29:23
tastes very good. So that was that was interesting
29:25
to learn and wow, these fresh Asahi chips that come right,
29:28
they're crunchy and they're blast of umami.
29:32
And then it turns into creaminess and complexity and
29:36
the after taste really that the most unbelievable thing was the
29:40
potency and the clarity, the after taste.
29:43
And then right afterwards, we got to try another one through
29:46
the same process that had been recently picked siami dori and
29:50
tasting the Siami dori Tensha RHA chip next to the Asahi
29:55
tensha chip. Wow.
29:57
I honestly think the flavor difference is more magnified at
30:00
that stage when you're just chewing on these freshly
30:03
processed leaves than they do in the cup.
30:06
And Paul was telling me that siami dori, like his his
30:08
favorite tasting note to identify it blindly was edamame.
30:12
And I tasted that was like, wow, I get it.
30:15
Like it just it clicked. There we go.
30:17
I get it. This is like this is the edamame
30:21
that Paul was talking about. Very cool and this is Siami
30:24
Dori. Siami Dori.
30:26
Yeah, SAEMI Siami Dori want to be confused with Sunny Dori,
30:32
which I somehow confuse more often than I should At the
30:36
beginning of my monster journey. I could actually thought they
30:39
were the same, just different romanization.
30:42
They are confusing, but the kanji is very different.
30:45
Read that. So Ryan, we have picked tea in
30:49
Wuji as well before. How is the picking tea
30:52
experience different here? Than wuji, so there's different
30:55
picking methods when you pick tea.
30:57
So the method that we didn't Wuji and here what they have in
31:00
common is so before this harvest, they cut the top bud at
31:04
some point, probably the very beginning of shading or right
31:07
before shading. Excuse me, I actually don't
31:09
quite remember when they do that.
31:11
But when the first spot appears on the top, it's the apical
31:13
marista. And when you cut that off, it
31:16
sends a hormone down the rest of the plant and tells new buds to
31:19
grow. And that means that for
31:21
basically every mature leaf that you have got working down, the
31:24
branch shoots out another one. So you have all of these little
31:28
shoots that shoot out. So you pull a branch towards
31:31
you, you work from the bottom and you have a mature leaf and
31:35
nestled next to that mature leaf, you have a new young leaf.
31:39
And then you pick that young leaf.
31:41
So you work your way up and maybe for each branch you have,
31:44
I don't know, 8 to 10 different alternating nodes to pick from.
31:49
And the higher you get, the more mature, the more longer those
31:53
new that new growth is. So when we were picking T Goku
31:57
Shell, you actually just pick off the whole thing.
32:00
So if there's a new leaf cluster, you pick off the stem
32:04
and you put the stem and the leaf in the basket.
32:07
This picking style that we're doing here, which has a name,
32:10
which we're going to look up now and Sam can tell you because I
32:12
can't pronounce anything Japanese, is where you pull and
32:16
kind of, it's not quite RIP, but you leave that soft young stem
32:21
behind and you're just pulling the Leafs out.
32:24
So it's as if you were picking one leaf by 1 leaf, but for some
32:27
of these and just be way too slow to do that and too
32:30
difficult. So you basically pinch down and
32:33
pull up and you get, it's like, that's the best sound effect I
32:38
can do to describe what that does.
32:40
I think most people can picture that, I hope.
32:42
And at the end you have a sort of cluster of leaves and that
32:46
you then toss into your basket with no stem.
32:48
This picture when you're trying to use your three fingers to
32:52
strip out of the grapes off from a very thinned Grapevine.
32:56
And that's, you know, kind of similar to how you would do it
33:00
for all these young tea leaves. So the picking method for this
33:03
kind of practice is called Shigoki tumi.
33:06
And apparently it's, you know, not only in Aichi but also in
33:10
Shiga, in Mandukuro they use this type of picking method as
33:13
well. And I've seen some videos of
33:16
some some people in Uji as well for a certain cultivars will
33:20
choose this method over the other one which actually I don't
33:25
know the name of called normal picking at least us.
33:28
How are you? Take the stem with you.
33:29
But the other picking that we did in Wuji and you know, but
33:34
you end up getting a lot of stamps which will naturally be
33:37
turned into Hojita or cookie Hoji by the end of the day.
33:41
So in this case is less hoji cha by the end of the day which is
33:45
so Sam. Which picking method do you
33:47
prefer? Do I prefer?
33:49
Interesting question. I don't know if I have a
33:51
preference, but you know, for so many hours, your fingertip do
33:57
end up getting, you know, a little bit painful for Shiko
34:00
Kitsumi. Yeah, there's a lot more like
34:02
rubbing when you're like trying not to damage the leaves, but
34:06
also trying to remove the leaves from the soft stem, which is a
34:10
difficult game. And putting just enough
34:12
pressure, but not enough pressure to break the soft stem.
34:15
Because if you break the soft stem, then you got to take off
34:17
each grape 1 by 1 so to speak, each leaf 1 by 1, which comes up
34:23
really. You waste a lot of time that
34:25
way. Yeah, I also like for this
34:27
method really requires a lot of like surface friction of your
34:31
finger to the tea leaves to kind of strip the tea leaf off.
34:35
And it's very difficult to do it with naked hand.
34:39
Here they actually give you these special gloves that has,
34:42
you know, unique surface texture that help you to strip the tea
34:47
leaf faster. But Ryan seem to be Nah in the
34:49
liking of using those. Glasses.
34:50
No. I hate this.
34:52
There are too. There's too much like traction
34:55
and I end up picking too many mature leaves.
34:57
Yeah, it's very hard to feel the actual.
35:00
Texture. You miss the sensoriness at your
35:03
fingertips. I was, I did.
35:05
I spent two months in India. I'm studying food and beverage
35:07
preferences across NE South and West in different parts of
35:12
India. And we had a sort of a local
35:14
guide that each person who helped identify the food and
35:18
beverage and flavour combinations we needed to do in
35:20
each particular region. And there was this, there's this
35:23
very nice old lady named Jayanti.
35:26
And Jayanti was like, look, something.
35:28
You have to understand that in India, the sensory experience of
35:32
eating food starts at the fingers, not at the mouth.
35:36
And I will never forget that. And it was kind of echoing in my
35:39
head when I decided to take these gloves off.
35:42
It's like, oh, I need to actually, because you can feel
35:44
the difference. You can hear the difference.
35:46
You can feel the difference in texture and in sound and in
35:49
waxing Ness and I don't know how smooth they are or how moist
35:54
they are and losing that little tiny bit of sensory perception.
35:58
Makes all the difference. Was really difficult in picking
36:01
the difference between picking tea fast and picking tea well.
36:05
Yeah, I mean, I've been always picking tea with my naked hands,
36:08
you know, in China, in Korea and also in Japan.
36:11
In the past, like in Wuji, we didn't use glove, but here I
36:16
tried to do it. But over some certain time your
36:19
fingertips really start hurting. So I decided to wear one glove
36:23
on one hand to do the stripping and use the other hand to kind
36:26
of feel check the textures. So we also got to see milling,
36:30
milling facility, I think they had 16 ECU, so not all of which
36:34
were actively being used. And we had a chance to really
36:37
ask some questions. This is a very unique producer
36:39
that does everything from like the agriculture all the way
36:42
through retail sales. They have a little store and in
36:46
the room we're obviously working on our matcha mill to mill much
36:49
of fresh anywhere and everywhere with an active cooling system,
36:51
swappable millstones, anti static technology.
36:54
Not that I have this down to a 32nd elevator pitch, but I gave
36:58
us some good opportunity to learn just some milling
37:01
knowledge. And so I asked him, what's your
37:03
target temperature like what's the temperature range of the
37:06
outer part of the stone that you consider generally acceptable?
37:09
And he said 40 to 50°C. But he says at the interface
37:13
where the the stones are actually touching each other,
37:17
they're probably even hotter, like probably closer to 60°C,
37:21
which is the same thing that I heard from one of the issue zoo
37:25
operators in Paris who is getting recommendations from a
37:30
producer in Ujitwara about the recommended milling temperature
37:34
being about 60°C as sort of a ceiling.
37:39
Another interesting thing that he does is that he refinishes
37:42
the tanja before grinding to remove any excess moisture
37:45
content. And I took down some notes here.
37:48
The what he does is he gives it another quick toast.
37:51
I didn't have how long the duration was.
37:54
But he does not let it exceed 100°C.
37:58
Otherwise he believes it imparts too much flavor change into the
38:02
tanja. So to drive off that final
38:04
moisture content before he decides to mill, he does a
38:07
little bit of refinishing, but it much lower temperatures.
38:10
And the goal is to control the moisture content to about like
38:14
3%, which is very dry. Which is, yeah, very dry.
38:18
The other thing that he mentioned is, and this is
38:20
something we've heard from a couple people now, is they
38:23
actually the importance of some heat in milling.
38:26
Without a lot of heat in milling, you can actually, you
38:30
have flavors that become much less mute, more muted and much
38:32
less interesting. And he was talking about how
38:35
that was actually pretty important to create a balance
38:37
profile. And I was asking him if you're
38:39
milling tea for 24 hours and you were just scoop tea at the
38:42
bottom of the pile, like in theory, tea that was milled in
38:45
the first hour. And if you were to scoop tea on
38:47
the top, which was just, you know, milled on a stone that had
38:51
been turning for 24 hours and theoretically much hotter.
38:54
I, you know, in theory you'll reach some temperature
38:57
equilibrium probably, but maybe it's still slowly exceeds, but
39:00
you still have some material coming out of it that was in a
39:03
colder Ishiusu than some of the later materials.
39:06
So you're actually kind of creating a blend.
39:08
He was like, yeah, the topic is a little bit more astringent,
39:12
but he thinks when it's blended all together, it actually can
39:15
bring some structure. I mean that he actually wants to
39:17
see some of that astringency as well as some of the, he didn't
39:21
use the word Hika and I forget what the word he used once, but
39:24
this sort of this milling aroma that comes with that heat.
39:28
And he says that the milling aroma this, I'll call it milling
39:32
hika with back of a better word or the, you know, a roasted
39:35
smell dissipates within one month after milling.
39:38
So everything that he knows is ground to order and ideally is
39:42
consumed within one month. And apparently the hika that is
39:46
made from tension processing in the tension oven lasts much
39:50
longer. So you have different
39:52
degradation rates for these different types of fired aromas.
39:55
So he recommends consuming tea within one month after milling
39:59
to preserve this sort of double layer of complexity.
40:04
Were there any other surprises to you?
40:06
Zoom June in the milling room, we went in in two different
40:09
groups because it was too small of a room.
40:11
Were you surprised or what struck you, or were there any
40:14
other interesting questions that people in your group asked?
40:17
Yeah. So the other very interesting
40:19
thing that we saw is that they use these wooden box to kind of
40:24
collect out of the, you know, milled matcha and also, you
40:29
know, tensha before milling. So they all contained in this
40:32
very uniquely designed little wooden box that is tint plated
40:35
inside. And this special wood that they
40:38
use is called Suki. And it also has kind of like
40:42
it's a local wood in Japan that people use for various
40:45
functionalities, but people specially like it because it has
40:49
kind of like a insect repellent feature that people not only
40:54
store food inside Sookie made containers, but also a close.
40:59
Prevent the moths. Yeah, prevent, prevent the
41:01
moths. Original moths ball box.
41:03
Yeah, so, but it's, you know, fairly odorless.
41:06
So people really like using this type of wood.
41:10
And we also saw a lot of these Sookie trees in Bazooka these
41:14
like they really looks like a forest giants, very magnificent
41:18
trees. The other thing that really
41:20
struck me was just how much Macho is everywhere Freeware
41:24
resurface. The matcha was everywhere.
41:27
When you're milling matcha, when you're making matcha, you know
41:30
it forms a suspension in water. After you mill it, it is
41:33
definitely forming a suspension in air.
41:36
There was matcha all over the floor.
41:38
The floor is literally green. Yeah, it's green, like half.
41:40
Of the surfaces are green, if you look up at the air
41:43
conditioning filter, it's horrifying.
41:45
And then if you think, what is this doing to my lungs?
41:48
If you're not wearing a mask, it's actually pretty big hazard
41:53
from an air quality perspective. So we recommend anyone milling
41:57
matcha just in general keep that in mind.
42:00
But then our machine, we made it kind of airtight.
42:02
There's very little there's only or basically one way for matcha
42:06
to come out that falls into a collector that we built a
42:09
special magnetic cup that goes up into it so that like it's not
42:14
being really exposed to the air. Otherwise it you definitely will
42:18
notice this in the air quality. It's actually if you're
42:21
comparing our mill against Anisha use.
42:22
So it's actually say that's one area where we have a heads up
42:25
because it much better contains the air surrounding the milling
42:29
surface to prevent that. And anyone who does mill on
42:32
Anisha use. So really recommend you get a
42:34
box and you close it because chronic I think exposure to this
42:38
type of dust, it's extremely unhealthy.
42:41
The other interesting thing that we kind of already heard from
42:44
other T Millers is that Yusif matcha after milling this farmer
42:50
also sips his matcha and precedes pre sift matcha looks
42:54
very interesting. It's very fluffy, contains a lot
42:57
of these some kind of hair like texture in the powder and also
43:02
you see some tension too. So we kind of.
43:05
It's naturally a messy process. Yeah, it's naturally a messy
43:09
process, you. Get a little tension here, a
43:11
little tension there, some partially milk powder when you
43:14
because you have to kind of prime the plates before you get
43:17
everything moving. Yeah, it's this is actually
43:20
quite encouraging to see because we saw this a lot when we were
43:23
developing our mill. This is very validating across
43:26
the board, even across the optimal temperature ranges and
43:29
that we're hitting right in the window and respecting the
43:32
ceiling at most of the speeds coming from our mill.
43:35
You can definitely push it hot if you really are running it
43:38
very fast for an extremely long time.
43:41
But it's still, you know, within this acceptable range for the
43:44
most part from all of these different numbers that we've
43:46
heard floating around. So last and perhaps most
43:49
importantly, Zhangjun, what did you think of the T?
43:51
And we got to try matcha after factory fresh ground ready to go
43:55
and having picked it, having seen it end to the end.
43:58
And what were your thoughts on that Usucha?
44:00
It was very good. It was very interesting.
44:02
If you would have let me guessed, I would totally guess
44:05
this matcha is is a traditional conventional farmed matcha has
44:11
this very full body rich umami flavor that you know has this
44:16
wonderful hint of as you previously mentioned and amame.
44:20
So this matcha was a blend. In fact, this farmer only does
44:25
blend matcha and it was really until this year, the Herd Koto
44:29
Tea Space special request. The first time we're going to do
44:33
a single cultivar, single origin matcha, but but for a bland
44:37
matcha using basically organic farming, that was some very
44:41
incredible taste. Yeah, with this very interesting
44:44
sort of withered fragrance makes it super unique.
44:47
And you know, something that occurred to me today, we were
44:50
getting a tour of the tension processing facility, which is in
44:54
an old miso factory, and a large part of it is actually made out
44:57
of wood. And you see these giant timber
44:59
beams in the building is about 100 years old.
45:02
And the farmer who, you know, it's harvest season.
45:05
I don't want to say he looked tired because I feel like that's
45:07
an insult, but the guy definitely has been working a
45:10
lot. We're standing there and he was
45:13
talking about earthquake proofing the building and that
45:16
he's wanted to make sure that it was structurally sound in case
45:20
of an earthquake. And I was looking at him and
45:22
thinking about this and I was like, wow, I really understand
45:27
now why most matcha and tension producers are end to end from
45:32
agriculture through retail sales.
45:34
This guy has to think about all of the hiring skilled T picker
45:39
people to work in the tension processing factory, all of this
45:43
land and probably all of the regulations and the paperwork,
45:47
just owning and maintaining the land, all of these buildings,
45:52
thinking, making sure that they're earthquake proof.
45:54
He has to do all the B2B sales. It had all the retail sales that
45:59
they have. They're blending the products.
46:02
And then also they have like basically a second factory where
46:05
they're doing the shiage and the milling, which also needs to be
46:09
monitored by people. And then you had to take care of
46:11
all the tea plants and then you need to make sure that all of
46:14
your T cells like I just even talking about it feels
46:18
exhausting. You know, I probably only
46:20
mentioned like 60% of the list. Like who knows what else that
46:25
that guy has to think about and like the ability to contact
46:28
switch the money to solve the problems, the expertise to solve
46:32
the problems, not even to mention the time that it takes
46:36
to solve those problems. I, I was looking at Sam as we
46:39
were leaving today and it was like, I understand why some
46:42
people just sell the wholesalers.
46:44
He's a farmer. He is a he's a factory owner and
46:48
processor and he's a brand, right?
46:51
And like so much mad respect. Like if you think about every
46:55
all of us who are in the much industry, you know, they're
46:57
sourcing material and selling it.
46:59
Just imagine being the factory that made it and the farmers who
47:03
grew it, right? Like that would increase the
47:06
scope of work by just a huge percent because even just
47:09
selling the product is hard. I'm selling it B to B, selling
47:12
it to consumer. So it's pretty crazy.
47:14
You know, you think of these tea farmers, these artists who are
47:17
sitting around thinking about their plants all day and the
47:20
type of fertilizer that they put in the ground and making sure
47:24
that everything is shaded perfectly.
47:26
And like, you know, it's exactly 21 days or it's exactly 30 days.
47:31
And he picks the perfect optimal time window to pick the tea
47:35
right when it's ready. But really what I realized is
47:38
that this is just a game of compromises and constraints,
47:41
right? How much tea, how many tea
47:43
pickers do we have? How quickly are these coming in?
47:46
Apparently it's an early year here in IG, and it's just one
47:49
big set of compromises. The level of intentionality and
47:53
control that tea farmers have over the outcome is very low.
47:58
And there's so many unpredictable factors from
48:01
weather, from how many people you have to when the tea
48:04
actually comes in. And then all of the other
48:07
factors that can pop up as it goes from, you know, a plant in
48:12
the dirt, in the ground all the way into your final cup.
48:16
Even things like the new Iran war and what that's doing to
48:18
fertilizer prices like this doesn't affect our our farmer
48:21
because he only uses this doesn't affect the farmer that
48:24
we visited here because he only uses organic fertilizer.
48:27
I guess maybe it does indirectly, but for the people
48:30
using synthetic fertilizer, like because of the the Iran war
48:34
that's causing a huge bottleneck in supply, I'm probably going to
48:38
increase a lot of fertilizer prices.
48:40
I would make the raw inputs even more expensive.
48:43
So there's all these exogenous factors that play a non
48:47
negligible role on the difficulty in the work that
48:50
these farmers are actually doing, which goes back to the
48:52
point that we've been making about Uji and uji matcha and
48:55
saying that, you know, a can of matcha tastes good.
48:58
Just because it says uji on it, it it's not actually crediting
49:02
the people who actually did the work to make it good.
49:05
Like, yes, this farmer, he's not even part of the four Prefecture
49:09
trademark zone, but he and the tea pickers and the whole
49:13
company and his wife and his family members there are the
49:17
reason why this tea is so good. It's not because he inherited
49:21
the skill from this person or that person as part of some
49:24
great lineage. I mean, we all stand on the
49:26
shoulders of giants and whatever our respective fields are.
49:29
It's good because he put in the work and the blood sweat and
49:32
tears and having these very reductive approaches, ceremonial
49:36
grade Uji Macha, whatever really doesn't put credit to the right
49:41
place to describe and define an attribute.
49:45
What makes a good product to premium or good.
49:48
Well said Ryan, well said. It's.
49:50
This work is really about like sweat and tears and hard works.
49:54
And when people talking about, you know, why these farmers
49:59
don't, you know, opt into single origin, why don't they promote
50:02
themselves more, you know, like it by the end of the day, really
50:07
just kind of ran out your energy or thinking about other things
50:10
like this is a lot of dimensions that people need to consider.
50:14
And for the farming, for the cultivation, for the picking,
50:19
for the manufacturing, for the packaging, every single segment
50:23
on this value chain, they lack labor.
50:26
There's really visible shortage of Labor and the very visible
50:30
aging of Labor in all of these segments.
50:32
I honestly feel a little bit concerned, like what if, you
50:35
know, we don't have our 85 year old grandpa in the future to
50:40
pick so many teas so fast and we were just looking around the tea
50:46
fills when we were picking tea. We barely finished like one row
50:50
yesterday and we barely finished half of the row today because we
50:53
had less time and there were just so much unpicked tea around
50:58
us. Very, like, intimidating.
51:01
Or scary, I don't know. Yeah.
51:03
And honestly? When we were picking some teas,
51:06
some of the younger leaves are getting a little bit hard and
51:09
that's definitely not because of, you know, the lack of
51:13
farmers care. It's definitely because, you
51:16
know, we don't have enough manpower to pick them timely.
51:19
And that's very sad. All of these timings in the past
51:23
before the harvest season, you know, they did their job, they
51:26
did their hard work and it was just that we don't have enough
51:31
people to pick the final product, that these product end
51:34
UPS ends up deteriorating in the field.
51:37
It's incredibly sad. This is like, you know, it's
51:40
almost. Like jazz or really good jazz
51:42
session where like every single person is improvising and
51:46
perhaps once in a while you just have this magic chemistry
51:50
between a group of musicians and a group of artists that create
51:54
something so perfect because everything is just In Sync and
51:59
coordinated and paste and the cadence is perfect.
52:02
It's very similar. Like with the weather with the
52:06
tea pickers, if you have enough labor, when things are ready,
52:09
just so many things have to go right to create those years
52:14
where they say this is a fantastic product.
52:16
Yeah, it should go ECA. Exactly when you do.
52:20
Have. The luck to end up trying a
52:22
product like that. Please cherish.
52:24
We should all cherish. Yeah.
52:26
And I think we should be a little bit.
52:27
Easier on producers, it's easy to be critical of, you know, any
52:31
this, that or the other factor that you know might cause the
52:35
tea to taste better or worse and truly understanding and
52:39
attributing what makes tea taste good and why that flavor tastes
52:43
good. It's just a very difficult thing
52:45
to do. There's really no lazy.
52:47
Farmer and bad tea. There's lazy farmer and no tea.
52:51
Like if there's ever tea end up producing that day, it's
52:56
hardworking farmers and hardworking jobs.
52:58
Yeah. And it also feels.
53:00
Like this is honestly having experienced it and seen it, you
53:03
can feel the lack of sustainability.
53:06
It doesn't feel sustained. Like I really can't wait to
53:10
contrast this someday when we make it to Kagoshima with these
53:13
auto harvesters where there's literally not a human single
53:17
human hand touching the tea here.
53:20
This tea gets touched so many times in this process it's
53:24
crazy. It gets picked and then it gets
53:27
moved from back-to-back. It gets withered and then it
53:29
gets moved again. It gets steamed.
53:31
They have people checking every leaf in the tension oven when it
53:36
comes out to either separate the leaves or remove some of the
53:40
older leaves and then it gets sorted out.
53:42
This is the level of care and intentionality, almost a leaf by
53:46
leaf basis and the number of human eyeballs.
53:49
Let's see and inspect and make a judgment call on each leaf is is
53:54
a little mind blow blowing and you're removing some of that
53:58
soul in like these completely automated factories.
54:01
It reminds me, you know, in China, they have these, they
54:04
call them dark factories, right? Where they don't even need to
54:07
turn the lights on because they're totally automated.
54:10
In Shenzhen, you don't even need.
54:12
Any people? To be there, all of these
54:14
electronics factories. It's this it's future of.
54:18
Of manufacturing of you walk in on a soul there right like you
54:22
can feel that that's coming to tea farm.
54:24
You feel that it needs to come to tea farming.
54:27
It has to, otherwise there will be no.
54:29
Tea and the people that continue to do.
54:31
This are really like heroes of saving culture.
54:35
And you know, even us, you know, we're complaining that this is
54:38
weird incentive loops in Japan about making better tea for the
54:41
competition or making better tea for what old men think good
54:45
think are good because they're the chashi's or the wholesale
54:47
buyers that are buying and selling this material around
54:50
Japan. And like, why isn't there more
54:52
innovation? Why aren't there more innovation
54:54
cycles? Why don't people experiment
54:56
more? Like these people can barely get
54:58
the product out the door like a reasonable profit.
55:02
Even some of the Rockstar macho farmers, so we've talked about
55:06
on this podcast, you know, we've heard, you know, it's not like
55:09
they are earning Rockstar money. And that actually cash flow is a
55:13
huge problem even during this matcha boom.
55:16
It is a difficult business when you decide to get into three
55:20
businesses instead of 1. So it's really hard to think
55:24
about like what does that feature look like?
55:26
Like are these dark factories good?
55:28
Are they still technically producing high quality matcha?
55:31
This obviously needs to be preserved, but it feels like it
55:35
almost can't be very commercial because like, who is going to
55:39
come pick the tea? Who is going to take on the
55:41
reins? And like, if you do all this
55:43
work and the tea that comes out of the dark factory is good
55:47
enough for most of the tea that most of the macho that's being
55:51
prepared and drink in the world, then like who is this for?
55:55
And I think it's for this community.
55:57
It's for specialty people. It's for people who care about
56:00
where the food came from, people who don't mind paying double the
56:04
price for a hand picked product. It's specialty food movement.
56:08
Specialty matcha movement. Yeah.
56:10
It's. When it comes to tawa, I think
56:13
especially so for matcha. It's really not about a
56:17
geographic region, is about the people that lives in those area.
56:22
And it's about all of these human interventions, human
56:25
decisions that end up going into all these products that created
56:29
this unique flavor profile. It's about people.
56:32
You are literally tasting people's wisdom, people's hard
56:36
work and people's life. Yeah, and you know this, this.
56:40
Whole industry is not going to be kept alive unless it's able
56:43
to grow outside of Japan. And Even so, there's going to be
56:47
a lot of loss in culture and lower productivity or these
56:50
slower methods. Well, hopefully there will be
56:53
new culture. Being created new culture being
56:56
created this. Culture being preserved in a
56:59
larger market to incentivize more people to flood the zone
57:03
with some money to keep this good work alive.
57:06
And it does create just a product with the soul and with
57:08
the story. And so that's what we're hoping
57:11
for, especially into the future. It's hard to know what's going
57:14
to happen, but this was really interesting to put into context
57:17
when thinking about like traditional practices versus
57:20
innovation, which is an attention we love to floor here.
57:23
And tomorrow we will go back to the T fill.
57:25
And we'll try to do our part to add value and we'll try to learn
57:29
more. Yes, we will.
57:30
So thanks. So much for listening and if you
57:33
enjoyed this, please consider sharing with friend and we'll
57:36
see you the next one. See you in the future.