What is matcha?

 

 

 

 

Ryan (00:00)
Hello, this is the Specialty Matcha Podcast. I'm Ryan Ahn and this is my co -host Zongjun Li And we're the co -founders of Sanko Matcha Products.

Zongjun (Sam) Li (00:04)
Hello, hello.

Yeah, so we launched this podcast to discuss our learning journey in matcha, share our stories and interview experts. So today we're going to talk about what is matcha.

Ryan (00:22)
it feels like one of those blog post headlines that you just have to do if you're a tea company. Like what is matcha? You know, there's probably like a thousand different blog posts describing the answer to this question.

Zongjun (Sam) Li (00:27)
Ha ha ha!

and there's probably a thousand answers.

Ryan (00:40)
Yeah, they might not all agree with each other. And you know, I put it right up there with the question, what is your favorite tea? That every tea person always gets asked. And you know, it's a very difficult question to answer, right? What is matcha is shockingly, there's a lot to unpack and depending on who you ask, you'll get very different answers. So for the blog post, what is matcha?

Zongjun (Sam) Li (00:43)
Yeah.

Ryan (01:08)
We decided to just answer it through the lens. I think there's six different lenses of answers that we've heard over the years and sort of compile our impressions. If you ask a tea master, what would their answer be? Or a tea farmer or a botanist. What is matcha? Or a chemist, a sommelier and historian. And the last one is a dietician.

Zongjun (Sam) Li (01:27)
Hmm.

Ryan (01:35)
and we filter it through all of these different lenses. And there's a lot more that we could have done, but for the sake of an article that we thought someone would read, that this covered our bases pretty well.

Zongjun (Sam) Li (01:46)
That's a very interesting approach. I mean, like viewing from different angles, much is really something that can be defined totally in a different way. It's very much like the difference between the creator, the distributor, the seller, and the user of a lot of products.

Ryan (02:15)
Yeah, no, it's a good reference. Things mean different things to different people largely because of the value that it brings them or what their values are. I think this is well encompassed both in physical values, monetary value, philosophical values, and historical values. It kind of goes through the gambit.

Zongjun (Sam) Li (02:38)
Yeah, yeah.

Ryan (02:39)
Something that's not in the article, but something that I was writing about recently for a future blog post, is that matcha has a self -descriptive name. So, Zongjun, you studied a lot more Japanese than I have. If you were to literally translate matcha, what do those characters, what does that kanji mean?

Zongjun (Sam) Li (03:00)
Yeah, well, the kanji or the name of matcha comes from Song dynasty of Mocha ceremony, which literally means powder tea or tea being milled into powder. So that's literally what it is. It's what Mocha is and it's what matcha is nowadays.

Ryan (03:25)
Yeah, and you have layers of different meaning at different times. So it has a self -descriptive name. Matcha is powdered tea. It's literally in the name. what Mocha or matcha, which were represented by the same characters meant to Song Dynasty China is different than a traditional Japanese tea ceremony practitioner is different.

than, I don't know, some consumer in California that loves matcha that doesn't even realize it's green tea. And all of these people have very different understandings and different understandings and expectations for what it is. It's actually shocking the number of people that don't realize that matcha is tea or is green tea.

Zongjun (Sam) Li (03:55)
They exist, they exist.

That's right. Right.

Yeah, I mean, like, I think it's totally reasonable. Like, it's just like a lot of people outside of, you know, common coffee drinking countries that doesn't realize that coffee actually comes from this very interesting bean that's, you know, that's enclosed by this beautiful, like, red cherry. Like, for a lot of people, they don't really know, like, that's what it is.

Ryan (04:31)
Fruit

Yeah, actually, I think technically it's classified as a seed, but yeah, it's a seed of a fruit.

Zongjun (Sam) Li (04:43)
Yeah, very, very, very fascinating, you know. Yeah, same with chocolate. You know, people doesn't necessarily know, you know, what the thing, what the beverage or the food that they're consuming from day to day basis, you know, originally come from. It's like all these salmon fillets are just salmon fillets swimming in the ocean.

Ryan (04:46)
Same with chocolate.

Yeah. Yeah. It's a good one. So I guess let's start actually at the bottom of this article. A lot of people are interested in matcha because it's healthy. So if we were to ask a dietician or if you were to ask a dietician, what is matcha? What type of answers and framing would you get from someone like that?

Zongjun (Sam) Li (05:29)
Well, regularly people would probably talk about the richness of L-Theanine and the abundance of antioxidants that matcha naturally has. And it's very true. Matcha is a very healthy drink. And also it has this phenomenal effect that's...

Provided by caffeine that perfectly suits with a lot of modern consumption habits, you know people wants to stay awake During the daytime so that they can work or do things that they want to do without a drowsy head

Ryan (06:10)
Yeah, certainly. Especially for the modern knowledge working economy, right? Our currency is clarity of mind, it's creativeness, it's awake, and a lot of the functional benefits, like you said, around the polyphenols, which are antioxidants, the L -theanine, which makes you feel kind of alert and focused, and caffeine is kind of a perfect magic cocktail of health and wellness in the mind.

And it's also linked to a lot of really great research showing positive correlations for all sorts of health issues as well. We won't go into them here. So a lot of them are just associative studies. They're not a direct cause and effect. But I mean, it's fair to say at the very least, matcha contains a lot of compounds that are very healthy.

Zongjun (Sam) Li (07:04)
Yeah, that's right.

Ryan (07:06)
I'm not sure if it's going to make you drop 20 pounds or cure cancer, but you see your fair share of snake oil sales pitches, which is unfortunate. But I mean, there is a lot of positive direction of the health benefits that matcha gives you.

Zongjun (Sam) Li (07:10)
Hopefully. If you're dressed, matcha.

Yeah, so I guess that's very much the reason why people nowadays feel matcha as an alternative to coffee. It has very similar effect and also it brings you all these good benefits.

Ryan (07:43)
Yeah, it's a better for you product and it looks better for you too. So both from a taste perspective and getting like all of these additional things that other caffeinated beverages don't necessarily offer, right? It's very understandably an attractive choice, even if it didn't taste good.

Zongjun (Sam) Li (07:48)
Mmm.

Yeah, like your favorite green juice that you are regularly consuming.

Ryan (08:06)
Hahaha!

Nice. Actually, I was recently served an ad for a very new clean label energy shot. And what they did is they mixed 120 milligrams of caffeine with, I think, around 100 milligrams of L -theanine. And I was like, oh, wow, that's just like taking a shot of matcha. Just taking a strip down, but without all the polyphenols and other compounds that you see in matcha.

Zongjun (Sam) Li (08:23)
It's just like matcha.

Yeah, yeah, yeah. Well, it's, I don't know, like, who is trying to, you know, barring who's popularity. But it looks like all of these, like, healthy green juice products are trying to mimic the way they look to matcha.

Ryan (08:55)
Yeah, very true. Especially some of the more like what I call gateway matcha products like the Frappuccino and like the lattes. They have like a thick looking consistency. They look very hearty drinks. They're a similar color. It's, you know, in a... Yeah. Well, in a culture where the camera eats first,

Zongjun (Sam) Li (09:13)
Yeah, it's very interesting.

Ryan (09:20)
Matcha's appearance certainly helps spread the word because it looks healthy.

Zongjun (Sam) Li (09:26)
Yeah, so like we talk about a lot of the ingredients that matcha has. So like from a chemist point of view, like what is matcha?

Ryan (09:37)
Yeah, great question. So from a sort of a chemistry physics point of view, it is a very weird beverage. Mostly because you are consuming the entire leaf. It just happens to be powdered so small that it forms a suspension. And it is so imperceptibly small that one, you can't distinguish too much of particles with your naked eye. So it's around five to 15 microns.

in diameter and the threshold to distinguish a particle from another particle is around 30 to 40 microns for the human eye. But you also really shouldn't be able to feel it in your mouth. If it feels grainy, it's probably larger or lower quality. And then it's whisked with water. So you have the suspension of these microscopic tea leaves in water.

Zongjun (Sam) Li (10:26)
Hmm.

Ryan (10:36)
You whisk it, there's a bunch of surfactants and other things in matcha that make it foam very easily and you create this very stable foam. Right? So you have like foam of a Guinness and you're also drinking down and drinking the entire leaf without it feeling like you're choking down leaves. And yeah, that largely encompasses the chemist's point of view on what it's like.

Zongjun (Sam) Li (11:03)
Interesting. I mean, I guess that's probably the reason why a lot of people think that matcha totally dissolves in water versus it's actually a suspension. tastes like a watery drink. It doesn't necessarily taste like a mixture of powder.

Ryan (11:17)
Yeah,

and almost all of the beverage powders in our daily life, whether or not that's powdered instant beverage like Tang or the new and popular Liquid IV with all the electrolytes, anytime we encounter a powder in a culinary or beverage context, like instant coffee, it dissolves.

Zongjun (Sam) Li (11:43)
Mm.

Ryan (11:44)
And it's not the case for matcha. And that actually adds some complexity, right? Because when you get particles that small, the electrostatic forces are very strong and it becomes very sticky. Especially when you get matcha, if you don't sift matcha and you get a clump of matcha wet, it really wants to stick to itself and you can't separate it and form a good suspension.

Zongjun (Sam) Li (11:46)
you

Right, because it's so, so fine. So, like, Ryan, how do we actually get matcha that fine? Like, it's so fine and it's finer than, you know, most of the coffee grounds.

Ryan (12:20)
Yeah, so unlike coffee, it's milled significantly finer. Actually, even compared to flour, like wheat flour, it's still milled finer than that. And traditionally, it's milled on something called an ishi -usu, which is a very large piece of granite that has ridges cut in it. And you feed the matcha into these two millstones, which are on top of each other, and it spins.

and it slowly grinds the tea leaves into a fine powder where it then exits. And there are now more industrial ways of milling it, such as a ball mill that can mill kilograms an hour. And an ishi -yusu, or the traditional method, which was first developed in China and then moved to Japan, it mills about 20 to 40 grams of tea an hour. And that is incredibly

To put it into perspective, a serving in a matcha drink can be anywhere from two to four grams of tea, usually two. And if you're getting anything less, your cafe is cheating you. And it gives about 10 servings an hour, which on an industrial scale makes it very non -scalable.

Zongjun (Sam) Li (13:25)
Good reference.

Ryan (13:40)
But there's a huge benefit to it because these ball mills generate tons of heat. So that's one. And heat can damage the product. And the second are the shape of the particles that are being milled. And it turns out that Ishiusus are just incredibly good at producing high surface area particle morphology. So put it into non -scientific terms, it produces very jagged shapes. And what's great about jagged shapes,

Zongjun (Sam) Li (13:52)
Hmm.

Ryan (14:09)
is that they form a much more stable suspension. So when you mix that and create a suspension in water, anything that has higher surface area is going to have higher surface energy. And it's going to want to float around in that solution a lot more than a perfect spherical So there's a suspension quality consideration.

Zongjun (Sam) Li (14:20)
Right.

Ryan (14:32)
for matcha being a fine powder, but also a taste because it needs to be very low temperature milling, which makes stone -milled matcha intrinsically better with the existing technologies right now.

Zongjun (Sam) Li (14:36)
Yeah,

well no wonder like why 90 % of the matcha are still being milled in Japan It's kind of crazy like it like it's almost you know if you think about that It's like all the coffees are being milled essentially in Ethiopia

and gets packaged and distributed around the world.

Ryan (15:06)
very unfortunate for matcha quality. Like the fact that most Ishii Usus are all centralized in Japan, and the fact that no one gives transparent mill dates. Like mill dates are one of the most important considerations in matcha quality, and there are very few companies, you can probably count them on less than one hand, that give you a mill date on their matcha where you know how long that tea has been powdered. Also, because it's such a fine powder, it's going to oxidize.

Zongjun (Sam) Li (15:32)
Yeah.

Ryan (15:36)
very fast, very quickly. I mean, even when you open a can over the course of a week, even if you keep it in the refrigerator, it's going to start tasting different. And not only is it going to taste different going back to the nutrition, right? A lot of those things will degrade. And there's a very interesting study looking at the degradation of antioxidants at room temperature, normal temperature, over two months. One of the key polyphenols, one of the key antioxidants, EGCG, degrades by over 40%.

Zongjun (Sam) Li (15:39)
Yep.

you

That's

Ryan (16:05)
I mean, most matcha that people are drinking is older than two months. And by the time it even gets to them, a lot of the health benefit has been destroyed because it was sitting in a warehouse for who knows how long.

Zongjun (Sam) Li (16:20)
I mean, they even look different. Like it gets yellowish and grayish in color. And they certainly don't taste nice.

Ryan (16:31)
Exactly. The status quo is very unfortunate. But we're starting to see more and more Western tea vendors import Ishii Usus and starting to mill matcha fresh stateside. I've seen the same thing in Thailand. It's probably happening in Europe, but I don't know specifically where. Problem is those machines are very slow. It's not a scalable way to grow your tea.

Zongjun (Sam) Li (16:49)
Right.

Ryan (16:56)
business. And, you know, I actually tried to buy one about a year ago. It is really complicated. It's not like Amazon where you add the cart. Like I had to find a translator, they had to get me quotes, right? And then you had to deal with the shipping and they're expensive. It's like you have to at least outlay $10 ,000, probably more with shipping. And then like you have this industrial piece of matcha milling equipment and like

Who knows what happens if the motor burns out or if you chip the millstone. No one's coming to help you.

Zongjun (Sam) Li (17:30)
Yeah,

but it's good to see like, you know, all these labelings habits stop popping, popping out, you know, outside of Japan. And it's quite fascinating. It's like, you know, you very much already have been seeing this kind of practice in a lot of other beverages like coffee and wine.

It's interesting that it doesn't necessarily exist in Japan, but that's what a lot of consumers nowadays care about. It's the color, it's the taste, and it's an ultimate reassurance of quality, or an expectation of quality that people can feel tangible.

Ryan (17:54)
Exactly.

Best by date or used by date is no longer good enough. Like I want to know when my coffee was roasted, right? And like the equivalent in matcha is knowing when it was milled.

Zongjun (Sam) Li (18:21)
Yeah,

yeah, and also, you know the cultivar, you know, it's not just a poetic name, you know on On on the can that says, you know, something's up in mokashi It's like a specific cultivar that people can associate with a you know, a flavor profile

that they either like or dislike.

Ryan (18:51)
Yeah, so important with these transparent labelings. I know that you and I are working on some articles now talking about the importance of transparent labeling, but sort of the short conclusion that we've come to is that you need to develop the shared language where people, especially in the specialty macho world, can develop a set of complex preferences. And, you know, when I first started learning tea and going to New York City and buying it, we would buy a can, it would have a poetic name.

I would drink it and enjoy it with other tea friends and other tea ceremony students. I wasn't developing a preference for that brand or that tea. I have no idea what it was, right? But like, if you know that you're drinking a Pinot Noir from Burgundy, right? You're starting to develop these labels and associating them with the things that you like. So then you can say, oh, you know what? I really liked that. Maybe I want to try a Pinot Noir from California. And same thing with matcha cultivars, as you said.

We need to see more transparency in labeling so that people can develop a set of complex preferences so that this industry can become richer, culturally speaking.

Zongjun (Sam) Li (20:00)
Right, right. I guess this is essentially how, you know, appreciator or sommelier's approach to what matcha is.

Ryan (20:10)
Oh, great segue. So Sam, what Zongjun that's your English name, Sam, for those listeners who might be confused, we have only two people.

Zongjun (Sam) Li (20:12)
ha ha ha ha

Yeah, I have

a separate personality for different...

Ryan (20:23)
When

he's in a good mood, he's Sam. When he's in a bad mood or business mood, it's Zongjun So we alternate.

Zongjun (Sam) Li (20:30)
Right.

Clean label for Sam.

Ryan (20:36)
And I can have a well set of complex developed preferences for these different person. We got to watch out when Zongjun enters the room.

Zongjun (Sam) Li (20:45)
That's

funny

Ryan (20:48)
But Sam, Zongjun, you have your WSET certificate in wine, your level three, which is quite impressive. So you know a lot about wine and I know you were part of some wine appreciation circles when you lived in Shanghai a few years ago. So what if you put that lens on to match up?

Zongjun (Sam) Li (21:06)
Oh,

Weirdly enough. I mean, it's the right amount of knowledge that gets you to know that you don't know a lot. It's just like everything, but you know, it's same thing to matcha. You know, before I start really, you know, get serious into matcha, I'm pretty much a matcha latte drinker.

Ryan (21:18)
Just like everything.

Zongjun (Sam) Li (21:33)
I seldom drink matcha by myself, unless it's required by my Omotesenkei school practice, which matcha is really a sense of relief after sitting in Seisa for like two hours. But for me, just like what we were talking about previously,

Ryan (21:49)
Ha ha.

Zongjun (Sam) Li (21:56)
Matcha for the longest time was pretty much a mystery to me. I don't necessarily have a right knowledge structure to kind of disintegrate or destructuralize matcha as a generic element. I don't necessarily know...

what kind of cultivar, what's the terroir of that very bowl of matcha that I just drank. And I certainly do not really understand what are the labor causes and all the manufacturer processes that goes into producing that very bowl of matcha. And what's the difference between that matcha.

to a different matcha, which they vary probably 10 times in price. But you get, you of course also get a very different sensory experience. The more expensive matcha certainly tastes better than the cheaper ones. But why? That bothers me for quite a long time until I start to learn more about matcha along the way.

Ryan (23:11)
Yeah.

Zongjun (Sam) Li (23:19)
that I don't necessarily learn from Chanoyu schools.

Ryan (23:26)
Yeah, for sure. And you know, I would say it's not your fault, right? That's not what Tea Ceremony is focused on. But, and the ecosystem of matcha vendors around, right, are not like promoting it necessarily either, right? It's not until very recently, really in the past few years, that you start to see this whole new world of labeling and storytelling to talk about the different terroirs and processing and cultivars. I myself, I didn't even realize matcha, like, I...

Zongjun (Sam) Li (23:52)
Um.

Ryan (23:56)
I should have realized, but it was never even a consideration for me that matcha had different cultivars until I was traveling through Southeast Asia and I went to a really great, what they call contemporary matcha bar in Bangkok. I tried tea there for the first time and I was looking at their menu and I was like, whoa, Asahi cultivar, Okumidori, Samidori. I'm like...

Never heard of these names. It's never occurred to me. I've never seen a menu offering different varieties. And I kind of systematically went through and tried all of them and had a light bulb moment because I was like, wow, what if you took the same wine specialty, wine principles or the same specialty coffee principles and just put that over matcha? And I thought it was so fascinating and kind of a shame that it was so opaque.

Zongjun (Sam) Li (24:47)
Yeah, yeah, but nowadays you see that demand more often. I guess it's like a lot of people like me and like you who are, you know, wine drinkers or coffee drinkers, that they already have this, you know, knowledge structure for them to, you know, take approach to objects, to things.

And I think that's what a lot of these new consumers are trying to apply that knowledge structure to matcha. And I think there's a great demand for that.

Ryan (25:22)
So let's break down what that knowledge structure is. So like when you ask a simole or even filter to the lens of matcha, like what effect does Tarwar have processing, cultivar, single origin versus blends? Like what is that knowledge structure?

Zongjun (Sam) Li (25:34)
Right, but I mean first...

Right.

Yeah, yeah. So first, you know, cultivar, you know, cultivar really makes a big difference. You know, different grapes, different, you know, coffee types certainly will provide a very different foundation for flavor to develop. And then it will be terroir It will be, you know, the geographic area where, you know, that crop grows.

So like different countries for coffee, different areas for coffee, different places for wine, different slope, whether the grape is grow on a slope or in the valley and how long the vegetation gets exposed to sunlight. All of these will have a very great impact to the flavor profile.

Ryan (26:30)
Yeah, I know you and I were at a tasting recently. We had two Chablis and I think they were four, grown four kilometers apart. And like one was closer to the river. One was on the mountain and wow, they were different, same producer, same production, same grapes. They were both Chardonnay because it's a Chablis, same vintage, same harvest, just different terroir and like there were different products.

Zongjun (Sam) Li (26:37)
Mm -hmm. Mm -hmm.

Yeah.

Yeah,

different products and also the surrounding environment really matters too. You know, same for Chez Bleu. I have the opportunity to try a Chez Bleu that the vineyard was very close to a lavender farm. And, you know, the wine has this wonderful, interesting floral taste that very much resembles a lot of lavender flavor. So, you know, the environment really makes...

a big difference on the outcome.

Ryan (27:27)
And going back a little bit on cultivar, one, you know, what are cultivars? And two, why do different cultivars exist? Why is that a thing?

Zongjun (Sam) Li (27:38)
Well, I mean, cultivars stands for cultivated variety. Ultimately, they are the same thing, biologically. But they are different because certain genetic traits altered some of the expression of some traits. For example, in tea, you would have different sizes of tea leaves, different colors of the stem.

sometimes it's green, sometimes it's purple. We sometimes refer to them as purple tea in China. They have very different flavor profile outcomes that start giving people the idea of naming them differently. When it comes to some extremes in Chaozhou, when you have Dan Cong tea and...

Dan Cong is a tea category that's highly driven by its fragrance type. And when it comes to extreme, some individual bush will get its own name because the flavor from that very bush tastes very different from other tea around it.

Ryan (28:54)
And I know in matcha specifically around cultivars, some of it is a mixture of just hybridization, or sometimes they just find a tree and they really like it or rediscover some trees and rediscover its flavor characteristics or appearance characteristics, or sometimes even yield. The most common cultivar in Japan is called yabukita. I think it's something around 70 % of tea grown in Japan is yabukita. And it generally tastes good.

and it's fantastic yield and it's very hardy. It's not a very delicate plant where some other cultivars are more difficult to grow, more finicky, kind of like Pinot Noir in wine. You just can't grow it everywhere. And when you do, it requires a lot of care and attention.

Zongjun (Sam) Li (29:42)
Yeah, and nowadays we see a general trend of, you know, planning cultivar or producing cultivars with these very strong umami taste that resembles like the taste of nori or seaweed, which in Japan is considered to be a very, very important indicator of high quality. But outside of Japan, I think that preference really diverged or polarized.

Some people like it and other people, for example, like me, I don't necessarily really like the nori taste.

Ryan (30:17)
Yeah, for certain. It'll be interesting to see in the coming decades how that changes and especially as matcha gets so many new consumers, global consumers, is that going to be a sustained preference in the matcha industry or is that going to need to change? My hunch is that it's going to be less appreciated by foreign audiences.

Zongjun (Sam) Li (30:27)
Yeah, I actually

Yeah.

Ryan (30:43)
I think

most people when they drink savory green tea find it a very strange experience.

Zongjun (Sam) Li (30:49)
Yeah, like common description would be like, you know, like seaweed and grassy Like it's some of the common notes that people associate with unpleasant flavors

Ryan (31:05)
Yeah. And you know, it kind of makes sense, right? If you grew up Japanese, there's a real cultural appreciation for umami flavors. And some of your earliest memories in flavor were around things like dashi or other things that have a lot of umami taste, that you're used to eating nori or kombu and different types of seaweed. There's a lot of exposure and it's generally positive, right? Whereas the seed...

Zongjun (Sam) Li (31:08)
Thank you.

That's right.

Ryan (31:33)
A seaweed note in the States is not a compliment. Or a grassy note, sometimes is, sometimes isn't. And it's those early associations and just the rest of the world doesn't have them. And the Japanese cuisine is so unique that this opaque green foamy beverage that's savory just might not be hitting the same notes for even who, maybe like a self -described macha connoisseur, that they would if they didn't have those early...

Zongjun (Sam) Li (31:36)
Yep.

Ryan (32:02)
childhood memories and flavor exposures.

Zongjun (Sam) Li (32:06)
Yeah, yeah, I mean from a Chinese point of view, the taste of savoury, it has a really strong association with soup or food, like food in dishes. It doesn't necessarily, you would expect that to occur in a drink.

So I guess it's a little off -putting for a lot of international consumers because it's not really a flavor to expect in their drink.

Ryan (32:38)
Even

East Asian consumers.

Zongjun (Sam) Li (32:41)
Yeah, yeah. But I guess it's so common for Japanese consumers because umami is really part of their culture. It's hometown of MSG. Umami is really an important element of their dietary habits.

Ryan (32:58)
Oh

Yeah, exactly.

So that's a bit of the Somalias' background.

Sam, if you were to look at matcha through a historical background as a historian, Like, what is matcha and what was its journey throughout time?

Zongjun (Sam) Li (33:21)
Yeah, so I'll start from China and maybe Ryan you can pick up from when matcha officially enters into Japan. But from Song dynasty, actually the notion of powdered tea really comes from the proto tea ceremony in Tang dynasty when people start to breaking tea cakes.

and mill them into finer chips, and at that time it's not really powder, in a wheel mill. And then they will toss tea into hot water, along with a lot of other spices, like ginger. So it was really like a soup back in the days. Yeah, or chai, really. Actually, it's like chai. You also add salt into the tea back in time, in Tang dynasty

Ryan (34:06)
or like chai.

I chugged it.

Zongjun (Sam) Li (34:17)
Yeah, and people would roast the tea cake on charcoal fire to kind of enhance the flavor a little bit. It was fascinating, you know, to see that kind of ceremonial practice back in the days. And so different from how people drink tea nowadays. But that was, you know, Tang dynasty. And then in Song dynasty,

that evolved into a much more elegant kind of ceremonial practice. Tea gets milled into much finer powder. But it's still very different from matcha that we drink nowadays in Japan. Back in Song dynasty, one of the very important indicators of high quality is how pale the color.

of the foam and the tea soup. The color, the better, the whiter, the better. So like the base material for Mocha back in Song dynasty is probably closer to modern day's Bai Cha, white tea. And I bet the texture is also going to be or would be very different. But we have no ways to verify that because, you know,

Ryan (35:05)
It's the opposite.

Zongjun (Sam) Li (35:33)
Mocha ceremony gets discontinued legally by the first Ming Emperor, Emperor Zhu Yuanzhang. He was born in a very low -class peasant family and worked his way up to becoming the first emperor of Ming dynasty during the World War era in late Yuan.

Ryan (35:40)
No.

Zongjun (Sam) Li (36:00)
So he really had the opportunity to experience how harshly life can be for lower class farmers and people that produce agriculture products back in the days. And he also realized Mocha was really meant for these aristocrats, noble families and monarchs.

Ryan (36:27)
He's very

stuffy, right? Like very elitist.

Zongjun (Sam) Li (36:28)
Yeah, very, very elitist

kind of, you know, culture back in the days. And he absolutely hated that. So basically, and also it was very, very labor intensive to produce Mocha. It really, you know, gives heavy burden for normal, you know, farmers in China back in the day. So he basically legally banned the production of Mocha.

powder green tea in China and switch the culture entirely to loose leaf tea.

Ryan (37:01)
Hmm, fascinating.

Zongjun (Sam) Li (37:03)
Yeah, but you know, it was fortunate or unfortunate, you know, unfortunate for China because we lost Mocha forever. But it was fortunate that, you know, this culture still exists in Japan. And it was brought to Japan by this great monk called Eisai which Ryan will have studied, you know, Japanese tea ceremony longer than...

Ryan (37:13)
No.

Zongjun (Sam) Li (37:29)
I did, so maybe you can provide a little bit of history on that.

Ryan (37:34)
Yeah, well, I'm far from an expert, but I'll pick up on your story and maybe I'll go back a little bit, go back a little bit. And that the spread of tea within East Asia, the earliest spreads of tea were to East Asian countries. And the primary reason why they spread was because of Zen Buddhism. So tea made its way to Korea and Japan originally through...

Buddhist monks bringing it back. And then it was grown and cultivated and produced around temples. So there are records of tea being introduced to Japan before the Song dynasty and the Tang, but it wasn't until Eisai brought it over that it really stuck. And yeah, so the practice evolved and I'm by no means an expert in that early history.

But the person who really cemented it into a ceremony was a guy named Sen no Rikyu really formalized the ceremony. And then when he died, it got his school, his practice, his lineage, got divided three different ways. The front house, the back house, and the house down the road, which later turned into a Omotesenke, Urasenke, and Mushanokōjisenke Yeah, family business got divided.

Zongjun (Sam) Li (38:46)
the family business at a time.

Ryan (38:53)
And, but once it divided, those schools are still around. And Omotesenke and Urasenke are one of them's 14 generations, the other 16 generation. I'm not sure about the third. And then there's also other samurai schools that exist as well. So there's a lot of these institutions that preserve Japanese tea ceremony and they're preserving it to this day.

And some of them have been very good at internationalizing it and spreading it. And I would say that East Asian countries, in particular China and Japan, have a very rich history of using tea as a form of cultural exchange. I know that when Japan went to the Paris World Expo over a hundred years ago, one of their cultural sites was a tea house. And if you look...

at any diplomats or presidents that go to Japan or go to China, right? Tea is one of those cultural exchange elements that people, foreigners, generally encounter and then develop some interest in. Like, you know, a non -negligible reason why modern matcha interest has spread has been Japan, general interest in Japanese culture. And when people go to Japan trying matcha for the first time.

and perhaps having a more open mind to the experience because they're in the country where it's from versus getting this very neon green beverage at their local cafe or something like that.

Zongjun (Sam) Li (40:25)
Yeah,

yeah, certainly. Japan plays a I would say the the only role in spreading, you know matcha internationally or even you know back to China because nowadays being a motcha revivalist in China that got inspired by Japanese tea ceremony and trying to bring back Song dynasty motcha ceremony.

Ryan (40:41)
Yep.

Zongjun (Sam) Li (40:53)
which is very interesting to see.

Ryan (40:55)
Yeah, indeed. Despite it being revivalist, some of the tea looks good. And weirdly enough, because I think it's outside of my experience, if you Google any of these sort of Song Dynasty replica teas that have this white foam, it actually is almost a little off -putting to me. It's like not something that looks very delicious because it's just outside my experience. But I'd love to try it. One foam to me.

Zongjun (Sam) Li (41:16)
No.

Yeah, I mean those films look

thick. It's almost like the colour of the film in a dish washing sink.

Ryan (41:29)
Yes, it does. It's like to me, white foam and tea usually are not a good mixture.

Zongjun (Sam) Li (41:35)
But I heard good things about them from what I've heard. Some of them actually taste pretty good.

Ryan (41:42)
Yeah, now you can totally see it. We need to try it next time we go back to training.

Zongjun (Sam) Li (41:45)
Yep,

let's do it.

Ryan (41:49)
All right, well, let's move on to the botanist perspective. And when you Google what is matcha, one of the first things everyone's going to tell you is that matcha comes from the tea plant and its genus and species is Camellia sinensis. And if you're drinking anything that doesn't come from Camellia sinensis, then it's not tea. So we will get that one out of the way. That's mostly true. And...

Zongjun (Sam) Li (42:11)
No.

Ha ha.

Ryan (42:14)
From the botanist perspective, camellia sinensis can have different cultivars, which Sam, Zongjun, already touched upon. And some of them are recognized by the government. The Japanese government actually keeps a list of these things. And some of them are unrecognized. And there's always new ones coming on through purposeful hybridization or mixing of existing cultivars that way, or even by seed propagation. So Zongjun talked about...

creating different danseong cultivars, which is a type of oolong from northern Guangdong in and around Chaozhou. And most of those are seed propagated. So put another way, the tea trees are allowed to have sex, they have sexual reproduction, and you end up with different genetic offspring, which can have different traits. Sometimes it tastes great, sometimes it's poisonous, or sometimes it tastes bad.

Zongjun (Sam) Li (42:58)
Woo!

Ryan (43:10)
So there's also sort of nature's way of creating variation within tea

Zongjun (Sam) Li (43:17)
That's very interesting. You know, it might be interesting in the future if we can try to shade -ground Camellia assamica.

Ryan (43:29)
Oh, yeah. A familiar sinentist, the Assamica version. Yeah.

Zongjun (Sam) Li (43:33)
Yeah,

Camellia and sinensis of Assamica That will be... I don't know.

Ryan (43:39)
Yeah, I don't know. Yeah, for those who don't know, Assamica is sort of the East Asian tea's cousin. And it grows in much more unfavorable conditions. So in much hotter conditions, drier, it's a more robust, rugged plant. So that's...

Zongjun (Sam) Li (43:58)
Yeah, it's almost

like coffee robusto.

Ryan (44:02)
Yeah, exactly. So it can be grown in places like Kenya, has a lot of Assamica a lot of India grows Assamica, where traditional Chinese varieties would struggle, which prefer higher altitudes, slightly colder temperatures, and just different, they're a little bit more delicate and finicky in their production.

Zongjun (Sam) Li (44:20)
Yeah, when tea was first brought to Japan, actually they end up having a few times of trying because tea dies in Japan initially. They had a hard time finding the right places to grow tea, which ultimately they found Uji. But before them, they were trying to grow tea elsewhere in Japan. It gets too cold.

and tea cannot grow or sometimes it gets too hot and they end up having very different outcomes.

Ryan (44:53)
Yeah, for sure. The tea plant can be very finicky.

Okay, so Zongjun, from a tea farmer's perspective, what is matcha? What makes it different than other types of green tea? You know, what makes matcha matcha from the person who's actually making it?

Zongjun (Sam) Li (45:06)
Yeah,

so I guess this is really one of the key importance or difference between Japanese tea and Chinese tea and between Japanese matcha and Chinese mocha. It's a shade grow. Like all of the most, I would say all of the matcha in Japan are, you know,

when they are farmed in all these gardens for a period of time, usually before picking, 20 to 40 days, the tea bushes will be covered and totally or partially blocked from sunlight. And all these tea bushes without sunlight, they were trying to shoot out these very, very tendered shoots, which are eventually gets harvest.

Ryan (45:52)
you

Zongjun (Sam) Li (45:59)
and gets made into matcha. So this very interesting practice is very unique to Japan. You don't see that elsewhere, you know, in Korea or in China. And the outcome is certainly fascinating. You have these very, very tendered, creamy, you know, savory and almost,

sweet with less bitterness tea leaf that gets mixed into matcha versus in other places in China or in Korea, certain bitterness is desired by the tea drinkers.

Ryan (46:44)
And you know, I'd say another big difference too is the steaming. Most green tea that's gone over the world is not steamed. It's usually pan -fried in some way or sometimes like really hot tumble dry. But matcha is very uniquely steamed, which was originally a Chinese processing technique, but the art was lost in the death of Mocha.

Zongjun (Sam) Li (46:48)
Right.

Yeah,

now it's all walks, usually walked. You basically fry the tea in a giant wok. But back in the days, you steam them to kill the oxidants, to oxidize the tea.

Ryan (47:20)
Yeah, you have to denature what's called PPO, polyphenol oxidase, which is the primary enzyme that will turn a leaf from green to brown.

Zongjun (Sam) Li (47:30)
Yep.

Ryan (47:31)
All right, last but not least, putting it through a traditional lens. So if you were to ask a tea master, what is matcha? Answers that I've gotten are that it's a special powdered green tea from Japan and that it's the main focus of Japanese tea ceremony. It's not like the only focus.

but it's called tea ceremony for a reason. But really what it is, it's a highly ritualized tradition centering around hospitality. And you can almost think of it as like the ultimate act of intentionality. When you learn Japanese tea ceremony, there's a lot of rules. And the more you learn about the rules, the more you learn about their subtle intentions.

like arranging the flowers in a particular way, picking out a certain calligraphy, the way you walk, the way you talk, the way you hold things, your movements. It's all pre -choreographed. And at first it feels very arbitrary, but then you start learning why certain things exist. And I'll never forget this moment. A teacher corrected a student who, you know, it was on some weekend, they were just wearing a t -shirt. And they did a move where they were grabbing a lid.

and they had to go underneath the bowl and then set it down. And this particular student carried it over the bowl and then set it down. And they said, no, no, no, you cannot do it. This move is always under. And someone asked why. And she said, well, in traditional tea ceremony, you would be wearing a kimono. And kimono has these large leaflets coming off. And it would be physically impossible to go over the bowl without

Zongjun (Sam) Li (49:07)
Ah.

Ryan (49:20)
you know, catching that leaflet on

it. So there's all of these little subtle intentions that they slowly teach you over time and they teach you to be very intentional. So, know, matcha and tea ceremony is a mechanism to learn a lot of these ultimate, through a Western perspective, it's like ultimate hospitality and all of the philosophical elements behind it.

Zongjun (Sam) Li (49:46)
Yeah, I mean like for flower arrangement in a tea house, for the calligraphy that gets hand, you know, on the side, they all need to be matched in a coherent theme. Whether it's seasonal, whether it's the occasion of the gathering, they are all in their ways a manifestation of the whole scope.

Ryan (50:09)
Yeah, no exactly.

Zongjun (Sam) Li (50:12)
Yeah, and tea plays a A road, not D road in the tea ceremony, which I actually find it very fascinating because in Chinese tea ceremony, everything is centered around the tea. Like you do all of these things to, you know, the right choice of teapot, the right choice of the water itself, how to age your water,

how to brew the tea, how long do you brew the tea, all of that is for the flavor of the tea. It's for a better tasting cup of tea. While in Japanese tea ceremony, tea is oftentimes not really the center of the spot.

Ryan (50:53)
Yeah,

I mean, Chinese tea ceremony is, or at least modern Chinese tea ceremony, is basically connoisseurship. And like the modern Japanese tea ceremony is like creating an experience. It's very different focuses.

Zongjun (Sam) Li (51:09)
Yeah,

very different approach.

Ryan (51:11)
both equally valid. And you know, and you know, in Chinese there's this character pin and pin cha basically means to appreciate tea, appreciate drinking tea, tea connoisseurship. And we leveraged this character to create our logo, which consists of a very similar shape to pin. And pin three squares that are stacked like a triangle.

Zongjun (Sam) Li (51:19)
Thank you.

Yes.

Ryan (51:38)
And each square character is called ko, and ko means mouth or sip. So san ko is sort of a reference to the appreciation of drinking tea, because you have three mouths make pin together. And also in Japanese tea ceremony, when you're handed a bowl of matcha, you're supposed to drink it in three sips. So,

just like E ko matcha would be one sip of tea, sang ko matcha would be three sips of tea.

Zongjun (Sam) Li (52:10)
Yeah,

triple pan.

Ryan (52:13)
Triple pun. Well, I think that's a great place to end. Thank you for listening. We would love it if you followed us on wherever you listen to podcasts, share it with a friend. Please give us a five -star review if you liked it. And thanks for listening and we'll come out with more content.

Zongjun (Sam) Li (52:17)
Yep.

Yeah, I'll see you in the next episode.

Ryan (52:35)
See you in the future.