Ceremonial Grade Matcha is Dead, Long Live Ceremonial Grade Matcha

 

 

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

Zongjun Li (00:02)
Hello, hello.

Yeah, so we launched this podcast to discuss our learning journey in Matcha, share our startup stories and interview experts. So today we are going to talk about the long -wanted death of ceremonial Matcha.

Alright, so the discussion today is more about sharing our opinion about the topic. So, Ryan, what do you think about it?

Ryan Ahn (00:35)
Yeah, so we wrote it as an opinion piece and kind of purposely made it sharp in its nature. We tried to consider different sides of different arguments, but we're very against the terms ceremonial -grade matcha. So the article outlined it saying that ceremonial matcha is dead, but long -lived ceremonial -grade matcha, which is our way of saying it shouldn't exist anymore, but its existence was very useful.

Zongjun Li (01:03)
Yeah,

Ryan Ahn (01:03)
and now it's kind of an out of date term. So.

Zongjun Li (01:06)
it serves the historic purpose.

Ryan Ahn (01:11)
Yeah, it's kind of outlived its life and it's probably potentially doing more harm than good. And we'd love to hear other people's perspectives on this. So if you're listening to this and you very much disagree, we'd love to hear from you. We'd even love to have you on the podcast to have a more open and formal back and forth to discuss the merits of the term ceremonial great macha.

The crux of the argument that ceremonial matcha is dead because it doesn't mean anything. It is a term that's not regulated. There's no particular government body in Japan or some tea organization in Japan that says, you know, this is now ceremonial grade matcha. And there's this connotation behind the word ceremonial grade that tea ceremony practitioners endorse this product.

this product is good enough to be used in a tea ceremony. And that's just not true. We both know that if we give some of that to an Omotesenke teacher or an Urasenke teacher from some of the lesser brands, they'll taste it and be like, whoa, what is this?

Zongjun Li (02:07)
Yeah,

like the lack of regulation and the legal

connotation of such term is really, you know, it doesn't mean anything anymore. Like everybody can label their, you know, what they think is a bad or macha ceremonial grade. But, you know, your ceremonial grade compared to my ceremonial grade might be like totally different from, you know, all aspects.

Ryan Ahn (02:50)
And when you commoditize something all under that same label, that same umbrella, it's a race to the bottom. The incentives are to make it then cheaper. Because if you're distinguishing yourself by the fact that it's ceremonial grade, right, the consumers are cost conscious, businesses are cost conscious. If you're a cafe and you're telling your consumers, I serve ceremonial grade matcha, right, your job as a steward to that business should probably to be to find the cheapest one that

the best in that application. Or maybe even the taste is secondary, it needs to just be good enough. But let's say that supplier disappears one day, you could easily swap that out and still make the claim that it's ceremonial grade. So it really commodifies what could be a very rich and thriving specialty market for matcha.

Zongjun Li (03:38)
So Ryan, how would you segment the consumer market outside of Japan based on their expectations of existing matcha classification?

Ryan Ahn (03:47)
There's a lot to unpack there. the consumer's educated. So you have some consumers that realize that ceremonial grade is a meaningless term. And then they have to start sorting through other data. Where was this matcha made? Who made it? How long was it shaded? What was the cultivar? Was it first harvest or second harvest? Second harvest is usually in the summer.

and is generally worse. And they'll have to start relying on other labels. So there's definitely a large and growing segment of the market that realizes it's completely false. For people who are just getting into matcha, when they read the term ceremonial grade, it's a self descriptive name. It's good enough that it can be used in tea ceremonies and you should be able to drink it and it should be palatable with just water. Because unfortunately,

Traditional Japanese tea ceremony hasn't evolved into latte creation just yet. I it might take a couple hundred years for them to make any change that's that large. And so, you know, they're expecting something that's good, that's shade grown. And when you look on these different websites of how to recognize ceremonial grade matcha, what to look for,

Zongjun Li (04:44)
Ha.

Ryan Ahn (04:59)
Right, you know, they're talking about very basic things that people can easily tell, like the color, some basic things about the taste, that it was shade grown. Sometimes people will say it needs to be handpicked or stone milled. And traditionally, that's the case. But the reality is most matcha that's labeled ceremonial grade is probably not handpicked. It might have not been shaded for very long. And it was...

probably not 100 % stone milled, or part of it was stone milled and it was blended in with more industrial milling like a ball mill.

Zongjun Li (05:34)
Right. So if you were to install a grading system into matcha, what would be the criteria? Or if a grading system will ever make sense for consumers?

Ryan Ahn (05:50)
These grading systems have an interesting history. And it's largely to protect a region or to protect a particular type of heritage. So if we look at the wine industry or like Bordeaux, you have different appellations. So you have like Bordeaux wine, which is like sort of a much larger classification system. But within there, you can have different ones. So to have wine from like Saint -Emilion, for example,

Zongjun Li (05:59)
Right.

Ryan Ahn (06:17)
There are very specific rules about when you can harvest. And these rules apply to everyone, but they also change year to year. And actually, a lot of them are changing to adapt to climate change around how much you can irrigate, around when and how you can use fertilizer or pesticides. And it has some utility in protecting the brand name of the region that it's from.

where they have great control over these very bio -regional products. So there's a lot of utility there. On the other side, there's a lot of harm. There's a lot of innovation that cannot happen under those classification systems. So if you look at the wine industry, there's a lot of criticisms of these classification systems because you could make decisions in the vineyard or in production that would yield higher quality.

Zongjun Li (07:10)
Okay.

Ryan Ahn (07:14)
but you're not allowed to because they fall outside of the rules of the classification systems. And there's a really interesting winery in Spain that was just allowed to be labeled as Spanish wine, I think, but it wasn't allowed to hold any other labels or classifications because they just wouldn't listen to the rules. And it was just like some fantastically produced natural wine that were doing much more innovative techniques that are not accepted by the old guard.

Zongjun Li (07:42)
Yeah.

Ryan Ahn (07:44)
To the extent to which

this makes sense in matcha, I actually think we're not the right people to be speculating on that. It's the farmers and the regions that have their own names to protect.

Zongjun Li (07:56)
Yeah,

or if a grading system will ever make sense. Like, you know, like for example, if you look at some of the region classification system, right, like you have sometimes like the village tier, the DOCG tier, the DOC tiers, and some of the like the region has been installed for like hundreds of years,

And that has never been changed. And historically, you have some vinyards in those regions that are doing fantastic, but not anymore in the modern era. And some of the lower tier wineries in the village area are starting to catch up and doing sometimes better than the more prestigious regions.

So such regional classification system might not make sense in long term as well.

So I would argue that a grading system will probably never make sense for like just about anything. Like things change, people's preference change. And I think the only thing that would make sense is transparent labeling. Like we labeled the area, we labeled the cultivar, we labeled the processing method, and we let the consumer to decide, you know, what their preference are and, you know, what they think is a higher quality matcha versus not.

Ryan Ahn (09:09)
Yeah.

I feel like classification systems in general need to be top down and posed. It is really hard. Unless some government or some local body is saying you are not allowed to sell this as this thing, unless you do X, Y, and Z, it's just not going to work. You can't get everyone to agree on the same classification systems and you just end up, you know, with a big mess of people using different labels or making up their own classifications.

and defining it themselves and it makes it so we don't have a vocabulary to talk to each other. Whereas these like really transparent labels that you see like in coffee, for example, it's a very organic approach. It's very bottoms up. You know, there's nothing complicated about listing the altitude that it was grown at, cultivar that it was from, the way it was processed. It just is a more descriptive transparent label.

Zongjun Li (10:08)
Yeah,

or let's say how fine the powders are can also be a good criteria too. I think it's...

Ryan Ahn (10:25)
Yeah, and the way it was

milled.

Zongjun Li (10:28)
Yeah, I think it's some of these more neutral criteria that's listed on the label that provide enough information for a consumer to make any decisions during purchasing scenarios that they can organically come up with their own system to decide which one is better than the other.

Ryan Ahn (10:54)
Yeah, they set their own standards. So that's a lot of critique so far of the term ceremonial -grade matcha. But, Zongjun, what's a case or an argument to be made about why it's been useful so far?

Zongjun Li (11:07)
Well, I mean, for matcha to be consumed, there are a lot of different ways. And you gotta have some sort of indicator of whether or not it should be used as a culinary ingredient or for drinking consumption, like for making a matcha drink or just drink the matcha by itself. So...

I think that historically it has been useful because you might end up buying some really low quality matcha from Amazon that are meant to be baked in an oven for 200 degrees to make into a cookie versus something that you can comfortably mix with milk. So I think on that end, it served its purpose of...

helping people make the decision whether or not you should be using this matcha for what kind of purpose.

Ryan Ahn (12:05)
I totally agree.

So, Zongjun, is there a universe where ceremonial -grade matcha can coexist with what's, we'll call it specialty -grade matcha, where it's labeled just like coffee, where it's from, the cultivar, the way it was milled, and all that other, all those other pieces of information that make it very useful to make some sort of quality assessment? Can these terms coexist? Are they going to be in conflict?

Or are they just talking to two different audiences? Like, how do you view this?

Zongjun Li (12:36)
Yeah, I think they're going to have to coexist for at least the near future as we are trying to come up with more criteria in describing what a can of matcha really is versus you still have a lot of these legacy baggage that ceremonial matcha is already an installed term in consumers' minds.

that people will still inevitably trying to look for such thing whether it's on the internet or on the supermarket shelf but at the same time I don't think it's in conflict of having a more detailed labeling of different matcha What do you think, Ryan?

Ryan Ahn (13:25)
Yeah, I totally agree with the sentiment that it's just legacy baggage. They will have to coexist. I mean, unless like the US government or some other government comes in and creates a classification system and labeling standards, which is very unlikely, it's all going to have to coexist. And it will continue to confuse a lot of consumers, I think. And the other really dark side of the term ceremonial grade is that I think it helps contribute to the...

I don't know what call it, like the stuffiness that people associate with matcha and the complexity of its preparation. It's like, oh, I don't really understand the tea ceremony. There's so much more history here. And it makes it sort of this high in the sky thing where it doesn't need to be. It doesn't need to be so complex. And it doesn't need to even be tied to ceremony for anyone to enjoy it. So the fact that the best matcha on the market that you can buy,

Now, with very few exceptions, some new vendors are dropping that term, but most of them use ceremonial grade and it links it to tea ceremony and tea ceremony equipment and philosophy and expectations and standards. My feeling is that it's really holding it back from the type of renaissance that we've seen in specialty coffee.

Zongjun Li (14:33)
. .

Right, maybe we should come up with a smarter name to replace that, because that kind of consumer recognition will still be, I guess, inevitable in the future, you know, especially, you know, in the beginning of their education or, you know, knowledge journey of matcha, like people who just got into matcha doesn't necessarily know anything about you.

altitude or how long it has to be shade -grown or the fineness of the powder, what's good or what's bad, or what kind of region the tea bush has been grown. They don't necessarily have that kind of knowledge to make an early decision on what's good and what's bad. So some kind of very surface indicator of the quality might still be necessary.

Ryan Ahn (15:46)
Yeah, for sure. Although I mean, I think specialty matcha is a decent like umbrella term to describe the idea of very transparent labeling. And you know, I think it's really important so that consumers can predict their own preferences. I mean, exactly as you said, they might not understand the cause and effect relationships between the cultivar, the way it was produced, how long it was shade grown, the way it was processed, the way it was milled. But...

in order for there to be a thriving specialty market, they'll eventually have to make those connections. And that's the depth and breadth that makes any hobby around tea fun, is understanding that variation and exploring it and celebrating it. That's what specialty matcha is. If consumers get burned enough time, because they're not able to...

have a good enough mental model of what to look for on a label, and they buy something, and they spent $40, and they didn't like it, as a consumer, you're only willing to do that so many times before you fall off the bandwagon.

Zongjun Li (16:48)
Thank you.

Just once, most of the time.

Ryan Ahn (16:57)
Yeah.

I mean, also, so you develop a set of complex preferences. If you not to hate on any of the very traditional original matcha brands that are very well respected and have been in Japan for hundreds of years, they have very poetic names that are hard to say. And I'm sorry, most people are not building a relationship or a preference for like a six syllable name in Japanese that actually is some poetic meaning.

You're just not. And they all have these weird names that are hard to remember. You don't know what's inside. And they don't allow you to develop any set of preferences about what you like or dislike. They're mysterious blends.

Zongjun Li (17:41)
Yeah, it's quite the opposite of what specialty product should be. this man -made barrier of any preference development.

Ryan Ahn (17:56)
So, Zongjun where do you foresee we'll get the most pushback? The article is titled, Ceremonial Macha Grade is Dead, Long Live Ceremonial Grade Macha, purposely quite provocative. where would people disagree with this sentiment?

Zongjun Li (18:11)
So I think the most pushback will probably come from vendors or people that have already invested a lot of effort in installing the idea of ceremonial matcha into consumers' mind. So they will probably get a little bit annoying because as we're trying to promote the new standard of transparent labeling, they will inevitably be...

spending new effort and more money into trying to either come up with a description to match with what people wanted to know in the future, or they need to fight against that trend, which will also be a costly journey.

Ryan Ahn (19:02)
Yeah. No, I agree. I think the biggest pushback will be from people who have a vested interest in keeping this term alive, primarily because they've used it for so long. And I think what's going to end up happening is you're going to have a new generation of matcha companies exist that are just going to look and feel different. They're not going to use that term. In fact, you're already seeing it. They're not going to use that term, and they're just going to start doing transparent labeling.

You have companies like Ooika you have companies like Kettl. Kettl wrote an article recently talking about the fact that they don't use ceremonial grade term as a term anywhere on their website. No matter how bad that will hit them on SEO rankings, they decided just to drop the term altogether. For similar reasons that we're talking about, it's just a meaningless term.

It's kind of like how third wave coffee or specialty coffee separated from more second wave coffee from companies like Peets and like Starbucks, Third wave coffee uses a different vocabulary. You don't see in a specialty coffee shop, light, medium and dark roasts, You just see different cultivars or different blends.

or you know things optimized for espresso versus filter coffee really celebrating the fact that coffee is the seed of a fresh fruit and exploring all the flavor variation that can exist within it. So they really developed a new vocabulary and a new set of things to differentiate their products and their offerings where those the old guard was still talking about light medium and dark roasts.

So it's, and you know, the reason that that's bad from, if you're starting with very good coffee, if you roast it very heavily, it's a lot of that nuance, subtlety and nuance inherent in those beans is gonna disappear and just the roasted flavors are going to get expressed. So no one takes fantastic base material and roast it very heavy because it's still gonna just end up tasting like any other darkly roasted coffee.

Zongjun Li (20:47)
Yeah.

Yeah, but even with that, trying to grade coffee based on roastage is still infinitely better classification than ceremonial grade, which you only have ceremonial grade.

Ryan Ahn (21:24)
Could you imagine if coffee, if you had a ceremonial grade coffee or really any other product, it's just a ridiculous term.

Zongjun Li (21:32)
Yeah, it's not really a classification system or grading system. You have a culinary grade and ceremonial grade and that's it. You don't even have a tier within ceremonial grade for people to decide what's better than the other. So I would doubt that the legacy baggage would be that heavy for people to get over it.

Ryan Ahn (21:38)
No.

Yeah.

Yeah, I mean, yes and no. I mean, it's also the first thing that people learn about. Anyone who wants to get into matcha, there's a hundred articles for you online to help you determine whether or not the matcha you're drinking is ceremonial grade. And then a bunch of affiliate links so that they can get their commission on whatever blog post that was. It's like at the very top of the funnel in like awareness and education about matcha.

Zongjun Li (22:26)
I agree.

Ryan Ahn (22:28)
I mean, everyone who wants to get into it, you know, it's natural to think, okay, what is good matcha? And when you answer that question right now, that is the very first thing that you come across. Until very recently, only the past couple of years do you start to see these newer companies break out and really change the discussion.

Zongjun Li (22:40)
Thank you.

Ryan Ahn (22:46)
I think they deserve a lot of credit. I that took a lot of time and this whole movement idea of transparent labeling and specialty matcha is going to take a lot of time. And it's unclear who the first early adopters will be.

Zongjun Li (22:51)
Yeah,

but thanks to our peers, you know, within the matcha industry and also, you know, from coffee and wine and other specialty product that we have.

at least a benchmark to reference. It's not like we're trying to create something out of the blue. Such grading systems, such classification system already exist in other specialty product. We just need to relocate that into matcha.

Ryan Ahn (23:21)
Yeah.

Yeah, to link back to the last podcast episode, it's about using existing knowledge structures and having them be useful to put that scaffolding in place to build up sort of what comes next in matcha.

I was talking with a food professional in the early days, early 2000s. She was selling matcha to health food stores. And kind of back when Whole Foods was really cool, like way before the Amazon acquisition days, it's where consumers went to be educated on new healthy products.

And she was telling me that it was actually a very easy sale. Those Whole Foods buyers already knew, or Whole Foods Whole Body, the Whole Body section focused specifically on health. They knew what L -theanine was, they knew what catechins were, EGCG. They understood the health benefits, even extrinsic to matcha. And it was a very easy sell. And like matcha really in the early 2000s exploded across California and in Vancouver as well, and then spread to the rest of North America.

Zongjun Li (24:35)
Okay.

Ryan Ahn (24:42)
particularly through health food stores, and then really caught on a lot of steam in 2013, 2014. So right around the same time when we started learning matcha, about matcha and about tea ceremony. And then what you start to see was a bunch of low quality matcha enter the market around that peak. And then people were really pushing ceremonial grade, ceremonial grade, because this really low quality stuff.

Some of it from Japan, some of it from mainland China entered the market and it made a really bad first impression on people. They would taste it, say, matcha's not for me, I don't like this. And part of the reason why is, you know, probably wasn't shade grown, wasn't great base material, it was all industrially ball milled. So everyone really leaned in hard to the term ceremonial grade matcha to differentiate those products. And it's not now until the past few years that you start to see people break away from that.

as more and more farmers in Japan are finishing their products as single cultivars to be purchased. Because if you also go back to the farm level, most of the time people were producing tencha or the precursor to matcha to be either blended or sold to another guy to blend. They weren't necessarily finishing it as a complete product.

Zongjun Li (26:03)
Yeah, that's all very interesting. So we said a lot about what ceremonial matcha should be or should not be, or what potential classification system can we use. But I guess by the end of the day, it's still for the consumers to decide which one they wanted to go for. I think our job is to really...

provide the knowledge and lead in the path and for you know, consumer to decide which path they want to necessarily work on.

Ryan Ahn (26:37)
Yeah. Well, actually, I think vendors are going to have to be the ones to do it too, right? Because a lot of the matcha education happens at the vendor level and describing what differentiates their products. So if, you know, if a single cultivar matcha isn't for sale, there'll be no consumer demand for it, most likely. So it's a push and pull.

Zongjun Li (26:59)
Yeah, we will see what will happen in the near future.

Ryan Ahn (27:04)
All right, I think that's all we have time for today. Thank you for listening. You can find this podcast anywhere you listen to podcasts and please share it with the friends. And I think we have very few ratings, so they gave us five stars. That'd be great. We're gonna produce more content and looking forward to it and take care.

Zongjun Li (27:18)
Let's go!

Maybe a start system works for classification. Five star matcha, that's what I want.

Ryan Ahn (27:29)
Five stars.

Only five stars.