What is good matcha? (Part 1)

 

 

 

Ryan and Zongjun
Hello and welcome to the Specialty Matcha podcast. My name is Ryan, this is my cohost Zongjun. Hello. And we're the co -founders of Sanko Matcha Products. Yeah, so we launched this podcast to discuss our learning journey in matcha and share some startup stories and interview experts. And today we're going to ask ourselves the question, what is good Matcha?

*Hello Ryan from the future here. We realized our mic was not plugged in half way through, so you'll notice the audio quality gets better about half way through. Sorry about that.*

A very loaded question. You know, you ask 10 different people in various parts of the industry this question and you'll get 10 very different answers.

And if you're asking someone who's trying to sell you tea, they might give you an answer. If you ask a tea ceremony practitioner, get different framing. If you ask someone who's really deep down the connoisseur ship hole, they might have very different perspective or just some random person that happens to like matcha. What is good matcha? I mean, ultimately it's what you like. But double -clipping into this question, we can rephrase it a little bit. And let's say like, what is high quality matcha?

How do you define high quality? What essentially is quality and what does it mean to consumers? What does it mean to matcha connoisseur? What does it mean to a chanoyu practitioner? Or someone just used matcha as an ingredient for a culinary purpose? Yeah. And what are the objective or subjective measures of quality?

A lot of people will try to define high quality matcha by objective standards. Like it must be grown in Japan. It must be hand picked. It must be shaded for X number of days. It should be used, you should be using a traditional cultivar or a really good matcha cultivar. It should be processed in a particular way. It should only be ground on an ishi usu traditional stone mill. And that's a very narrow definition, but it still doesn't tell us anything about what it tastes like at the end of the day. And if you do all of that and you have a can of matcha and you let it sit around for a year and a half, I wouldn't consider that quality anymore. So there's other factors as well that play into that. So that's the objective side. But what if it was a blind tasting and I gave you a matcha that was one of the best you ever had in your life and you discover it wasn't handpicked, it was actually Chinese, using a Chinese cultivar, that's never been used to make matcha before and it happened to be one of the best matches of your life. Right? Are you going to say that's not high quality matcha?

You have no taste, Ryan. Or not. I mean, like that can totally be a preference. I mean, to me, like some of the like really high quality Japanese matcha with this very distinctive nori notes, it's not necessarily a personal preference for me. So, you know, you can say I have a cheap taste.

On the other hand, some of the organically cultivated or grown matcha with some kind of nuts and seeds and roasted notes, I actually very like it. More the Yame style, with a slight toast at the end. It could be related to my early preference towards Chinese Longjing or Biwo Chun with the slight toasted notes in the green tea. Could be relatable, but you know...

That's my preference and I consider that as an indicator of quality. So if we look to other industries and think like what is good wine, what is good coffee, what is good bean to bar chocolate? You and I have interacted with a lot of experts in the sensory world back when we were doing product development from people whose job it is to sit around and think about flavor all day and how to optimize it. And when you work with professional tasters, they're certainly able to separate

what they would consider quality from their preferences. So I just use an example from the craft beer world. About eight years ago, I did a lot of work in craft beer. It was one of the first industries that we were, at the startup I was working at, that we were trying to sell into. Professional craft beer brewers might not like particular styles. They might not like port beers because they're too bitter, they just not to their preferences. Or maybe there's some very unfortunate brewers out there.

that don't like IPAs, but they have to create them because that's what consumers want. And despite their own personal preferences, they can certainly say, this is a good IPA and this is a bad IPA, despite not liking either. So there's still some social construct to what quality is then. But then what is quality? How can they tell that one is higher quality than another if they're just judging it based on the taste? Yeah.

And the quality indicator can change over time too. Something that today is considered high quality or a point of preference might not be the case a few years ago or a few decades ago. Today, some of the really hot, valued, Islay scotch were not necessarily an indicator of high quality, high -end product.

back when whiskey was still created in the early days. It was a flaw, right? Yeah, it was a flaw. The smoky notes. The smoky notes, all of the water being used in the island of Islay, are inevitably going to be at the time contaminated by peat that's just everywhere.

It's in the earth. It's touching all of the fuel that they used to smoke the malt. You know, like it was not necessarily considered as a good product, but nowadays people chase after them. They got sold, some of the older bottles get sold in auctions for very high price. And it became the new indicator of high quality. But how do you tell when something is high quality?

So the goalposts move for sure, but let's say like right now, pick anything. I don't know, bean to bar chocolate, coffee, matcha, pu 'er tea. What makes something high quality? I guess these quality indicators must be eventually tied to certain taste profile that can essentially have people to develop a preference of.

So different processing methods, they will in coffee or in chocolate, they will eventually affect the taste profile or the texture. Different fermentation time or with different fermentation vessel for Chocor can affect the flavor profile and the texture as well. So all of these, what we call quality indicator must... I guess be tied to certain attributes that can be related or can be detached with one's taste bud. Yeah, so but even when you have that perception and you say, you know, I'm tasting flavors A, B, C, and D and because I'm tasting these flavors, I believe that it's high quality. Why do they believe that it's high quality? Well, that's a very interesting question, Ryan. I would say a formative experience. 

It's what they have been taught that something is high quality, that they have the past experience to associate with, that end up having them consider something is high quality. A lot of these quality indicators and what people think is associating with high quality materials are essentially socially construct. They learned it from somewhere, from something, from someone that they end up having the experience to make any conclusions.

I totally agree. I think, I believe quality is a rather arbitrary social construct that can only be learned in the presence of a community and with other people. And, you know, these groups form, develop preferences, are able to learn where certain flavor profile outcomes come from. So like a good example for that would be like natural processed coffee, right? So not, there's many things that can go wrong when you natural process coffee that can lead to some very weird flavors.

And when you explore the flavor variation in there and you start to tie, this lot that was not dried properly ended up tasting really weird and sour and funky. Whereas this lot, the humidity was low, they dried them very carefully and the flavor profile was very clean, very bright, a lot of tropical fruits, a lot of blueberry notes, et cetera.

They started to associate that with high quality where they could link it back to things that were under somebody's control in the journey of the agricultural product from where it was grown all the way to where it was consumed. And then these groups of people develop preferences and decide what is high in the quality. And I think you have these little communities and like within matcha, you could argue that there are Japanese preferences. People have been doing this for generation after generation are the current gatekeepers because they're in control of the entire process, really, from the tea bush all the way through the cup, or at least through being milled right now, for the most part, with very few exceptions, get to decide what is quality. And they're the most qualified too. They've tasted what the tea tastes like when they steam it for too long. They've tasted what it's like when they pick on a rainy day.

versus a sunny day. They know what the difference is between two weeks of shading and four weeks of shading. They've built up the formative experiences and they have the community to then decide, this is what we would consider high or low quality. But I still believe that to be objective when you're tasting something blind and you've been taught that it's something that's high or low quality, it's still arbitrary to some extent.

Yeah, yeah. Some certain flavor profile or point of quality assessment can really be acquired later through education or through different repeat exposure to the same product. For example, in the very recent natural wine movement we've been seeing going on everywhere in the world, in some of the natural yeast fermentation of red, you get this very abrasive funky leathery notes that a lot of the traditional wine drinkers would consider it as a flaw.

But a lot of consumers love. And a lot of consumers love. It's an entire industry of what would be considered flawed wine. Yeah, yeah. Like if you compare, you know, a naturally fermented Kertury red with a traditional Bordeaux red, side by side, both very high quality by their own standard.

you can have very polarized preference. One group might consider the other group's preference to be undrinkable. I really argue that for some quality indicator and for some flavor preference can be really just educated or acquired afterwards. Me as an individual, as a wine drinker, I totally experienced the shift from a traditional wine drinker to a natural wine drinker.

I can honestly now enjoy both perfectly. Yeah. Well, it's interesting because this is now kind of almost a third camp where, you know, we just like high quality wines that are well produced, right? We don't care if it's natural. We don't care if it's very traditional, right? Like there's a lot of people. I think Dustin Wilson is his name. The founder of Verve Wine and Tribeca is also in the movie Somme and now has a really great restaurant, at least so I've heard. I haven't been yet.

called One White Street, a very great wine list and program. He sits very much in that camp and does a lot of wine education content. He's just about, how do we find really delicious things? But even by his metric, what is high quality wine, whether or not it's natural or traditionally produced, still, to some degrees, who's deciding that?

What makes certain flavor profiles higher or lower quality still right because you could layer on other intangibles, right? Like people really care about their farm. They take care of it. They're out in the fields every day They're touching every grape stories Ryan stories. Yeah anything honestly with a story Can be a quality indicator?

Yeah, quality inflation. Anything that's related to time and effort, you know, can be storified. I mean, you could argue that a lot of the more like luxury chocolate products or luxury coffee products, really, it's just vanity, right? It's just these intangibles layered on top. Yeah, but you know, this is really taking a very de-constructive approach to build all of these.

But still, there are some quality indicators that are really associated with certain attributes that just cannot be ignored, like processing methods, taking dates, cultivars. These can be storified, but they are also hard attributes that had to be used or will be involved in the production of the product.

wine has to be produced from grape. Otherwise it's not a wine. It will be some other fruit wine. Yeah, it's specifically from Venus Venifera. Yeah, beer has to be produced from malt. And you can argue that you can use other materials or even some addition of rice nowadays, as we can see in a lot of the beer production.

But essentially, if it's 100 % made by rice, it's probably a sparkling sake. Or some high fructose corn syrup, for those of you that know that reference. But to some degree, it is fair to make certain quality assessments. It is arbitrary. It is cultural. It is a social construct. But still, we generally know what people like and don't like as consumers. By and large, people tend to like balanced flavor profiles.

where you don't have these very sharp edges and this disharmony in a product. Most consumers don't like things that are really not that balanced. So that is a relatively universal quality indicator that can be used to back your way into what's high quality matcha. Talking with a lot of people who've made new beer recipes or different coffee blends or even cocktails.

or formulated products like a new flavored soda or a new ice cream flavor, right? Everyone is focused on balance. How do we get all of these flavors in proportion in the right ways so that it's really pleasurable? And I'd say lack of bitterness too. I don't really know anyone that really likes their matcha very bitter. Maybe they think they like bitterness because they wanna be able to taste it if they're consuming it in a latte.

But I might argue that it's not really just exclusively the bitterness. It's a full flavor where the total intensity, flavor profile intensity of the product can stand up to being mixed with other things. It's not just the bitterness, even though that could be a pleasant thing. Yeah. I mean, you see bitterness in a lot of other teas or other beverages as actually an indicator of high quality.

Yeah, especially like a lot of the really old tea tree, Gu Shu in Chinese, like a lot of the Gu Shu red tea from Yunnan, super bitter, very astringent. And in some bigger, stronger Italian wine, bitterness and some tanning, so essentially the compound that contributes to astringency is desired to create some sort of a skeleton to hold all the other flavors. So I would argue that maybe one day in matcha bitterness or some expression of bitterness will be an indicator of quality.

It's possible, especially if it's very intentional for specific use cases. And it depends on what it's accompanied by. Perception also differs. You could give two people the same product and they might have very different experiences where they're actually tasting different things based on how well they can disentangle the flavors. If you give a really fantastic, expensive, well -made, washed coffee from Ethiopia to someone, and that's very inexperienced coffee taster, they might just say, wow, I just taste bitter or sour. Or let's go the most extreme of an inexperienced coffee taster. Let's say you give that to someone who's three years old. They're gonna say, wow, this is disgusting, it's bitter, I don't like it, mom.

Whereas you give it to a coffee professional, they're going to taste very different things. They might not even say that they taste any bitterness. It might be sweet to them, fruity, clean, floral. They'll tasting all these other flavors that, you know, to an inexperienced taster are all getting offloaded onto the very limited vocabulary that they have and say bitter.

That's a somewhat of an unfair example because children's taste receptors, especially for bitter, are much more sensitive. So it's a little too extreme, but still, your ability to disentangle what it is that you're tasting and all the different sensory notes leads to very different perceptions, which leads to very different preferences. Yeah, analytical tasting is really an art that requires a lot of experience and vocabulary to be able to describe what you taste.

And, you know, it's not just learning the words, like citrusy, different kind of citrus, gaminess. It's not just learning the words, but to actually have the formative experience to know what those words mean, to be able to really have a successful and a local taste. Yeah. But here's where it gets even more complicated, right? You have these different people who are consuming matcha. They built a preference for it. They like it every day.

people who are very good at deconstructing the flavor and people who, you know, it's just part of their day. They're not really thinking about the taste. It's certainly a very large group of consumers, probably the vast majority of people that consume matcha, right? Like what is high quality matcha? Yeah, and especially what's high quality matcha for them? Because right now a lot of these high quality matcha we see in the market are really high quality matcha for Japanese consumers.

which might really have a very different dietary habit and preference compared to other consumers outside of Japan. So what means high quality or high preference to Japanese consumers might not necessarily translate into other non -Japanese consumers' mind? Yeah, when you grow up eating a seafood heavy diet and miso soup and dashi, you know, bonito, kombu...

all of these flavors, you develop a real preference for them at a young age that like someone in, I don't know, in Chile or in Dubai or in New York or Los Angeles just aren't going to have those formative experiences and might actually have an anti -preference or dis -preference for those types of things.

yeah, I mean like people always say, you know, matcha was originally from China and now it's in Japan. But it was very interesting because we recently, Ryan and I went to Shanghai to visit a longtime tea friend and we actually talked about the Chinese preference to matcha nowadays, especially Chinese tea drinkers and their opinion about matcha. And she shared a very interesting story. So she host a matcha tasting event with her friend recently in her tea house and invited a bunch of their tea drinker friends to come and they essentially taste a very large variety of different cultivars all the way from regular Yabukita to very high quality Asahi. And a lot of the tea drinkers end up didn't like any of them.

Not even the high quality asahi. A common description of what they can perceive with seaweed soup, which is not necessarily really related to a higher quality tea or tea taste profile in the Chinese tea context. Yeah, really varies even across similar cultural contexts, even amongst East Asian preferences.

Yeah, yeah. It's... It's not really very pleasant for them, very unfortunate. And the people were trying to recreate Song dynasty, Mocha nowadays, in a lot of these revivalist movement in China, which they are essentially using a Bai Cha, white tea, to create the experience.

And it was based off from a lot of study from manuscripts back in Song dynasty that actually, you know, no one knows what Song dynasty Mocha tastes like. No one knows what the cultivar is. No one knows what exactly the processing method is, but based on, you know, the description of what Mocha looked like and tastes like at the time, people found that the closest association is actually Bai Cha white tea. And it's very different from nowadays.

Japanese matcha. The foam is a lot thicker, it's a lot paler, and the texture is slightly coarser and with close to zero umami, but a lot of these sweet and very fruity and a little bit of a toasted kind of expression. It's a very different flavor profile. Interesting. So really, likeWhat does it mean for Japanese consumers as a high quality matcha might not necessarily really translate into other consumer cohorts outside of Japan?

Yeah, agreed. So, you know, the entire discussion so far has very much been on flavor profiles, experiences that consumers have when they consume something, whether or not it's blinded, unblinded in a latte, you know, prepared at home. But what if we put quality a little bit different?

in the eyes of a producer. What is high or low quality matcha as a product? All matcha exists in the form of a product. You have different blends from all the older traditional matcha companies like Ippodo. You have newer matcha companies that are coming out with different blends, whether it be like Ooika, Kettle, Johnny Matcha, they have different blends. They also have single cultivar products. And then you also have more commodity products that you, you know, generally they're the type of things that you could find on Amazon or your local grocery store. What does quality mean at the product level versus at the sensory level or what's inside like the actual tea that's making it up?

That's a very interesting question. To what degree you can separate the quality indicator for the manufacturer or the company that produce matcha.in different production segments, whether or not it's farmer, whether or not it's blender, whether or not it's retailer, to what degree you can separate their quality indicator from consumers quality indicator. I mean, like these products eventually need to be purchased by consumer. Means a successful product for the retailer, for the manufacturers is ultimately if these products are liked by consumers.

So I'm curious about your answer, Ryan, but I would argue that the quality indicator of these manufacturers should be looking for needs to be aligned with consumers as well.

Yeah. Well, I mean, we've been talking about this a lot because we're thinking about sourcing tencha and creating our own blends and creating our own products. And consistency is usually the biggest one. Tea is an agricultural product, year to year, season to season. Right?

You're going to have variables that are outside the farm control. And especially if you don't control your own supply chain, you might need to switch suppliers and be able to replicate similar products. So not only are you dealing with variable flavor profiles, you might be dealing with variable supply of what you are able to purchase. And even at the larger ends, most of this matcha, most of this Tencha is sold at auctions. These large tea companies that are creating blends might not even have consistent supply year to year because someone was able to pick up those lots that were produced by the producer they used last year, at least for part of their blend.

Yeah, I guess it really depends on or it really will be defined by what matcha eventually will be or how do consumers really view matcha as. Consistency is a big deal for a lot of other products, for example, like whiskey. Even the single malt whiskey are some sort of in -house, in -factory blend to have a more consistent flavor. But in the wine industry, consumers just accept that the product will be different from year to year. They accept the fact that vintage exists. They accept the fact that terroir can change depending on different weather.

Do we define matcha as a product that's closer to scotch or do we define matcha as a product that's closer to wine? Or should we do both? Yeah, I don't know. It's interesting, right? Because do you control for nature? If you control for nature, you're creating a consistent product. And there's a huge argument that year after year, like, that's a good example, like Moet, champagne, right? They have master blenders that have been around forever that really know how to replicate that every single year. Really shouldn't taste the same. The non -vintage Moet should always taste the same. You could say the same thing about Nescafe. You could say the same thing about Twinings Earl Grey Tea. My grandpa who drinks Twinings Earl Grey Tea every day does not want that product to change. You have consumers where that's really important for it, even at the high end and at the very commodity end.

And then you have this entire other part where you're not trying to control for nature, where you're just celebrating that variance. And it's just part of the consumer journey. And I think it just depends on the industry and the way they communicate it. You see some industries doing it very well where they set those expectations. And wine is a really good example of that. Most producers...

They have a vintage on it, they explain that it changes, this year was a good year, this year was a bad year. It's really been baked into the marketing for hundreds of years. Yeah, a bad example would be beer. Beer is a wonderful bad example. Yeah, very unfortunate because malt is also an agricultural product. Hops are a big problem. And hops too.

The year to year variance can be very high and totally inevitable because of weather, because of... changing to terroir, all things can happen that will result into a very different flavor profile.

Yeah, hops are a nightmare for brewers. A couple years ago, for a couple years in a row, I don't know, from eight years ago to around six years ago, I went to ASBC, American Society of Brewing Chemists, which is a beer conference, and they talk a lot about hops and getting matching hop flavor profiles. It is such a nightmare.

When the craft beer movement exploded in the US and North America and in Europe, there wasn't enough supply. Everyone who had any money was purchasing them on futures. And when you purchase on futures, you're going to get what you're going to get. And there was a huge shortage. And year to year, even very large, well -funded breweries could not have a consistent supply of hops. And even if they did, hops also have different cultivars. You can have centennial, you can have mosaic, which tastes like mangoes and pineapples, you can have more evergreen -like flavors in hops as well from the different terpenes content that's within them. And even within the same cultivar grown in the same place, it's not going to taste the same every year. So when you're drinking your favorite IPA blend, those hops are changing every year. And someone is behind all that, really desperately trying, not working with very much, trying to make it consistent. And, you know, they just didn't set the expectation and quality started to fester a little bit.

I actually have a very interesting story from my first conference there. It was, it was actually like the day after my 21st birthday, I flew to California out to the desert in La Quinta, California for my very first conference ever, let alone it'd be a beer conference after my 21st birthday. Very good timing, Ryan.

I'm pretty sure I was the youngest person there. Are you sure you're really after 21? And, you know, we were chatting with someone from a very large brewery and everyone who attends this conference is all in quality or consistency in some way across the way that beer gets made. And we were talking with someone who was a really high up from a very large brewery, one of the world's largest. I can't say which one, but she was telling us.

you know, all of these American craft brewers, their quality is so low, right? It's like the consistency is so low. And you know, at the time we were, yeah, go specialty, go craft. This is so much more high quality than like quote big beer. And the flavor profiles are more interesting and there's subtlety and nuance. And like this is should be celebrated. So we kind of rode off that comment.

But it was really interesting. Over the years working in the industry with progressively larger and larger and larger food and beverage companies, you realize, one, consistency is really hard. And two, it is what's high quality. And as a consumer, I've completely fallen off the craft bandwagon for a lot of industries, and particularly beer. I want a clean Pilsner. And I don't care how big the brewery was, I just want it to taste the same.

And so many of even these well -funded craft breweries cannot manage to produce a consistent tasting product. And it makes people fall off. And now growth has stopped in craft beer. It was growing like crazy. Growth has stopped. And now everyone's fighting for market share, which is why you see 10 ,000 different New England style hazy IPAs. There's very little innovation, or the innovation is very hyper competitive stealing market share within the category versus growing the whole category. So a great example of poor quality being a serious problem in preventing growth for the whole category.

Interesting final preference for your consumer journey. Say that to yourself back in 2011. Well, I wasn't drinking in 2011. Really? I was 19 at the time. Well, I mean, like, just say this is a result of the trauma doing all these adventurous tasting.

We've tasted a lot of disgusting products, both in product development. I mean, there's a reason why product development is an iterative cycle. Usually you don't produce something very good the first time. Yeah. And let alone have it be to your own preferences. Totally agree. You know, after my 101 instant noodle in Thailand, I'm done for life, I guess, at least for a long time. No, it's interesting how preferences evolve, especially for people in the industry.

I mean, a lot of people who are on the sommelier track talk about, like they grow very dis - personally disinterested in drinking these very complex, very big, bold, rich wines. And they basically drink exclusively Riesling because they want something light and refreshing. And they don't want a lot of flavor or complexity or subtlety or nuance. They just want something good. Yeah. It's very simple. It's tedious.

Because for them, analytical tasting is almost a muscle memory. It's their job. It's their job. And it's really tired to do that every single time. You just want to consume something that can help you relax. The ability to turn on and off your critical lens and tasting when you're in the industry or when you do this a lot or you're really trying to cultivate your preferences for your new matcha hobby is so important.

Like I need to be able to just sit down and enjoy a cup of Nescafe because that's all that's available to me right now. And still coffee and it still feels good. Or a normal bag of tea, like a tea bag, as compared to some really crazy high in the sky specialty product. Like turning that on and off, it just makes you a better human being.

And it's hard actually, you know, not just in the food and beverage world, but I have a musician friend who is a composer. She writes classical music mostly. And after years of studying how to write music, listening to music has forever changed for her. She can actually no longer enjoy some of the music out there. Like she cannot stop but to think about its structure, think about how to recreate some of the chapters and it's tired.

She's discovered that her heaven is secretly turning into hell. Yeah, it's like setting your favorite music as your alarm clock. Well, to bring this back full circle around matcha quality and consistency, like what should it be? Like should we live in two universes where, and you know, the traditional Japanese matcha houses companies that have been around for hundreds of years, they have in -house blenders and like they're really highly certified. And the reason they're so prized it's a prized profession is because they're able to reproduce these same blends, these same flavors year after year after year that a smallish part of the world really wants and has grown a strong preference for and that's what they expect when they're buying products from them. Or are we gonna see with the rise of these single origins, single cultivar where they give you the season and all of like how long it was shaded and all these detail, right?

Are people going to then expect it to, will they be okay accepting that it's not going to always taste the same? Yeah, yeah. I think there is a lot to learn for, you know, consumer, matcha consumer or a matcha manufacturer from, you know, all the other beverage categories like beer and wine and coffee. Like it's forever going to be a dynamic between manufacturers capability and consumer's preference. So I think that there's a lot of things can be done to actually be able to catch both ends of these consumer segments. People who wants consistently high quality matcha or people who expect to have variants from year to year, but still looking for things that they think is good quality, things that they think that they will like. So I think, you know, like There are ways to be able to suffice the demands from both ends.

Yeah. And I think the biggest thing are just setting up expectations and giving new people drinking matcha enough experiences that they're able to predict their own preferences. When you see a foreign coffee list, when you walk in and you read, okay, this coffee is from Colombia. Okay, it's washed. Okay. Maybe it's from Bourbon cultivar, whatever.

Right? Like you can build somewhat of a mental model about whether or not you're going to like that. Or maybe you have a natural process from Kenya and you have had enough coffees to realize, I probably won't like that. Like the last three examples I've had of natural process coffees from Kenya kind of tastes like canned tomatoes to me. But if you're not good at building your own mental model, then that inconsistency is going to move people in an extreme state of exploration away from their bad experiences.

Yeah, I mean, I will argue that, you know, in the consumer's journey that might eventually happen one way or another, you know, in some time of their life, just like you, Ryan, you know, like now you would prefer a simple pilsner. Now you would prefer a simple coffee over a more complex profile coffee or other products. You know, there will be a lot of consumer after years of exploration in the world of matcha decided to really just would enjoy a simple, nice sweet Yabukita at the end of the day.

Yeah, very possible. And I think the world's going to need both and the industry is going to need both. And it's important that everyone able to put in this like educational scaffolding or educational assistance to help people make higher quality choices. Because the problem when everything is a specialty product and you're really celebrating the fact that it's an agro the result of nature and nurture and agriculture, you have an explosion of choices and have options. And when you have so many choices and options, there's a high probability that you will encounter something that you don't like unless you get very good at developing a complex set of preferences.

So like, you know, I guess it's a call to action for everyone in the industry that's selling matcha, single origin matcha, single state, single cultivar matcha that we need to equally put out educational content and sort of buying recommendations about whether or not someone's going to like a product. And it's very possible that, you know, half of the things that are in your catalog, someone just might not like.

And that's okay. And we need to steer those consumers away from those products towards something that they will like more. Versus just saying, here, everyone try this. It's very good. And it's good because I said so because it's high quality matcha grown in Japan, shade grown, hand picked. You should like it.

Yeah. To a certain degree, some sort of condescending-ness  could really push consumers away. They might decide that, you know, maybe matcha is not for me. You know, with such high value, high -end matcha, I still don't like it. Maybe I just don't like matcha, which is probably not the case. There might be, you know, other flavor profiles in other category, in other cultivar, in other tea production region in Japan or even outside of Japan that might be suitable for your preference.

Yeah, absolutely. So quality matcha, what is high quality matcha?

You know, I don't really know. Do we really have an answer, Ryan? There's a grand conclusion to this. People like what they like and quality is a social construct. And it's actually quite complicated when you lie it all out. And I'm sure there's some stuff we missed. But it's ever evolving and we should always listen to the consumer. We should always listen to ourselves. Yeah, absolutely. And other producers and people selling it, people growing it.

So if anyone listening has any strong opinions on this topic, we'd love to hear from you. Bring on a more diverse set of perspectives and kind of let these ideas breathe. So which is what this podcast is all about. Thank you for listening. This is all we have time for today. And be on the lookout for more content. And if you liked it, please share it with a friend. Give us five stars and follow it wherever you follow podcasts. All right. I'll see you in the next episode. See you. Bye.