Debate: What should Uji matcha be?

Ryan · 0:06

Hello and welcome to the Specialty Matcha Podcast. My name is Ryan. This is Zongjun Li who also goes by Sam. Hello, hello. And we're the Co founders of Sanko Matcha Products. Yeah, we launched this podcast to discuss our learning journey, Matcha, share startup stories and interview experts.

Ryan · 0:20

And today we are debating what should Uji Matcha be. So for those of you that haven't listened to our previous content, we have released a piece on what is and was Uji Matcha, which was an editorial conversation on a five-part Substack post that we did called Ujinomacha, the inconvenient truth behind Japan's most mythologized tea label.

Zongjun · 0:44

So this is the end of the series of the deep dive that we have done on Uji Matcha. Oh, I don't know Sam, do you take a side one way or the other for debating? Like what should Uji Matcha be? Or are you? Yeah, it's so it's difficult. So before we start this podcast, Ryan and I were talking about the setup being like with flip a coin. And then each of us will literally pick a side and then debate over each other.

Zongjun · 1:12

But after some thoughts, you know it, I think it's much easier if we if we just talk over, you know, each other's point because at least for me, I can see like merits on both sides and also a lot of shortcomings too. So it's kind of complicated to unwrap.

Ryan · 1:28

Before we dive into it, just to give everyone a brief summary of what's been said. First of all, just an acknowledgement. A lot of content is going to be repeated in this episode. We'd like to think that ideas get more refined, more articulate, and that we're able to synthesize these arguments better after we have made them X number of times. So heads up, there's not a whole lot of new information other than new and what we hope to be fresh framing of these issues. But the broader context is, is that Uji Matcha, the provenance of tea labeled as Uji Matcha is really diverse. Some of it actually comes from

Ryan · 2:08

Uji, Some of it comes from towns that are nearby Uji, but some people are willing to die on the hill. But it's also Uji or the Uji region. You have the trademark definition, which was established in 2004. And then you have sort of this expansive blend rule where you can take anything from the trademark definition zone. And so long as it's at least 50% of the material, you can blend in other tea and still call it an Uji Matcha blend. So that's a lot of definitions that don't agree with each other.

Ryan · 2:39

And you have the orthodox Uji definition, which are frequently made by Uji tea farmers that are literally in Uji arguing that you know, it should really be Uji grown tencha. That's right. And then you can add a, you can add a temporal layer on top of this and say, OK, this is the variety of the provenance that we see being labeled as Uji Matcha today, which legally, to the best of my knowledge, there's no reason why you couldn't import tencha from mainland China and have it be 1 of the components of a quote Uji Matcha blend. So the provenance could be a blend even coming from multiple countries today.

Ryan · 3:23

That was almost certainly not the case 30 years ago. And then the further you wind back the clock, the definition of the OR the provenance of the tea that was being labeled as Uji Matcha has changed. But then you can go back and layer on various levels of historical argument about what Uji Matcha was. And when you go backwards, then you can kind of project forward to what should it be, which is, you know, the conversation that we want to have now.

Zongjun · 3:51

That's right. So if we really rewind the clock back to, you know, the definition of modern matcha, which is, you know, has to be milled from tencha and tencha has to be cultivated under a shading condition. You know, the Uji farmers had the most legit point.

Zongjun · 4:07

This type of tea that's very well defined can only be legally produced in Uji back in the days that are supervised by all these chashis which were serving the shogunate at the time. So do you think we should pick their side by it?

Ryan · 4:25

Well, yeah, you're right. Historically for hundreds of years, matcha and its current definition, which I guess we should define before we even we start talking, needing to be from shade grown tencha, which is steamed de stemmed and deveined green tea that's been shaded, you know, only came from one town in Uji, but shaded cultivation was literally prevented anywhere else. And for hundreds of years, all, the, not only all the Uji Matcha in the world, all of the matcha in the world came from one town that was basically its own form of, had its own form of government protection, government controlled monopoly of state development.

Ryan · 5:09

And then that's all slowly started to unwrap as the state literally changed as we moved into the Meiji period. And then things started to loosen up. And then it's gone through various waves of consumer bases too. The consumer base for matcha has changed meaningfully 3 times one being the elites of the Edo era.

Ryan · 5:27

That huge change when the schools, particularly Urasenke, Omotesenke gained a lot of ground, especially through the government campaign, good wives and wise mothers where it was taken up as part of bridal training and girls schools, education and etiquette. And then you could argue there's a quote, UN quote, 3rd wave of matcha consumers being sort of global practitioner base, global consumption base.

Zongjun · 5:51

We see today where you know, you can be in Paris, Dubai, New York, Santiago, Chile and you know, have a great matcha latte. So it's. Very top down movement if you think about it. But the last movement is like much more grassroots or you have a bunch of don't have all this context. Why not necessarily all the history or or the culture of it that are taking it up, which it's it's the world we live in now, but the way that Uji cha trait, the way this Uji cha name has evolved through the these levels of practitioner bases too.

Ryan · 6:29

It's worth considering. And you know, Sam, this brings me back to exactly the the podcast episode that we adore so much. What do you care about? It's so perfectly on air. Or or who? Who do you identified you are? Because like, if you pick team Uji farmer and you literally will not be able to drink matcha or Uji Matcha ever again, that will go back to, you know, the shogunate era and those tea will certainly be reserved by a very, very, very small group of people.

Ryan · 7:04

And and this will forever be a myth to the majority of the population. The fact that you are be able to drink Uji Matcha or actual Uji Matcha for that matter. Like you can you can still go to Uji and buy Oji Qimen (keemun) and a bunch of other producers in a fairly reasonable price.

Zongjun · 7:23

It's because we are having the current systems being set up in Japan. So like it's like, what do you care about? Actually, if you do end up picking the side and had have the ability to change the reality, then you are literally, you know, cutting yourself out from some delicious tea. Yeah, that's true.

Ryan · 7:46

It was so exclusive for so long. Shawn are you? And Shawn are you? Narrative enthuse modern marketing brands all over the place. People talk about Ichigo, Ichi AE or One Moment, One Time. People talk about San, people talk about meditation.

Ryan · 8:01

People talk about the beauty of simplicity and, and rusticity and sort of this dignified poverty look of wabi sabi. And you know, these intentions are all great, but the there's a huge reality is that, you know, during the formative years, the invention of essentially Uji Macha and during this period of state controlled monopoly, it was not for the every man or the every woman. You know, it was it was a highly exclusive tea. It was extremely expensive.

Ryan · 8:34

And despite what these traditions say about inclusivity, and you know, everyone has to bow before going in the tea room's little door to show that everyone is equal in this tea room. And, you know, there's all sorts of these little stories in China you about, you know, peasants being invited or fisherman's being invited to, to come to tea ceremony. The, the reality on the ground is that it was, say, probably a very elitist and sexist institution or institutions or cultural practice is another way to put it. So if you purely care about accessibility inequality, you're right.

Ryan · 9:10

We have never been in a better time for matcha. Like let's take a what is the most Uji matcha we can think of? For me, it's probably from Horisishimayan Okunuyama tea garden. Let's say the Okuniyama cultivar, which we we know comes from Uji native Zai Rai from a 400 year old plant and where they have cuttings of this cultivar still grown. And one of the oldest known plots in Uji that date back to Ujisishimayan, the state controlled monopoly as part of one of the seven famous tea gardens of Uji. You can buy that tea at Horatio Saman. I think it's 35 or 40 bucks and I'm pretty sure you can buy it online.

Ryan · 9:51

And anyone in the world, if you take into account shipping, you know, can buy access this tea for let's say between 50 to $100 to their door, whether or not you live in Norway or South Africa or like anywhere. That is crazy, right?

Ryan · 10:10

This accessibility, if you exist, in order to have consumed a product like this hundreds of years ago, you would have literally had to win the genetic lottery or what Warren Buffett would call the divine right of the womb.

Ryan · 10:26

That you would, if I'd have been born a family in the right circumstances with enough money and good fortune. And I probably had to prepay for your tea to get it, as then tensha. And then you would have one of your servants mill it into matcha for you where you had your tea syrup, where you pretended to live in this dignified poverty. It's just not the realities of what this was. And just from an accessibility point of view, what Uji Matcha has turned into now is a beautiful thing, the fact that it's even accessible.

Ryan · 10:58

But Sam, I feel like we're steering, of course, a little bit. So like if we were to debate, let's take the most conservative definition where Uji Macha needs to come from, Uji Gron Tancha, and the least conservative definition, which is Uji Macha is a processing culture.

Zongjun · 11:15

And a culture of processing tensha and blending it into a product and that theoretically, it can be made from, you know, other material. And a slightly more conservative definition might be the Yamashiro region or the towns that were more geographically close to Uji and that had supplied blend houses for let's say around 100 years because no one was growing potential there until around the 20th century.

Zongjun · 11:44

But they were supplying sentia and other teas that were purchased and blended by Unji Machika. So there is at least a culture of exchange going on within this Yamashiro region, which includes counties like JoJo, like Wazuka and like Kyoto Nabe, among others.

Zongjun · 12:00

And then the most expansive definition, which I feel like you and I like tend to lean towards sometimes when we talk through arguments in this podcast, that it's really just a processing culture. And that because matcha is not very terroir driven, which we can get into in a bit, it can theoretically be grown anywhere. And that all matcha after, you know, the fall of Edo, the fall of the Shogun, it's kind of Fujimacha, at least in spirit, because that's where that whole culture was originally invented anyway.

Zongjun · 12:31

So even these, you know, companies setting up in China. And Korea. Are some ways legacies of this quote Fujimacha tradition and have some claim the same way that these Yamashiro towns do or the prefectures bordering Kyoto prefecture like me A or Shiga etcetera?

Zongjun · 12:48

Yeah, or they can, they can be somehow linked back to, you know, UJI or company, key companies in WUJI, right. It's either through education or training or Commission or, you know, all these market procurement contracts and all that. And it's literally a organic expansion of UJI. That's, you know, that that's being called Uji matcha at large, but it's really a a wooji system, a wooji culture that we are seeing.

Zongjun · 13:20

But yeah, there are a lot of sites that you know, that a lot of different definitions we can explore. But I feel like that if you really care about these definitions and the truth of these claims behind anyone that made such a statement on either of these definitions, the only really traceable and verifiable definition will be the OGT farmers that you trust. Obviously because they are physically there, you can physically see all those teeth and all of the other definitions lacks a regulatory entity or very very verifiable truth. Like you know they tell you how much portion of their tea or blends that are.

Zongjun · 14:03

Infrequently they will tell you, but if they do are coming from, you know, some certain regions you know in Kyoto Prefecture. But how do you actually know that? There's no way you can really verify those information. If you look at my product positioning, people don't tell you what they believe the Uji Macha definition that they're using is, right. Some people, it's from Uji Gron Tansha, and sometimes they tell you that for other people, they say it's single origin. And you can tell that whoever is selling and marketing and positioning the product really has no clue about how complicated the network of

Zongjun · 14:41

provenance is for the Fuji Matcha label, right? Like honestly, our first trip into Japan, we were handed tons of priceless and like you go to producers in Yami, you go to producers in. Like Izuma, you go to producers in in in in Nara, for example, and you ask for a price list and somewhere on that price list is probably the terms Fujimacha or an even in Nishio, right? Everyone is selling this Fujimacha and all of the other tea on this price list.

Zongjun · 15:09

Yama Yama Kagoshima, Kagoshima Nara, Nara Nara probably comes from that place. And then you have this thing, right? It's it, it, it'd be so weird to go back and say, is this really from Uji Gran Tanja? And no one does that. No one thinks to ask that question, right? Most people go in with ears wide open, ready to believe whatever people tell them because they're a Japanese tea farmer. But the reality check that most people never get is typically what you hear is opinion and very strong perspective. And those people trying to sell that uji matcha are in the business of selling tea, right?

Zongjun · 15:46

And it was so weird when I was putting together this price list of tensha for people who are part of our beta program that have purchased the milk. I, I kept finding myself writing the sentence, this was labeled as Ujimacha, but it's actually from Fukuchiyama. And but it, you can technically label it and call it as Ujimacha and it would probably give you a marketing advantage because most consumers are only looking for Ujimacha. And this is the rules of the game that everyone else is playing and.

Zongjun · 16:20

You know, this is exactly why the this definition has expanded so much, because you can sell it better. It's all comes down to the business. It's like that one Chinese comedian who's in the States who's not very religious and a bunch of missionaries came up to him and says, do you believe in Jesus Christ?

Zongjun · 16:40

And he says no. And he says, but you know, if you don't believe in him, you know you'll go to hell. And he says, what about the people that live on an uninhabited island that have never heard of Jesus? Well, you know, they've never heard of him.

Zongjun · 16:54

They never had the opportunity and God will forgive them and they can go to heaven. And he said, then why did you tell me? And you know, whether or not you're Christian or whatever your religion is now with this Uji matcha thing, if you know the truth, I can say, oh, you know, this is labeled and sold as Uji matcha.

Zongjun · 17:13

This material actually comes from Wazuka. If you want to play by the rules, right, everyone else is playing by, you can label this as Uji matcha, but really it comes from Wazuka. And now that you know, you know that there's some level of intellectual dishonesty.

Zongjun · 17:28

You know that Uji is an actual town. You know that this hasn't actually grown in that town. You're being told you can sell it as Uji matcha, but really it's from this other place. And now that you know, right, are you going to label that as Uji matcha?

Ryan · 17:42

I'd I'd feel a little dirty doing that now that I know if you really care about, you know, the product and transparency, But on the other side, it's you're like, is it fair to yourself in your business when you're in the business of selling tea to play by different rules, right?

Ryan · 17:58

Especially if you're in a market that might be less educated, right? Maybe Uji matcha really does mean something, right? Being able to put that on your Cafe menu means something and means you can charge a higher price when no one has heard of Joyo or Wazuka or Ujitawara, right? Like then, you know, why wouldn't you play by the rules of everyone else and the rules of everyone and else who honestly, they don't know, they don't really know where their tea comes from, they're told is blended by some blend master. And they should label Uji matcha, right? Like, it's also kind of fair for them to play by the rules that everyone else is, but at least

Zongjun · 18:36

then they're making a conscious decision and doing. Well, it's, it's, it's literally one of the definitions. Like they're there. I feel like really there's no right or wrong in here. It's just different consensus of different groups. And I think the, the only people with a legitimate reason to get frustrated are the tea farmers at that, that are actually in Uji making tea.

Zongjun · 19:02

And all of the other definitions are just really, I feel like loosely helped by consensus of different people for either, you know, commercial reasons or just purely, you know, inheritance of information or culture from their predecessors or, or from people that they learned he from.

Zongjun · 19:21

It's very complicated. Yes and no. I don't know, it depends too what you care about, right? If you care about flavor and sensory and the product experience and let's say let's take it from the viewpoint of a blind tasting, you know, knowing the region can give you some level of information. We say that matcha is not very terroir driven because matcha primarily is the flavor profile and quality is a result of human intervention.

Zongjun · 19:49

Shading is a huge homogenizer, especially for how long you shade it gets the shaded flavor, also known as Ooika. It boosts umami, blocks the pathway turn preventing sweet and savory amino acids into bitter and astringent catechins, right? And then the fertilizer in the ground is that umami kind of fueling, fueling the umami and fertilizer has a huge impact tasting unfertilized matcha and you've tasted matcha that tastes nothing like all the other matcha on the market really tastes drastically.

Zongjun · 20:21

It tastes more different than tea from two different places that have been fertilized typically. But there is a processing culture in these different places. For example, if you do have Uji grown tencha that's turned into Uji matcha, most of the farmers in Uji are practicing tezumi or handpicking.

Zongjun · 20:40

So there's a huge culture of that and it tells you that the quality is probably going to be higher. They're willing to spend much more money on fertilizers. Most of the farmers in Uji only do a single harvest. So when you shade a plant, you're essentially suffocating.

Zongjun · 20:54

So when you shade over the course of multiple times per year, over multiple seasons, it's very hard on the plant. So if you're only shading once a year like most Uji matcha farmers do, you tend to get even more higher quality from that first harvest. And most of them have very what we'll call luxury cultivars, cultivars that are a little more difficult to grow like Asahi, for example.

Zongjun · 21:18

So saying that, it does come from Uji grown tencha. Well, the terroir might not matter. The human part does matter. Suji san for a kala, say cha Horisi Sumayan, the Shimizu family, Taishi san are creating products using these methods that do result in higher quality, right? So if you look at the probability of of if you blindly taste Uji matcha from Uji grown tencha, the probability that it is higher quality, when you compare it to the average product coming out of the more industrial place like Wazuka, the probability is that the Wazuka average Wazuka tea is going to be lower and that the Uji one is higher. And it's not necessarily terroir,

Zongjun · 21:59

but it's the processing culture that's happening in those places. So in that sense it does matter where you know knowing what the origin is. Well, you are proving that my points Ryan right. Like because I was saying that that, you know, the OG tea farmers are probably the only group that will be frustrated by the current status. But all the other definitions doesn't really matter. Like even even if you look at, you know, processing style, like Yame has a unique processing style and, and all the other regions doesn't necessarily have a very unique well defined style that people can taste and immediately point AT. And, and also like, even with

Zongjun · 22:43

the participation of all the other regions and, and also for, for Uji tea farmers, like the, the chance of a lot of people tasting tea actually being made from Uji is still not that large. Because a lot of these productions actually goes to all the bland houses.

Zongjun · 23:01

And for all these poetic, poetic named cans that you can purchase from different tea brands, they all contain, you know, some amounts of Uji grown tencha from here and there. And, and, and how do we, you know, make sense out of that?

Zongjun · 23:15

Like do we consider that partially Uji or like if we really want to be team Uji tea farmers or do we just, you know, totally disregard them as as a Uji product and no matter how much percentage of Uji tea they contain?

Ryan · 23:32

That is the trickiest 1 and actually the blend houses. The existence of the blend houses is where I get torn the most in this argument. We take most. Conservative definition or the least conservative definition? Because these blend houses once were making a truly single origin product that was Uji matcha from Uji grown tencha.

Ryan · 23:55

And actually they weren't even making Uji matcha. They were making Uji tencha. And the tencha got shipped everywhere. And you ground it yourself. It's the product, right? And that it's changed, right? It slowly expanded and expanded 1st to towns like Joyo and then later in the 70s expanded to places like seventies, 80s and 90s into Wazuka and expanded more into other various places.

Ryan · 24:20

And you know, it's a living culture they were adopting. You had all of these tea ceremony schools across Japan that aided good supply of matcha from Omotesenke and Urasenke. And they expanded and the blend houses did their work in blending, creating these products, creating new products. And you can argue it's all part of a living tradition of Uji matcha that expanded and expanded and you know, to the point where actually most of their leaves can come from outside of Kyoto.

Ryan · 24:50

And there's a joke that one of the major blend houses which will remain nameless is not headquartered in Uji but actually headquartered in Mie because so much of their supply comes from Mie prefecture, not from even Kyoto prefecture.

Ryan · 25:05

So you know, the straw that broke the camels back and it's the sub stack article I'm working on now is the single estate idea that that's imported probably from the West. We don't know who it was, although we think we know who it was. But we don't want decided to sell single estate tea from Uji for the first time.

Ryan · 25:26

And the thing that differentiates that tea the most is that it's the real thing from the actual place, right? That's the best way to sell. That's what makes that tea interesting. You taste the perspective of that one farmer and the most historical place for matcha in the entire world, and yet it's the pure and real site.

Ryan · 25:47

And then now there's a narrative break because this didn't really exist. The single farmer idea, this level of vertical integration of a farmer selling the tea for themselves, right? It was always these blend houses to the early 20th century, from before all the way up until now.

Ryan · 26:05

And now you have two fundamentally incompatible narratives because now what do you do with all of this Uji matcha from these blend houses? And then to compound one to the point, you have other players that are coming into the space fully utilizing this very broad definition that was established in 2004 by the trademark that everything has to be processed in Kyoto but can come from any of the four prefectures, Nara, Shiga, Mie and Kyoto Prefecture.

Ryan · 26:37

And now we start to see the large Nishio based companies who set up new factories in Kyoto Prefecture to literally now manufacture and origin to create Uji matcha.And the part that's disturbing to me is the way that more Uji matcha gets made is not through innovation.

Ryan · 26:56

It's not through farmers reclaiming abandoned land or creating a new plot to grow more tea. It's by people utilizing and leveraging this loophole that exists. It's taking teeth that would have not been able to be labeled as Uji matcha, which can now be labeled as Uji matcha because we've gone 100 kilometers over the border and set up a factory there.

Ryan · 27:20

Like that's the upsetting part. Now, how do you make distinguish between the 300 or 200 year old blend house from these people coming from a different place now utilizing this loophole essentially? And that's where I get hung up.

Ryan · 27:35

Because if you only think about Yamamasa Koyamaya and Oruku Koyama and Ippodo, right, you think very differently than if you think about these new, newer players that want to come into this land grab. You know, utilizing the rules of the game that exist to create new Uji matcha.

Zongjun · 27:55

Yeah, I totally agree. It's very difficult because like for for all these native fake names, like, you know, Madoku or Yamamasa, they have some standards of doing things. You know, they, they, they do, they, they are aware of the loophole that they essentially actually created the loophole in the beginning. But but at least they have some standards of doing something. Although now we know that they their standards is losing a little bit as well after visiting some Infinity areas knowing that there are also suppliers to to these big brands.

Zongjun · 28:30

Yeah, from. Outside part of the traditional areas that they claim they they are. But, you know, at least we we can, I would say I would trust them more than some of these newcomers. But in nature they have no difference, right?

Zongjun · 28:46

It's just different levels of, you know, pushing the boundary to to how much further away and, and for for hundreds of years, though, I would say that thanks to these blend houses, that matcha has to exist to these days. You know, they figured out a way to make the whole system commercially viable so that, you know, this culture can actually survived instead of living in history textbooks and for so many years of them being a stable income for all these tea farmers, you know, they essentially stolen the the narrative of, you know, Uji tea or Uji matcha. They they are in control of the narrative. And you know, that's why, you

Zongjun · 29:31

know, the current system is so has so many definitions because there are so many tea houses doing things differently than each other. And, and the tea farmers have really no sayings of all these because, you know, they have to rely on them as they're so source of income.

Zongjun · 29:48

All these contract being signed or sometimes even no contract being signed, but in all these social engineering, they're being enforced into making sure that these tea farmers continue to be their almost surf like this is almost a serfdom in a in a way. Oh yeah, this goes back directly to feudal Japan, and that is easy to make.

Zongjun · 30:10

Yeah, yeah, yeah. And and now we finally have one tea farmer that does start to trying to break free from this system. And a boy to boy, they got so much push backs and punishment from all these people. It's a little bit difficult to fathom, but but you're absolutely right, you know, like that now there's a contradicting or competing a definition or a discourse that exist that's, you know, fighting back to this legacy definition of what Uji matcha is. It's fascinating to look at.

Ryan · 30:42

It's painful also to look at and to be part of it. Yeah, I mean, you have the Uji matcha farmers themselves, which have their own set of incentives and going single origin, single estate back to what Uji matcha always was, by the way, for most of its history. You could argue that's the most authentic, but you could also argue that the Marukyu's and the Yamamasa's and you know, the Kambayashi's of the world making these blends are the most living tradition.

Ryan · 31:10

If we think about what was sold as a product, they were the ones that originally owned the customer, a relationship and the history of blending and of processing right. Like and those living cultures are allowed to adapt.

Ryan · 31:25

They should adapt. Otherwise they're dead right. It's, you know, very Japanese philosophy or especially around chanoyu that the a static and sterile tradition is not a tradition at all. It's an artifact, something that's in glass, something dead. And that change is an important part for any living tradition. So those two, you know, camps I think have a past. But then you could also argue that these new Uji matcha farmers essentially vertically integrating and going direct to consumer, more direct to other businesses is a revolution. It's a business model that literally did not exist before, right?

Ryan · 32:04

It's pretty. It's a change in business model as much as it is anything. And if you don't sell your best material to the blend houses, then the blend houses have even less true Uji tencha to make Uji matcha, which you know it, there's a finite supply of. And then you have the players coming in that are just capitalizing on all of this change. Like in literally just set up a new factory in Kyoto. Theoretically, Zhongjun, you and I could go set up a new tencha factory, probably be a lot of red tape. But theoretically we could go set up a new factory or partner with someone to create a new factory and start manufacturing Uji matcha by exclusively

Ryan · 32:44

importing leaves from Mie and processing them and selling it to Uji matcha and having it be sold on by other brands as a single origin Uji matcha product. That has nothing to do with Uji, has nothing to do with Uji. Processing culture has nothing to do with anything. Oh yeah, we can just talk to the owner of the Shichimeien in Uji and he can help us.

Zongjun · 33:08

We can import 50% of our tencha from Jiu Jiang China and have a blend in to to become an Uji matcha blend which people get confused at which it's a horrible net, right? Because most Uji matcha is a blend. Like a blend of what? Like in today's parlance for the the the average specialty matcha consumer, it just means that you're mixing cultivars and potentially mixing origins.

Zongjun · 33:32

So Uji matcha blend horribly non descriptive name. Even with this new Nihoncha Japanese tea or GI thing, you know, like I read through all the definitions of the policy and I think technically, you know, even though maybe the tea cannot be called as Nihoncha, it can still be called as Uji cha as long as it's being processed in the right way, regardless of the ingredients coming from elsewhere.

Ryan · 33:59

It's a it's a little bit ridiculous. Well, not to mention too, something we forgot to mention on the GI by episode is that it doesn't include wakocha or black tea or red tea, depending on how you define that. And bancha, and I think there's one other one too that I'm forgetting, which is super weird because bancha is like the most Japanese thing ever. But you can argue I don't think any other countries are making bancha.

Zongjun · 34:24

Like no culture of copying that tea. Actually, I really, I really have come to like bancha. I drink it more and more often. I actually just ran out. I find it really nice. Digestive tea good. For you, I was just going to say that I need a dedicated teapot for that tea. Yeah, it has some pretty interesting acidity you might not want to mix with some of your other tea wire. And after taste or after?

Ryan · 34:53

Older. Let's just say it's complex, unlike many other people. Yeah, sorry. Go ahead, Ryan. Acquired takes, but really good. But OK, if we really zoom out now, let's put on another lens of what you care about and let's put ourselves in the shoes of people who only care about the organoleptic or sensory experience of the product. And you know, this another way to put the let's let the product speak for itself, which is best done in a blind test, right? If you drink it knowing nothing about. And this by the way, goes into this whole camp of people who are like, let's stop worrying about these labels. Let's just appreciate the tea.

Ryan · 35:29

OK, Let's just appreciate the tea in this example. I know for a fact that there are some tea in China that we have tasted that no one would think as a Chinese product, they would think it's Japanese quality. We have had Uji matcha from Uji grown tencha that tastes worse than tea than tencha that was milled into matcha in China that we tasted and that we've had some tea that was higher quality, at least from a blind tasting perspective. What we consider to be good by our own standard and by Japanese standards of what high quality matcha should be from material that wasn't even grown in Japan, let alone even in Japan. I've had Wazuka tea that I

Ryan · 36:07

thought was better than matcha from Uji grown tencha, either because it was boring or because it had some sort of flaw. So if we only care about the product itself, you know, does these provenance even matter? Does this Uji matcha-ness even matter? Right.

Ryan · 36:23

Theoretically, Uji matcha could be considered a processing culture, and that processing culture could theoretically happen anywhere because there's so much human intervention. So can a tea grown in Hubei be Uji matcha? Can a tea grown in Mie be Uji matcha or the spirit of Uji matcha or Uji matcha style? And I think that's a fair consideration along the question of does that even matter that we're mislabeling the origin of all of this product?

Zongjun · 36:53

I think it's well from from a purely answering the question point of view, I think it doesn't matter, right? Like the quality is a good or similar enough to the point that, you know, it doesn't really affect people's ability to distinguish between the product.

Zongjun · 37:10

But but I think that in reality, it will be a terrible, almost stupid maneuver to labeled your product that's being produced elsewhere as OGT. That's you know, that, that, that you're essentially just putting yourself into this trying port of nameless producers and you know, and, and, and you are keep fostering this, this current status quo that's painful for a lot of people and especially for yourself. Like, because like I think a lot of people you know, regardless of which tea sectors you're coming from, either matcha or oolong or black tea or poor, the name of a origin is very important.

Zongjun · 37:54

It's, it's, it's essentially the, the, the core value or core aspect of your brand or sometimes it is your brand of your tea. And the earlier you can establish this consumer recognition of your brand, the better or the location, the better the geography, the better. So I think can you label it as Uji cha? Yes, you can.

Zongjun · 38:20

Should you label it as Uji cha? Absolutely not if you are actually producing some amazing tea. Yeah, because you're making a name for wherever you're from, and then you have this diversity of places and new processing cultures, new ways to differ outside of the sea.

Zongjun · 38:37

Because really, I think Uji matcha and the broad definition just let's it what it's really doing. If you look at the like percentages of the number of the amount of tea that is labeled that way, it's elevating A mediocre product, that's what. I absolutely agree, absolutely agree. It's it's for a very few of people that's setting up a ginormously, ridiculously high standard so that lot of people can take it on a ride and start selling CDT to everybody. You can also argue it robs the luxury market to the Uji matcha farmer families.

Ryan · 39:15

Now that sounds elitist, but let's compare this to wine for a second. If you take a bottle of Romanée-Conti or Chateau Lafitte Rothschild or any of these really cult classic wines, what wine has done is over many hundreds of years, developed a market of people who go deep on the subject, have tons of tasting experience and are willing to pay more for an elite thing.

Ryan · 39:40

Now, the lions of this caliber, of which I've only ever had one that was very, we both, you know, got to taste through some very good fortune. It's very good. Is it $2000 a bottle good? No. Like honestly, on the average day I'm sure there's some natural wine producers. That are doing fantastic work for $50 a bottle producing wine that I would personally rather drink. But what elevates it to that price is the rarity, the scarcity, and the incredible history and the heritage of making it in those places.

Ryan · 40:17

When you buy it, you're drinking something that heads of state have enjoyed that people who you know has been passed down from generation to generation. The people that get the best French oak barrels, that get the best analogist, that get the best blend masters. All of this perfection of craft that has happened and has been recognized for so long that demands this price you. That's this rich, deep culture that ends up getting supported. And Uji could so totally be that, right? There should be some matcha, some of the best. I was just explaining this to someone. I was at a wedding in France recently and someone was very interested in matcha and I was

Ryan · 41:04

saying, you know, for maximum $250 you can get some of the for a 20 gram can, which you know, if you take 2 grams of serving, it's $25 a serving. You can literally have the best matcha in the world. Honzu shaded, hand-picked Uji native zairai cultivars, slowly processed on a brick oven kiln, hand-sorted individual leaves with chopsticks for this competition grade tea. Ground at 20 to 30 grams per hour on a stone mill. That is crazy.

Ryan · 41:36

That should be going for so much more money. And this, it having this expensive definition doesn't let this kind of luxury market evolve. Which, you know, it sounds very fufu or whatever, but it's really where a whole lot of culture lies, right?

Ryan · 41:54

Like it's where like really, the art and the craft and the heritage merge and get preserved and have enough money to get preserved and to reinvest into creating this what would otherwise be not a very economically viable product.

Ryan · 42:10

Well, then will certainly turn into something that you and I will probably not be able to frequently try or try at all for the sake of, you know, the, the, the sheer production of, of Uji being so low. So true. Yeah, it's and I'm not. Specifically arguing for it, I'm exploring attention and an opportunity for the market to evolve in a certain way that it already exists in a different industry. That would by the way, probably be the best outcome for the uji matcha farming families that like the system already exists, it's just not valued the way that it should be. People aren't actually drinking

Zongjun · 42:49

uji matcha and it's just so no one knows this. And all of this tea is just incredibly cheap right now if you actually can find it in the right places. Yeah, and it would only happen if all these big plant houses just go bankrupt on, you know, next day and or the government just somehow grant the status to these tea farmers some so that they can operate on their own. You know, like the reality is that, you know, seeing how much punishment that one tea farmer that we were talking about trying to break free from the current system, it's scary for other people.

Zongjun · 43:26

It's it's terrifying, like to be cut off from a system that has been a reliable source of income for so many years, hundreds of years. Generations. Generations it's it's it's unimaginable probably for a lot of people. And and it's not purely A economical decisions, right. Like Japan is such a societal based culture that there are a lot of intangible strings that's held that's holding everybody almost like a puppet in the in day-to-day life. And and it's just not really a future that we can expect probably.

Ryan · 44:09

Actually, I I have some pushback, let's say essentially what that world would look like of, you know, allowing the tea industry market matcha industry market to develop the equivalent of these, you know, very rare and sought after wine labels that are highly valued, that are, you know, willing to present a lot of money for a product that is indeed very special, is that it could still coexist.

Ryan · 44:34

Like essentially if GI if Uji matcha got GI status and all Uji matcha that had the GI label had to come from Uji grown tencha, there's no reason why the old blend houses who already have relationships with the Uji matcha farmers couldn't produce a GI blend of Uji matcha the same way that the Yame Gyokuro producers, all the Yame people you can buy Gyokuro from, they have their Hon Yame Gyokuro which is the GI certified one, which has all these different rules around the way it must be grown. That must be I think it has to be Honzu tana, the rice straw shaded with a a shelf canopy so there's no direct coverage. I think it has to be hand

Ryan · 45:16

picked. There's a bunch of other rules too for the GI actually has to come from Yame and then they have their quote Yame Gyokuro, which, you know, who knows what that actually means, May or may not come from Yame, certainly processed in a Yame style. And those products just coexist and the, you know, the Hon Yame, Hon Uji matcha or genuine Uji matcha. Well, I think for the tea houses or the blend houses to, to, to move into that state, they because we, we, we almost need to think about Uji tea or Ujicha as a name of a brand for all these tea houses or these plant houses. It's a brand that consumer

Ryan · 45:55

recognized. It's a brand that they can for sure sell, sell their tea for a higher price. And it's it's also a brand that they created, arguably. Totally. And for them to continue to, you know, operate commercially in a sustainable manner, they either need to create a new term for the true Uji matcha.

Ryan · 46:16

Maybe we can call it a Hon Uji matcha, or they need to give up Uji matcha and, and create a new term. You know, the this there. There's still a need of consumer recognition for a broad enough definition so that these tea houses can sell the mass market tea for a higher margin so that their business can be sustainable.

Ryan · 46:38

We're talking about commodity products here. It's, you know, we're, they're still a very large group of consumers that doesn't really care about specialty. They just want to drink some delicious tea that has some name that they can, you know, recognize or they can, you know, gift, gift the tea as a gift for other people that other people can recognize. So there's a market need for that, for that demand. And, and it's just that the current system is, you know, hurting the true OG tea farmer because, you know, like they, they, they have been married into this system for so long. And this is right now the the

Zongjun · 47:15

only system that worked for everybody, yeah. Well, yeah, I agree with you. I mean it's a lot of the demand for uji matchas for people that don't really know the difference or re educating the market, especially the domestic market, you know, might be expensive, might have some trust issues.

Zongjun · 47:32

I mean, we've been told multiple times that the average person in Japan believes that Uji matcha comes from Uji. And they might know it's a blend of different leaves and that blend is expected to stay consistent. But I don't think but they realize the extent to which it's really the the provenance, the true provenance of the actual raw material does not come from that place.

Ryan · 47:53

But OK, if you zoom out outside of the domestic market and even zoom out further from just these blind houses and let's say you have this with the perspective of someone and pick a random country trying to create a new matcha brand, which is happening all over the place. Basically every country on earth, there's a bunch of people trying to create their own matcha brand trying to source this.

Ryan · 48:16

This creates such a level of confusion in this current system because if you do the math, about one in three cans of matcha produced in Japan can be called Uji matcha. Which is crazy considering that Uji has only 35 farming families and everyone's applying the specialty framework on the single origin product coming from Uji.

Ryan · 48:37

But it's not. And now you have a culture in context that is being exploited in Japan by actors that are from other places setting up across the border to get, quote UN quote, the right passport for the tea labeled as the thing.

Ryan · 48:54

And then you have a bunch of people unintentionally exploiting the single origin concept or applying a single origin concept that just have no clue how complicated like this whole system is. And no one talks about what they believe Uji matcha to be right? Because really you need to believe someones beliefs first before you can understand what they're selling. So the more you know, the more you should distrust everyone's tea labeling.

Ryan · 49:25

When I'm in Paris where I live and I find Uji matcha on the menu, I don't even bother asking any questions and I don't wonder it. Like I know it's not from Uji. I know the person behind the counter has no clue. The brand owner or the owner of the cafe has no clue. The person who sourced the product from the brand owner of Matcha probably also has no clue, right? Just like no one has a clue of where this product is actually coming from.

Ryan · 49:54

And then you sit back and think to yourself, why can't we just call it by the thing where it's from? It is a blend of tea from these places. And this is the intention behind the blend when trying to get it to express this, this and this for this use case.

Ryan · 50:09

This is a justification for why this product exists. And instead we're all focused on just slapping on this meaningless label because people want to authentic experience from the most historical place in Uji. Slapping on veil after veil, vanity metric after vanity metric, to create such a fantasy that is so disconnected from reality. It's robbing all of these other really interesting stories of the people who actually make the tea. All of these companies, all of this framing, quite frankly, excuse the language, all of this bullshit completely does not take into consideration the people who actually drink the tea and the people who actually

Ryan · 50:52

make the tea. We're honoring some fantasy that we all want to project onto with this product. But if we really truly want to honor the people who make the tea, which come from all over Japan or other countries for that matter, and the people who are actually drinking the tea.

Ryan · 51:09

And the biggest favor we can give the people actually drinking the tea are facts that cannot be manipulated. We're no longer calling it premium wine, premium matcha. A non manipulated fact is that it's okumidori cultivar.

Zongjun · 51:24

You know, make that up. That's not a story. It could be very great opportunity for storytelling and for, you know, education. And it's storytelling that once you learn, OK, I like okumidori. It's the same way I like Chardonnay. I might go try something else.

Zongjun · 51:40

But you say, oh, I like this premium matcha. I want to go find another premium matcha. You didn't learn anything. You're not making the consumer better discovering what other things that they might actually like. And it's very selfish framing actually by all of these matcha companies by not talking about the region or the processing style or the fertilizing style.

Ryan · 51:59

Even what type of tencha oven we recently learned has a huge impact. If you have one of these more mass produced tencha ovens, the simple tencha dryers, which are basically air fryers and Kagoshima, it leaves the green leaf almost like spicy green, like a dandelion leaf or arugula. Like it really doesn't have this complexity or sweetness that you get from, you know, radiant heat from a radiant tencha red brick oven, right?

Zongjun · 52:28

Like this? If you if you buy tea from that specific supplier and you do know these piece of information, do you share that to the consumer? Well, you could, I mean. That's a clear indicator of the lower, you know, quality. Or a great indicator of value.

Ryan · 52:45

You know, this is a new I can let me try to sell it to you. The Japanese have invented a new innovation and processing technology for creating matcha that makes it even greener. It better preserves all of the chlorophyll and all of these compounds, giving you a beautiful green cup.

Ryan · 53:03

It tends to be a little more bitter, a little more harsh, but actually it really balances out the moment that this hits milk. And we know that color is super important, but we also know that creating a balanced taste is super important, which is why we also used okumidori cultivar, which has naturally much higher chlorophyll content. And when it's shaded, it gets amplified. And when it goes through this type of drawing, it gets amplified.

Ryan · 53:27

And not only that, it's actually much cheaper to make. And we can give you an Argentine Malbec for 10 bucks. This is this is that, but in matcha format. This is how we can afford to give you these fantastic prices. Is it something that you're going to want to consume, you know, as an usucha? You know, maybe, yeah, I'll give it a month or two. It's going to blow off some of these greener notes. And, you know, maybe it's going to result in a more naturally balanced cup.

Ryan · 53:53

But it's a fantastic product, and we can give it to you for 20 bucks. But we also source this fantastic tea. It was grown in Ujitawara. It was put on a traditional tencha oven radiant brick. It's going to be a little bit less green.

Ryan · 54:07

It's also using a cultivar that's naturally a little more pale. But this tea is also really great for all of these other reasons. It's handpicked. Maybe it's a shelf shaded, maybe it was fertilized, maybe it was a matcha that wasn't fertilized and no pesticides at all, and it has a different framing to use it on. But all of this is not a made-up story. It's the truth about the way it was made. And you can spin it to be more or less romantic, right? But there's a time in the place.

Zongjun · 54:33

And what I don't want to see is someone who is trying to sell a $10 bottle of Malbec from Argentina and trying to pass it off as a top sentiment on Bordeaux, right? Which is kind of what's going on by everyone just slapping premium on. It's like literally forcing their consumers to pay an intelligence tax and a markup way larger than they realize. When you know if it's on objective facts, there's none of this manipulation that can be done. I totally agree.

Zongjun · 55:05

Totally agree. It's, it's just incredible difficult to, to change, right? Like there are a couple layers that we're, I think we're facing right here. First is the accessibility of information. Like I've heard a lot of these tea farmers, they just wouldn't tell you exactly what's going on.

Zongjun · 55:21

And you really have to pull the information from, from, from them as a brand owner or a product creator. And, and, and for so few of them that do end up sharing the information, it's, you know, one or two data points that people can use, But, you know, it's not enough to build up a, a large enough map for a system for, for, you know, consumers to really learn about the differences, at least not for now, for a lot of region. I would love to see that happen in the future. And and second, there isn't again, a regulatory entity or someone or some entity that the police, all these people hold, hold people accountable for

Zongjun · 55:59

their claims. It's just almost impossible to exist. And you like for, for a consumer, you, you really have to learn or pay all these tuitions by yourself to get, you know, to some experience level to be able to, you know, make a judgement by yourself.

Zongjun · 56:16

But there's no other ways to hold people accountable. And, and for now, you know, there's two competing narratives, right? There's, you know, all these either misinformed or ill informed brand owners or lazy brand owners or purely dishonest brand owners.

Zongjun · 56:34

Who's taking the right of this whole Uji tea bandwagon to trying to sell the tea for a higher margin, inferior tea for a higher margin. And there is this a specialty tea market or just tea brands that you are advocating for Ryan that's trying to tell a more complicated more honors the story about all these teas. But one party cannot shut the other party's mouth like it that there's no way you can just go there and sue them or like tell them to like, you know, stop doing what what they're doing. Like the specialty people cannot tell the commodity people what to do and the commodity people cannot tell the specialty people what to do.

Zongjun · 57:17

The only way now is that you, you, you spread enough awareness to win the competition of discourse of that consumer by the end of the day will vote with their own money and then one will eventually convert to the other.

Ryan · 57:32

That's that's the only way now. Yeah, the court of public opinion. I mean, that's the real war that should be fought, right? That's winning hearts and minds. Yeah, yeah, yeah. So it takes all of us, the whole community to to do so. We, we shared our opinion and our view of what, you know, Uji tea or matcha should be.

Ryan · 57:54

But you know, we don't we, we cannot hold anyone accountable. We, there's no one can do that. We we have to win the hearts of the consumers to to win this battle. Well, also, you know, just as a quick land acknowledgement too, is that we're not from Uji. We are not Japanese.

Ryan · 58:13

We are not at least active China, you practitioners. We are people trying to build a business in the context of this industry and also try to build awareness for a lot of these topics through this podcast. But you know, we have a very different level of skin in the game than than other people do.

Ryan · 58:29

And, you know, in a lot of ways, you can ask yourself, is this our battle to fight? And I don't know. I feel very conflicted about that. We are not Uji matcha farmers. Our family livelihood does not depend on this. Quite frankly, our business does not depend on whether or not people are honest about labeling. You know where their tea comes from and how it gets called and the complications of it.

Zongjun · 58:53

I I mean if you are a but. Is it consumer? I deeply care. Yeah, yeah, yeah. And, and, and if you are a small business owner and like the only way for you to be able to sell your tea is to label your tea as Uji matcha. Like please do like don't kill your business. Don't like go bankrupt because of them. You can wait until the market is maturing enough, the specialty market is maturing enough in the future and then it's your decision to convert to that party or not. But if you are a large enough tea company, you have a healthy cash flow and you do have the capability of, you know, playing the game.

Zongjun · 59:27

I, we, we, we really hope that there will be more of you to, to, to do that, to, to, to inform the market, to educate the market, to move the market into a more, just a more interesting direction for everybody. Yeah, just a much more interesting direction than, you know, all of this tea getting dumped into one label that ignores all of the farmers who are actually doing the hard, the real work of bringing this product to market.

Ryan · 59:54

Some of them want to be recognized, other others don't want to be recognized specifically. But, you know, unless people are pulling this out of these places, there's no reason for them to change or modify the status quo. Japanese farmers are aging.

Ryan · 1:00:10

They have no succession plans. Taking on the risk of doing this is just so not worth it unless we make it worth it like. And it's very much a revolution because it's really setting up a new business model having the Uji matcha farming families, you know, sell less to wholesale, less blended products, more sell their own products that are actually from Ujigun Densha.

Ryan · 1:00:32

And then all the Uji matcha supply regions also doing the same. And we see more and more of that even at the combini in the Lawson in Wazuka, the there's a whole little like table full of Wazuka, Wazuka, Wazuka tea, Wazuka tea.

Ryan · 1:00:47

They're really leaning into that heart and the the local products that are actually from that place. Yeah. So, you know, we are starting to see this change. But still, so much tea just gets fun blended. And I think the first step is awareness. Like if you're going to label your tea as a matcha brand, as a single origin product, at least No whether and what the provenance of the T actually is, and you know what you're calling it and that that's the game that you're playing, right? And you know it's then you make your own judgment call. I'd love to see the world in the next 5 to 5 years shift from everyone not knowing to at least

Ryan · 1:01:27

everyone knowing what they're doing. And then we start, I think this is going to be one person by person, farmer by farmer, you know, finding these farmers say we'd love to highlight you or we'd love to highlight this is a single origin product instead of just calling it this thing.

Ryan · 1:01:43

And then you build, you know, these different identities for this product. Build up the fame of these different regions. Discover what's special. Tell the 1000 human stories that are all covered up by the two syllables on a label, which is uji, which is selling, you know, romance, fantasy of a place, the fantasy of an idea.

Ryan · 1:02:03

We can start selling new romance and they they don't necessarily need to be a fantasy and all the places and people scattering around the world making wonderful products. They all have their own unique story to tell and, and and it it should be the new romance and these romance on this time have some ground truths that people can verify them trust.

Ryan · 1:02:26

You know, I just thought of something. Uji has like a 400 year head start in creating its brand and creating a name and building consensus that it's the good thing. And it was the only place in the world where matcha was being made for hundreds of years because it was a state controlled monopoly. And you know, that processing culture and the culture of making it stayed concentrated.

Ryan · 1:02:49

And it hasn't been in the last two decades. But these other regions are new matcha growing regions. Nishio and the areas around Aichi, you know, have been doing it for maybe 120 years, maybe a little bit longer, maybe 140 years, but still pretty new in the grand history of matcha, same thing.

Ryan · 1:03:09

Wazuka, super new. Joyo is a little bit older. I think the oldest places in Joyo date back to the late 1800s, but they just haven't had time or the opportunity to build up their name. Just I think as an artifact is Japanese society and the way these products were positioned and sold the top down this of the way, you know, Japanese culture operates. And they just haven't been given an opportunity to to shine a stage to to break free of that mold. And maybe it's just there isn't hasn't been enough time yet. Uji is so old, but at the same time so new for everybody. Yeah.

Ryan · 1:03:48

And when you compare it to places like China across like the really large different categories, already differences among the different tea like you have, you know, Phoenix Mountain Dancong, you have Wuyi Cha different Fujian, you have pu'er from Yunnan, you have baicha white tea from Fuding, right?

Ryan · 1:04:08

All of these places have really long deep processing histories. When we think about tea origin and the reality is for matcha, there's only one old tea origin and it's Uji, and then everything else is less than 200 years old.

Ryan · 1:04:24

Yame, Kagoshima, Aichi, even the matcha being grown in Korea or China. It just, it takes time for myths to develop and for consumer awareness to take place. And, but it can happen. And I hope it happens within this century. And it finally has the opportunity to happen because, you know, matcha has gone through its third wave of consumers.

Ryan · 1:04:48

The first were, you know, the daimyo, the Shogun, the elites of feudalistic Japan. And then it switched to the tea ceremony practitioners, you know, that were all happening in Meiji post Meiji. And now matcha has gone from a really like obscure Japanese ceremonial ingredient to something that you find in every coffee shop in every and all these places around the world being represented in such diverse and new markets. It may be just it's just a matter of time. That's almost an inevitability as people go searching for more and more tea, more and more people. Even this last year, the difference between the harvest and 25 and 2026, just looking at

Ryan · 1:05:30

it through Instagram is so different. It used to be so rare to see the inside of a tencha factory on social media. Now it's feel like it's everybody. Feels like every day someone posts a new picture with Suji San. It's like it's, it's, it's happening before our eyes.

Ryan · 1:05:49

And these people, these brand founders, these markets care about very different things and idea of knowing where your food comes from is coming. And I, you know, even if you talked to us two years ago, we had no idea that most Uji matcha didn't come from Uji. This is a very new realization even for us. And it just maybe just takes time for this to spread and for people to realize and apply their own values. Maybe we're being a little too harsh because like, the distribution of information is still like, like it hasn't happened yet.

Ryan · 1:06:24

And the quality from other regions too, like within Japan, the quality from different region has been rising. Even Kagoshima are making some pretty interesting tea. And outside of Japan, you know, Korea, China, that the quality of Chinese matcha, you know, has really significantly increased also right in front of us like compared to a few years ago.

Ryan · 1:06:46

And now we just saw the India being part of the player as they're making their, their first auction level competition tea within their own country. It's fascinating to see this culture blossoming everywhere. And and we do hope, we do think that this is future hope. That's hopeful enough for us to to see see it unfold. Sam, I want to go philosophical moment, like what is the truth, right?

Zongjun · 1:07:16

Is truth what the Japanese trademark says is Uji matcha? Is the truth about where the tea was grown? Is the truth what consumers belief in their own mind, right? If every American wakes up tomorrow and says I am not an American, is it still America? Is America not just one big collective belief in a place? Well, well, I, I think there's a, there's a tautology here, right?

Zongjun · 1:07:44

Like it's the truth in this sense is a abstract definition as well. And, and we are trying to explained a abstract definition using a, another abstract definition or explanation, which is the definition of the tautology. There's actually no truth here.

Zongjun · 1:08:05

If we want something that's, you know, that's, that's all. If there's the communious analysis. But I mean, you could also argue, and I agree to tautology, but you know, it depends on what lens, what abstract concept you are applying to another abstract concept.

Zongjun · 1:08:21

So let me take the abstract concept of perception. If perception is reality and most people in the world believe that Uji matcha is a particular thing right now, we've gone from awareness of people who even know what Uji matcha.

Zongjun · 1:08:38

But but let's say the Japan and a few extreme tea freaks and geeks like us abroad to now being hundreds of millions, maybe even billions of people. The perception by the raw numbers of what Uji matcha is in people's mind being written by the brand owners in each of these countries, which means we have an opportunity as a global specialty matcha Society of people spreading this culture to set the narrative which becomes the reality and most of the people's heads who are selling Uji matcha and consuming quote. But even for, from a perception point of view, like I don't think I have the definition for

Zongjun · 1:09:28

Uji matcha, the sheer difference between different matcha that's produced from Uji is so large. It's, it's, it's enormous even from a taste perspective. Like we even had bad tasting Uji tea that's actually from Uji. And I, I think it's too difficult to, to defined this product in a way that everybody can understand geography, the physical location of these tea being grown.

Zongjun · 1:09:55

But for that to be verified, you have to, you know, see through the entire process. You have to pick tea with the farmers and see it processed in the tencha factory and then see that being shiaged separately from with all these other teas being shiaged at the same factory from other regions.

Zongjun · 1:10:13

And then it gets repackaged separately. And then that's your OGT. I feel like unless you really see through this entire process, there's, there's very little, you know, I would say trust that can be formed or, you know, verifiable experience being formed for everybody to to acknowledge, unless you know, it's really from a trustworthy source that you have personal relationships with.

Ryan · 1:10:39

I mean yes and no. I mean even the chashi's right? Like get objective truth about the lots of tea that they're buying either direct from the farmers or even at auction. I mean, these lots are batched separately. And like, even if you go down one level in the industry, you know, further down the supply chain, further up the supply chain, depending on the direction, you know, they do know what they're working with. They know the cultivar, they know all the information about it and get to taste it.

Ryan · 1:11:09

So it's just like if you pluck the tea out of the system when it's being sold at auction or being commissioned or contracts in place from these blend houses to the farmers, right, then you get to then you get to the to the source and could sell it as a specialty product, but verify provenance in all these details.

Ryan · 1:11:29

But you know, the point is like it can't be made-up right when you have all of these objective truths. We're not talking about an abstract concept to describe another abstract concept, right? Like saying Uji Matcha is from Uji grown tencha is just a objective fact.

Ryan · 1:11:44

We don't have to get into the spirit of blending and the culture of these blend houses or the legal definition, right? You can have the legal abstract concept to describe this abstract word. You can have the cultural abstract concept to describe this abstract word.

Ryan · 1:12:00

You could have like, it's all these abstractions, as you're saying, and even the abstraction of consumer perceptions when people believe the folksonomy of a word the way it's, you know, a thing that lives inside the minds of everyday consumers.

Ryan · 1:12:14

You could argue as the the truest reality because that's what everyone believes in, right? Like it's but you can't fight like this Yabukita cultivar. There's no stories involved there, right? There are some stories involving Yabukita.

Zongjun · 1:12:32

It's fascinating actually. But but I I guess my argument is that even with Uji tea being grown in Uji, it's still like so different from each other. There's so many different teas being grown in Uji that there's not a unique or or definable Ujiness that people can can point their fingers at. Not to mention for the current system, you know you are getting a lot of other teas being blended or being mixed into the Uji cha that's sitting in front of you.

Zongjun · 1:13:02

And for those people who bothered or has the capability to go so far to verify their tea actually being produced in Uji, there's still a lot of difference between all these teas and it takes a lot of time for anyone to get informed enough to be able to taste the Ujiness of is that actually exist. That's an interesting point because we do know that there is like direct cover machine harvested Yabukita in Uji like and that sits next to plots that are from like luxury cultivars that are handpicked and go through like crazy fertilizer regimens.

Ryan · 1:13:43

There's some even in the same photo on the same plot of mountain where you see these two things next to each other. Even in yeah, very obvious different shading. Very different, like trimming of the Bush. You can immediately tell the way it's intended to be picked by just looking at it. So you're right.

Ryan · 1:14:00

But also, if you take the, you know, the average product of Uji is still elevated because it is where people are carrying on these traditions of higher labor methods of these endangered methods that aren't really just not that economically viable unless you, you know, are able to sell your tea for a higher price because it's a market that's willing to pay for it and a way that it wouldn't be, you know, if you're producing it in a new area that has less cachet. So like, I mean, yes and no.

Ryan · 1:14:28

If you look at the average quality from Wazuka versus from Uji, Uji will be on average, higher quality because they use more expensive, more laborious techniques that ends up produced. But their incentive models are different. You know, maybe they're trying to win competitions. They've also recently learned that a lot of the Uji matcha farming families do not rely on tea as their sole source of income.

Zongjun · 1:14:50

So, you know, you're trying to win competitions or you're doing a very extreme philosophy of fertilizer or protecting endangered processing methods, right? Like you have very different incentive loops. And you are, if you're a new farmer in Wazuka that's trying to make a name for yourself that actually has to sell tea to make money. But like, you know, there's a huge piece of meal, let's just call it for what it is.

Ryan · 1:15:15

But like, if you're right, it's all these tautologies of abstract concepts defining another abstract concept. And you have legal abstract concepts, you have cultural abstract concepts. You have like consumer reality, abstract concepts, historical. Here's here's another thought experiment so I think we can both agree on one verifiable truth is the geography right? The physical location that exist as a reality in this world that's that's touchable and doesn't move. What if someone for you know, some future policy change or figure out some guanxi to maneuvered from a different country that acquiring start

Zongjun · 1:15:56

acquiring tea plots in Uji and start using their own interpretation and methods to produce tea with even non Uji cultivar, But it's actually, you know, tencha made in Uji. Like do we call that Uji tea? Yeah. Well, great question. What do you care about comes back to that? You care about the culture, you care about the consumer experience, Do you care about the legacy in history? And like you get a very different answer depending on what lens you apply.

Zongjun · 1:16:26

You know, I mean, like, it really could be a future like, like all these tea farmers are getting really old in Uji. And you know, thanks to Taishi, who's, you know, making a lot of effort in making tea and also kids at the same time, there will be like very little people to take over in the future.

Ryan · 1:16:47

That's like actually from Uji. And there will be. Yeah, Gingeros sound. Yeah, if I were some younger Uji Matcha farmers. But you know that there will be influx of people coming from other regions within Japan and maybe in the future outside of Japan to Uji to start farming and that could very possible to be a future.

Ryan · 1:17:09

Yeah, very possible. It's especially with all of these abandoned plots. I think the the regulations make it very difficult, but theoretically not impossible which? And it could be like, and could be totally delicious too. Like think about Bison Nakamura.

Ryan · 1:17:24

Like our friends study tea in Kagoshima and now he's making tea in in Uji and and some of his tea are really, really tasty. It's just doesn't taste quite like what you know traditional Uji tea tastes like, but they're fantastic. Yeah, totally.

Zongjun · 1:17:40

Yeah. I don't know. That's such a good point. And then, you know, how does it live and evolve and what do we consider what's real and how does that reflect our own values? And you know, I don't know that it would spiritually be less Uji matcha than it would be if it was from multi generational family using Uji native zairai. And that's another interesting point too, is there's a Uji-ness even with an Uji, right?

Zongjun · 1:18:08

If you're using a cultivar like Yabukita that comes from Shizuoka zairai, which, you know, was adapted from some form of natural selection with human intervention over, you know, hundreds of years within Shizuoka to yield a very specific cultivar that's now being moved to Uji.

Zongjun · 1:18:26

That's less Uji than something that comes from the hundreds of years of Uji natives, right, like Uji Hikari or, or Samidori or like Asahi, Narino, Okunuyama, all Uji natives, right. So then it's yeah. Then it's Yabukita from that's grown in Uji.

Zongjun · 1:18:45

Really, Uji matcha, you put on the historical lens and the genetic lens, I'd say it's less Uji matcha, right? There's a Uji matcha-ness and that scale looks so different depending on what value system you project on top of it.

Ryan · 1:19:00

Yeah, yeah. A fascinating topic. It is. It is. I don't think I have any answer to this. To believe in Uji matcha, you have to hold contradictions in your mind. No matter what position you're taking that you are dismissing another very valid narrative and that's just the reality. And you just have to accept that believing in Uji matcha by any definition is to hold a contradiction in your mind. OK, my vote goes to the most tasty and the cheapest matcha on the table.

Zongjun · 1:19:38

And so Chinese matcha. Great. I'm taking it. Yeah, I only like Uji grade matcha from from Jijiang. Uji grade? Wow, that's new. No, not new, but I thought that was very clever from one of the Chinese matcha. That's true. That's true.

Ryan · 1:19:56

A lot of them are talking about, a lot of them are talking about their being supplier to Uji tea companies. Yeah, that's that's hilarious. Yeah, well, I mean the reality of Uji matcha is the definition has changed, the genetics have changed.

Ryan · 1:20:14

I mean even the tea that's today and I'm writing a big sub stack post about it that I'm going to release and I'd like to record an episode on it if we haven't beat this Uji tea. Uji matcha horse to death is the move from zairai to cultivars is huge, right? The tea that was being consumed for hundreds of years that was Uji matcha completely died 50 years ago when everyone switched to cultivars.

Ryan · 1:20:37

It is just such a different, like I said, to a massive difference in the secondary and tertiary implications about the way it gets blended, the way taste gets homogenized, less genetic diversity, the fact that there doesn't no longer has a taproot like biologically physical, geologically huge plant differences, which are definitely going to result in differences in taste. The way fertilizer gets applied and absorbed, the way they get valued.

Ryan · 1:21:04

You would have to value each individual zairai batch or zairai plot, you know, versus having saemidori rates and Okumidori rates. And yes, there's going to be variation within those, but there's huge differences in the way those products get traded. And like that's probably only scratching the surface and not in fact every leaf of Uji tea hits a conveyor belt. I to my knowledge, there's anyone doing truly hand processed tea the way that you see in the old pictures when you when you look at the way Uji matcha used to be produced back in the day before mechanization.

Zongjun · 1:21:41

So it's just gone through so many different changes. And as as Chinese tea drinkers, you know, they did the idea of older trees, older Arbor of being valued so differently back in the days versus now. It's also fascinating, like people actually do value older trees in Japan back in the days, but now it's all about young trees, robustness, vibrant taste, vibrant color, and then tree dyes.

Ryan · 1:22:07

Wow, it's I really look forward to publishing that article which kind of deep dive into that and I feel like it's only scratching the surface. I think the next year project is I want to really do a comprehensive piece on the move from zairai to cultivars. I feel very passionate about that as someone who deeply cares about more natural ways of agriculture and tea farming, as someone that believes that older trees are generally higher quality, especially for Japanese tea. Honestly, if you taste 100 year old like sencha 100 year old trees and they make sencha from it and it comes from zairai so it has a taproot it take and

Ryan · 1:22:44

take boiling water tastes good like it's it really makes all of these other Japanese teas taste really weird like it can't take boiling water. They taste almost unnaturally umami. And when you go back to this more natural way of farming that was highly priced as little as 70 years ago using old trees, it can it is just so much more interesting and complex, like what happened and why I.

Zongjun · 1:23:10

Feel like. Everyone quality change. Yeah, I feel like we really should talk to some researchers or historians in all these tea institutes in Japan to get more information from it. And I would love to see some goo shoes in in Japan. I still haven't seen many older trees in Japan, which is crazy. Yeah, we need to do that.

Ryan · 1:23:31

Well, there's the Okunuyama mother plant. I don't know if we'll ever be allowed by Horii-san to go visit it. I'd be incredibly grateful just to see it. Yeah. Although I'd be, I'd also understand if they want to keep it a bit of a secret, which one it is because it's sort of a national living treasure. In the same way that some of the older mother trees of in China are highly, highly, highly protected, some of them are certain have constant surveillance like the old Da Hong Pao trees.

Ryan · 1:23:59

Like you can't get anywhere near those. You can see that, but you couldn't. You could never go walk up and touch one. But all these 100 year old trees in Feng Kong, in Weishan and in in Yunnan, you can, you can go see them and touch them and they're fascinating to, to see, to visit.

Zongjun · 1:24:17

And some of the other regions, that's true. You know, it's yeah, I would love to see that in Japan right now. I've only seen all these very short little garden bushes, which is a little sad. Yeah, I mean, the reality of most tea trees, if you think about the trees as a living being, the most of the tea trees that make matcha in Japan are literally work to death, put in incredibly unnatural environments with extremely high levels of pesticides, fertilizer and being shaded for very long periods of time, which would never naturally happen to that degree in nature, pushed to the very brink.

Zongjun · 1:24:54

It's that's just the reality of the life of those living beings. Not that I'm a supernaturalist, but what Uji Matcha families discovered with the shaded cultivation, you know, 400 years ago or around 400 years ago, the exact date is unknown.

Ryan · 1:25:11

Really is a pretty extreme and interesting way of agriculture. And what's even more a historical peculiarity or curiosity was the fact that it was a state controlled monopoly for hundreds of years. Then what is the most disturbing part to me deeply caring about genetic diversity, is that all the Uji natives, I right, we've talked to a lot of these Uji Matcha farming families and they started to switch to cultivars around the 60s and 70s. I'm sure some of it was captured at the institute's, the genetic diversity, but there's no way that all of it was captured and you had hundreds of years of an

Ryan · 1:25:50

unknown experiment of natural selection. If you have seed propagated tea, every plant is a little bit different in the same way that siblings are a little bit different. And the trees that were not able to take shaded cultivation died. The trees that were not able to take the weather and the climate died.

Ryan · 1:26:06

The teas that were not able to survive high levels of fertilization, which they were doing back then, even back then from night soil, mostly from human feces, they died. So you have all of this sort of Darwinian or semi Darwinian process happening over hundreds of years.

Ryan · 1:26:23

And all of this genetic legacy was ripped up, some of it saved at the Research Center, certainly not all of it. And now it's very sad. You see, cultivars from Uji native zairai like Asahi can no longer sure, take the heat and the changing climate within Uji and how a lot of Asahi plants are not doing well when you go to visit actual Uji Matcha farming families. And who knows what genetics, what traits, what genotypes and phenotypes existed among that native heirloom seed stock that are gone and you cannot just replace it. And I find that a great shame in the modernization. The same time I totally

Ryan · 1:27:05

understand why everyone switched from zairai to cultivars. It's a huge difference and Uji is really a living culture. I mean if you put on like genetic history of Uji. I mean, unless you're having Uji native zairai, the cultivars, you know, are you really drinking Uji Matcha the way it was understood to be drank for all these years?

Zongjun · 1:27:24

There's another thing, you know, worth asking. There's just so many different lens you can put on this topic. And like we talked so much about Uji, but Uji really is where it stops and starts because that's where all this came from.

Zongjun · 1:27:37

And it's where and the only place that did it for hundreds of years. And it's really quite a beautiful thing that it still survives to this day. And when you apply those lenses on it, I do find myself getting offended how much mediocre tea and non Uji grown tencha matcha can be labeled and take off take on this legacy that is still changing to this day. It's such a complicated.

Ryan · 1:28:04

It's an interesting story full of drama too. Yeah, yeah. Love to see more of these drama happening in the future. It's really part of the culture too. And and if you, the more you understand, at least for me, the more I appreciate the the tea more. That's lying on my cup, Yeah.

Ryan · 1:28:24

Whether or not it even comes from Uji, like I really appreciate like, you know, my tea coming from other places too. It's and all the work that has to get in to make this product like it's those are the real things we should be celebrating, not the fact that you have 100% me a Li slap Uji matcha in because it was done doing Uji style processing somewhere in Kyoto Prefecture.

Ryan · 1:28:47

We don't know where that has lost its provenance along the way. It's told some BS story that was stopped on the label, right? Like the really true, interesting stories of this human effort, the history, the legacy of what actually reflects the work of the people who got that tea into your cup. Yep, it really is a Symphony of two species. You know, it's a biological story of the tea plant, but also anthropological story of all these people getting involved into making this product.

Zongjun · 1:29:19

Totally and them Co involving together over hundreds of years in Uji, which is a very special culture which should be celebrated. But Yep, there's no one right answer. And this debate episode, I think we did the best job we could exploring the tension that exists here and giving, you know, really in good faith, trying to map out the different arguments that people are making for or against these different deaths.

Zongjun · 1:29:45

Yeah. Well, if you have any arguments or opinions, please share to us too, we would love to hear from you. Yeah, what are we missing in the story? Please reach out if you feel strongly disagree or can identify knowledge gaps even in our own thinking. We'd love to to follow up on that to explore this topic even further.

Ryan · 1:30:04

Yeah. So this concludes the end of the this Uji Matcha series, the Uji no Matcha piece that we have released. We have some extension series, including on quote, what happened to all of Uji's old tea trees, and a couple others that are going to be released on our sub stack. We may or may not do a podcast episode about it, depending on how tired we are of saying the word Uji. And then I promise we will move on from this topic and find some very interesting things to think about and talk about as well. And we're going to have a lot more interview episodes coming up with some very fresh and interesting and unique perspectives, some from some

Ryan · 1:30:41

wonderful friends and people we've met in the tea industry over the years. Awesome, awesome. So thank you so much for listening. If you enjoyed this, please consider sharing the front and we'll see you in the next one. Thanks.

Zongjun · 1:30:54

In the future.