"Japanese Tea" GI Granted & Startup Update

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 cofounders 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 this week we are breaking some news. The GI label for quote, Japanese tea has been officially granted as of slightly less than one week ago. There's a few things that we missed in our initial podcast episode that we wouldn't have done the the topic justice if we didn't talk about here, and we also wanted to react to the news more broadly. So before we jump into any of the details, what are your thoughts on the fact that this is moved from a proposal to the real deal?

Zongjun · 0:48

Well, surprise, not surprise I guess. I honestly wouldn't see this not being able to go through and approved. So yeah, we have officially a legal status for Japanese tea now. Now, calling anything Japanese tea that's not from Japan is apparently not GI. Well, actually it's a little more complex and the headline that I wish I saw more of, and I'm going to publish a sub stack article about it is that quote Japanese tea is now a protected term, comma protecting only some Japanese tea. So the biggest omission we didn't realize the first time that we recorded is that they are completely ignoring any what they call what gets translated

Zongjun · 1:32

as fermented. And then there's this whole big fermented fermentation versus oxidation, weird semantic mistranslation that happens all the time when you're going between Korean and English, Japanese and English, Chinese and English. But it's pretty clear that this cover is basically only green tea.

Zongjun · 1:50

So no oolong, no white tea, no wakocha. So those who have Japanese produced wakocha under the GI rules, it is not Japanese tea, which is a little ridiculous. Why it's? Fermentation. I was thinking about like our bancha or something.

Zongjun · 2:08

So that I had a very hard time looking up. So if you really read the rules carefully, they basically stipulate there needs to be some sort of kill green step where you're denaturing like polyphenol oxidase and all the enzymes that you know, produce the different classifications of tea. You know, green tea, oolong black tea, etcetera, which you know, a lot of these like goishicha and awabancha and all of these very traditional teas that get fermented do go through some sort.

Zongjun · 2:34

They go through a boiling usually, although the processing differs between them. And I thought, well, OK, maybe it does meet the definition because I guess it's still sort of kind of green tea. But so I did a lot. For oolong you, you do have a pill grain or like a like a heat treatment to deactivate the enzyme, right?

Zongjun · 2:53

So. It's totally unoxidized though, and the way it gets translated, when you run it through machine translation, it says unfermented and then it gives some examples it's. Classified that in the in the document. Wow, that's really strange.

Zongjun · 3:08

So, and then I did some digging. It's like, OK, this is goishicha and awabancha because I heard from some members of the Global Japanese Tea Association that it did not include things like awabancha. And they were, there was a lot of commentary that it's kind of ridiculous because they're literally some of the most Japanese tea in in, in the sense that like it was invented there in these mountainous towns.

Zongjun · 3:30

And I don't think anyone is copying goishicha or awabancha or all of these different kind of teas, which is strange that it's not part of the GI status. And then I wanted to double confirm it. So I found this really great article about this in Japanese on the Japanese Internet on Yahoo. It was written by this very interesting author, Tomoko San, who is a Nihoncha instructor.

Zongjun · 3:53

She also studies Urasenke and she, she wrote about the status. And actually if you look at some of her other work, it's very interesting. She does some very open minded comparison of Chinese and Japanese matcha. She clearly really knows what she's talking about and really kind of enjoyed reading some of her perspectives after finding this article. But what she mentioned here is that there is some dissent. And she also expressed some surprise that things like wakocha and oolong are not included. And she also confirmed what kind of makes sense from first principles.

Zongjun · 4:26

But it was the first place that I saw it written. And anything that looked officially researched is that these post fermented teas are also not included. I'm reading this article that she wrote about a comparison of Chinese matcha and Japanese matcha, and in this case it's Wazuka matcha. Pretty fair comparison.

Zongjun · 4:47

Very fair comparison. I was like, really? She really went in with less bias than I would have guessed from a Japanese tea author. Yeah. Yeah, yeah, very cool. So like she and actually just just to give everyone some context of that article, which is pretty fascinating, so she prepared these all as usucha and compared them to a more like standard Wazuka matcha.

Zongjun · 5:09

And she basically, I don't know, indirectly said they were all too bitter and astringent for her despite having a decent color. Some of them were a little yellowish, but I reading between the lines, you can really get the sense that this would be something she would be a little embarrassed to prepare for someone, especially as an Urasenke instructor. And that the the other product from Wazuka was, you know, much more to what she considers classically good. Apparently she took one sip of each of the Chinese matchas and couldn't even go in for a second sip. But then she prepared them as a latte and she was like, wow, actually these are excellent

Zongjun · 5:44

lattes and she thinks that they're totally suitable. And I don't it's just such a perfect encapsulation actually of this Chinese versus Japanese matcha debate isn't really, you know, the Japanese have their own context in which they consume this, which was her first reaction.

Zongjun · 6:00

But that's not really how the rest of the world judges quality standards by because it's not even they're not even seeing the same painting. When you drink a matcha as usucha, its flaws are you can't, you cannot hide behind a flaw.

Zongjun · 6:14

It's very noticeable, right? But when you drink it as a latte, there's a really fundamental flavor transformation and you are no longer looking at the same painting, so to speak, because the canvas is completely different material. And I really liked that she gave it a fair shot. And actually that is how most of the matcha is consumed in the world, whether or not we like it. And actually even within the case of this GI thing with with Japan, you know, the reason it's being driven is mostly because of imitation products in the matcha space. I really genuinely do not believe there are very many people counterfeiting Japanese

Zongjun · 6:50

sencha or Japanese bancha. Like it's, there's no economic incentive to it. So like the whole backbone, actually the whole GI piece is about economic incentives. I don't think anyone's copying Japanese wakocha. And for reasons that are very easy to understand when you taste these, these things like awabancha and goishicha are also not being copied. So like they go to what the most commercially relevant thing is. Which is pretty interesting if you think about it, because in terms of how this document is written, it's not necessarily it's not.

Zongjun · 7:25

It's the document is not not covering Wakocha or Goishicha or the fermented tea. It's excluding all these tea because of the term usage specified unfermented tea, because if they don't add that term, it's just going to cover everything, right. So yeah, that that's very interesting if you think about it.

Zongjun · 7:46

I should really just call it Japanese green tea. That's what should be getting GI'd, not Japanese tea. And they make the argument that quote Japanese tea is, you know, historically being sencha and matcha and gyokuro, etcetera.

Zongjun · 8:02

And this is the consumer perception of what Japanese tea is. Because also in this Art of Yahoo article, the people who were in charge of this GI going through were asked in a public setting why Wakocha was not included. And I can quote this specifically what was said. And this has gone through Google Translate. OK, So it says during the Q, the Q&A session, I, she asked him. So she was there during the Q&A session. I asked Mr. Suzuki a question.

Zongjun · 8:34

There was a debate about why Japanese black tea, which is currently popular in Japan, is not included in the GI range. The images that quote Japanese tea currently has both domestically and internationally is green tea.

Zongjun · 8:49

Given the long history of green tea culture in Japan, Japanese tea was defined as encompassing the category of green tea, and that's what they said. Wow, this is just nonsense. So in short, the deciding factors for GI registration where the Japan has been producing quote green tea for hundreds of years since tea was introduced from China and the production began in Japan including the long established quote matcha. It's I'm being a little bit too speculative, please forgive me, but I smell the sense of elitism right here because that's an. Interesting tank.

Zongjun · 9:24

Yeah, for, for our bancha, for bancha, for Wakocha or for Goishicha and also like Hojicha, right. Hojicha is included and bancha is also included. They are Japanese tea. Yeah it's just these weird post fermented teas that are not along with wakocha, oolong and white tea. OK.

Ryan · 9:44

Well, interesting. OK, maybe I'm being too speculative, but these teas. These are bancha was the every man's tea but it is included. OK, OK, interesting. Wow, very strange. Why? And why not call it Japanese green tea. This. Is why not specific or like you just be more inclusive? Like they they've gone through the effort of excluding other teas, which is very surprising because it's not like these tea companies doesn't make other teas. So to add to more context, she also goes on to write instead overseas.

Ryan · 10:20

When people think of Japanese tea, they think of green tea such as matcha and sencha. I don't believe that most people think of sencha. This is the story I think the Japanese like to tell themselves, and that sencha really is only only commercially relevant in the domestic market in Japan. Well, but if you include other teas, just going to make everything more interesting.

Ryan · 10:41

Yeah. Like, it's a perfect opportunity to educate the oversea consumers that there's more about Japanese tea, more diversity. Well, OK, so they do go on. So furthermore, when I asked whether Japanese black tea and other varieties would be registered as GI in the future, the response was quote, depending on the response from overseas to Japanese black tea, it may be possible to add them to the GI list in the future. So they're not close minded about it. And then she goes on to write.

Zongjun · 11:13

Hearing that makes me want to support Japanese black tea and domestically produced oolong, which still has a very small production volume. So someone I was having a dialogue with someone that listens to the podcast and they were reacting to our GI episode that had a little bit of pushback that I thought was just incredibly thoughtful.

Zongjun · 11:31

And something that they mentioned is that, you know, this GI label is going to be seen as premium. So it's going, and this is something that this article recommend recognizes as well, is that, you know, this GI label looks fancy, It looks nice, it looks official, looks premium.

Zongjun · 11:47

And when it gets put on a label, it's going to elevate the status of the products. And you know, when you compare it to like, let's say this tea with, you know, laundered Chinese ply or whatever that's being used by some of the more shady players being mislabeled, this is Japanese tea.

Zongjun · 12:03

I mean, let's say we take that tea out of the system and now we have a Chinese matcha product that is being marketed on its own merits. If you compare this Chinese generic or even non generic matcha product that's being sold, that's a ceremonial grade versus this very official looking average commercial quality matcha that has this beautiful GI label. It's a label that matters in the same way that if you don't know very much about wine, seeing something that won a gold, the gold medal, or has an AOP or DOP designation, you're more likely to think that it's premium.

Ryan · 12:37

So let's assume that that's true, and I think it's a fair assumption. It's totally ignoring the T types that could use the most help. Like Wakucha is not a very big thing internationally. These post fermentities are extremely niche.

Ryan · 12:53

You could even argue that are they're a little bit in danger of of their preservation because they are so incredibly regional and so niche. And same thing with the relatively new Japanese oolong or white tea styles. Everything's just so new. And you know, those are the industries that argue they need the most help.

Ryan · 13:12

So like if it does give the perception of premiumness, the Japanese tea industry is not being very inclusive. Yeah, yeah. And for our bancha and Goishicha, I think they're arguably the most Japanese tea since you I don't think and you can't find any equivalent in China or historical lineage of producing those I've.

Zongjun · 13:32

Never heard of like lacto fermented or koji fermented teas like these are. Some of them are anaerobically fermented like the lacto ones. I think it's really very unique heritage. It actually better meets the spirit of AGI. It's.

Ryan · 13:49

Totally agree. Totally agree. Very strange. It's very strange. I mean this is obviously all commercially minded with regards to counterfeits. The reason you GI something is to tap into the existing infrastructure of countries with mutually exchanged GIS and so that you can fight counterfeits and mislabeled products. And you know, each of the new countries and UK, for example, have existing frameworks to you can use the legal and enforcement mechanisms within each of these countries to fight back in the same way that if Russia selling fake champagne labeled as champagne to to Japan, there are enforcement mechanisms in Japan to get that

Ryan · 14:33

removed. And you can utilize local frameworks for dealing with that. So I mean, this is all very clearly about money because they're only doing the commercial ones. But I do think it is very outrageous to basically implicitly say Japanese tea is green tea, and green tea is the only thing we are going to consider as quote Japanese tea.

Ryan · 14:57

I mean this is just crazy. Very dismissive to other tea categories. So in terms of how this effects matcha, you know, none of our opinions have changed since the last time we covered this in a previous podcast episode, which we encourage everyone to do. It's a good thing for all of the shady players who are importing foreign material and labeling it as Japanese tea. So, you know, that's a good thing. Anything that has more accurate provenance is a good thing for the specialty movement.

Ryan · 15:27

I think there's a good thing for matcha and I think it's going to also force the Chinese. All of that stuff that was being exported to Japan was quality checked by tea masters in Japan. So it's not second rate material necessarily.

Ryan · 15:40

You know, they'll be what based on the numbers and you know, obviously it's very hard to get official statistics on these things, but based on what we've read, it feels like it's around 1000 tons of tencha from China and to Japan.

Ryan · 15:52

It's going to need to find a new market. Well, maybe not necessarily right, because they just don't. They just cannot label it as Japanese tea or nihoncha, but they can continue to do so and the seller without label. That's true. It's very true.

Ryan · 16:08

So another thing that's one thing one more thing worth noting is if you look at the official math website for this GI registration, there has to be an organizing entity behind the GI. And in this case The Who behind the story is the Japan Tea Central Association, which is chaired by someone who originally comes from Shizuoka.

Ryan · 16:29

And then I get a little curious who controls and funds the Japan Tea Central Association because there's curious what whether or not there were commercial interests that were being mixed up into what is officially considered a public interest group or organization. And so it has 10 full time members, 3 come from industry federations of tea producers, tea merchants and tea exporters, 4 prefectural tea chambers, Shizuoka, Kyoto, Kagoshima and Mie, which about makes sense.

Ryan · 17:02

Those are the biggest places by volume and importance for all of these Sencha and Matcha and three companies, Ito En and Suntory and Mitsui. Yeah, Mitsui is one of the largest Japanese commercial conglomerate and encompasses Mitsui Group, encompasses a lot of sectors, manufacturing, banking, farm and a lot of that. I smell money.

Ryan · 17:25

I smell money. Well, yeah, it's hard to make any connections actually. I was looking for a deeper story in gossip or misaligned incentives here. And actually I think it's a pretty balanced group. Like you do have like the majority being represented by the larger tea producing prefecture, tea chambers, Shizuoka, Kyoto, Kagoshima and Mie.

Ryan · 17:49

And then you have the industry Federations which actually I don't know that much about. And this is really going to send me down a new rabbit hole. And three from the biggest corporate interests, it actually does feel a little bit balanced to me, but definitely around quote big tea we think about like big agriculture, big whatever. And this is definitely representing big tea interests in Japan.

Ryan · 18:10

Oh yeah, big time. So yeah, I don't know what to think about that part either. And I was trying to dig up more about how this group was funded etcetera, but didn't really find anything really worth mentioning here. Well. One thing that that we can be for sure is that they are not going to lack any money or fund and this is going to last, which I guess is good and then maybe eventually it will cascade down to other tea categories and other small players. Yeah, just they made-up a very weird collective decision so that, you know, it's talked about protecting Japanese tea, but really it's only some

Zongjun · 18:44

Japanese tea. Like, this actually could have been such an interesting moment for the country to come together and recognize the diversity tea and like, the beauty of the various tea that's been produced in Japan and even in Japan historically. Actually, Wakucha is not that new of a style to Japan. I mean, it's new if you compare it to like, matcha, but, you know, it has 100 plus year old history. And for these post fermented teas, I actually have no idea how old they are, but no one else is making them. So that's the most Japanese of all the Japanese tea. Yeah.

Zongjun · 19:13

Yeah, maybe I'm not being too speculative, Brian. There is segregation of categories, I guess. Yeah, it's, it's a little sad. Yeah, it's a little weird. It's a little sad. It also feels like 1/2 measure. Also all the things that were in our previous recording about why not actually do this by region like Uji, You know, Uji is just so fundamentally on GI able based on all of the materials that we've posted in the past. So, you know, basically they just don't produce enough tea and so much tea that's labeled as Uji, it's coming from Uji and people believe it comes from Uji even though that's technically not what the trademark

Zongjun · 19:51

definition says. But that's still the reality of consumer perception and the spirit of a GI is it, you know, it's actually from that place. So it's kind of breaks the rules and there's just too much being fought over in Uji.

Ryan · 20:06

Whether or not it could be GI able, whether or not they get this UNESCO heritage status for the Yamashiro region and Count encompassing the Uji and the 8 counties or 7 counties around Uji including Wazuka, Joyo. Quiltanabe, etcetera.

Ryan · 20:23

And then of course, you have the trademark definition, which expands 4 different prefectures. So yeah, all of this is weird. I think it's primarily about money. It's to leverage the institutions that exist in the reciprocal GI countries to remove fake products, which I think is a good thing. If you're a consumer in Spain or in Portugal or in France or in London, having the tea that is falsely labeled as Japanese tea getting removed from shelves is a good thing. It's a good thing for Japan.

Ryan · 20:54

It's a good thing for Japanese tea. So I think the net benefit of this is very good to the consumer. And I think that there is some net harm to the domestic industry by basically saying Japanese tea is green tea and green tea is Japanese tea, at least implicitly. That's what they're saying, yeah. Well, consumers can be informed and educated, located at any time and they're open to it.

Ryan · 21:19

So there could be changes in the future. I wonder if you could get Japanese tea wakucha removed from European store shelves being labeling itself as Japanese tea like what happens in those edge cases? One of some massive troll wants to go like prove how ridiculous this is and try to get all of this tea that is not green tea but is indeed Japanese tea removed from shelves like.

Ryan · 21:49

I guess it will be difficult to find them in the first place. Yeah, that's true. But yeah, very weird. So that's the double edged sword as we see it with this Japanese tea designation. Yeah. So that's our take. I don't know, Sam, if you have anything to add. No, no, no.

Zongjun · 22:04

It's interesting to see how everything is going to unfold. Yeah, exciting news. Overall probably not beneficial overall I hope. Agree. Let's all support even though we're the Specialty Matcha Podcast. Let's all support some of the Wakocha oolong and post fermented tea producers that we can. So if you do know a vendor, give some of those teas some love. They need it.

Zongjun · 22:25

You know, we're on we care about matcha on the Specialty Matcha Podcast, obviously, but we also care deeply about broader tea culture and seeing it not being recognized at an official level is a little sad. So let's all asset, our Yahoo article suggests. Let's let's go out and support those producers. Agreed.

Ryan · 22:43

So before we leave, we wanted to give a brief update on our startup progress. Sanko Usu One, which is our countertop matcha mill. We have started manufacturing and which is incredibly exciting. It has been perpetually delayed for 1000 different reasons, but we have parts that are being cut right now, the assembly lines being finished. We're working on compliance and in about a week the assembly line should be starting if we approve the design of the assembly unit, which really means our company is finally actually getting started.

Zongjun · 23:17

How does it feel? Sound. Well, I don't know. At this point, I'm a little hesitant in making any judgments or expectation, but it feels good, it feels good, it feels solid. It's visible milestone that we have achieved and we can't wait to, you know, deliver all these units out into the world and seeing the idea of fresh milled matcha being shared.

Zongjun · 23:40

By many and we really have the world's best beta program partners. Really every single person throughout this whole process who, you know, took a bet on us and believed in the product and believed in the vision has just been so unbelievably supportive and helpful.

Zongjun · 23:55

And we're laying the foundations and we hope to be a really wonderful growing community of people in the matcha industry that are able to to mill their own product. And we will be doing our first conference in September.

Zongjun · 24:08

So we'll be in Bangkok at one of the larger coffee conferences that's happening in Thailand in September. So if you're Bangkok based, we'd love to meet up. And we think it's a pretty appropriate first place for us to be attending a show with the mill and and doing some demos.

Ryan · 24:23

We've talked about Thailand and and matcha culture in Thailand so much and it's, it feels, you know, neither of us have ever lived there, but it feels a little bit like a a bit of a homecoming, at least from how much the Thai matcha community has given us. It feels really nice that that and appropriate that that's the first place that we're going to.

Ryan · 24:43

Terms of specialty, matcha, it really is the home of specialty and it's it's a place that, you know, if we can conquer, then we can really conquer the rest of the world. Indeed, indeed. So we're super excited to be partnering with Chaseki there and we'll be at their booths in early September. I think the date is September 10 through 13. We couldn't be more excited or more grateful to be doing this. Then we can't wait to to meet up with all of our friends in Thailand.

Ryan · 25:10

And then we will be doing the in person implementations to the first seven people who purchased a mill and which is going to be taking us all over the place, which we will give updates on and would love to do some live reporting about what's what's everything like on the ground in those various places.

Ryan · 25:26

So after two years of talking about it, it finally feels like our company is getting started. Yeah, feels great. Too long, too long. You also might see quite a bit more content about why fresh. We think fresh milled matcha is better and you can absolutely believe that there is a bias and some of this content. However, we do firmly believe it and we wouldn't have spent so much time and money bringing this infrastructure to life if we did not believe that it is a better way to do things. And we even believe that the Japanese tea producers would all agree with us that if it would be possible to fresh mill everything locally, it would be

Zongjun · 26:06

better. I don't think we've met anyone that would disagree with that sentence. It's just the infrastructure structure has not existed for that to happen in so many different ways in the supply chain, the actual equipment, the knowledge and the craft and doing it. But that's all slowly starting to change, so it makes us incredibly excited.

Zongjun · 26:27

And this is so different from the old, you know, AI consulting base, Ryan, because now we have proof, we can actually show you, you can taste it. It's very tangible. That's true. When you're doing analytics, really advanced analytics and you know the the AI spits out some numbers. How do you verify that you know this, this consumer demographic likes this product by this percentage more than the next product or something right like which we did verify. It's incredibly slow and expensive to actually go out and do the physical in person test to make sure that the prediction worked.

Zongjun · 27:01

But this is just so much more tangible as you put in tencha fresh milled matcha comes out. The matcha milling standard is incredibly high quality. Here's the smear test and even better taste it. You know, it's, it's there's nothing abstract about what this is what's has a really nice left, hard left turn that compared to what we used to be doing. Agree.

Ryan · 27:24

Agree. So, you know, part of Specialty Matcha Podcast for us is getting a lot of more clarity on our ideas and working through knowledge gaps. But we're also going to dedicate a few episodes to just talking through all of the benefits, both because we really believe in them, but also it acts as a way for us to become more articulate in communicating why this is better.

Ryan · 27:44

So if you have strong opinions, if you have an interest in this topic, please let us know. If you happen to know a lot about machinery where you think we have knowledge gaps, please also reach out. We would love to make this a broader discussion and talk about matcha more generally as it becomes a topic that I believe in the next three to five years. You will have to know something about if you're a tea person, in the same way that ignoring a coffee grinder in the coffee world is basically impossible if you care about quality. I think the same thing is going to be true for matcha. And that's the world that we're

Zongjun · 28:16

moving into. And we have the very rare opportunity as a community to really focus on objective things that that conversation is going to evolve around, around. It's really the early days and it's just getting started. And it's so like, there's so much potential that can happen here, but obviously we can't do it alone.

Ryan · 28:37

Yeah. So new and so fresh, pun intended. So fresh. That's right. I think it's the perfect place to end. If you enjoyed this, please consider sharing it with the friend. We're going to open up the next batch of Sanko Usu One probably about a month after the first batch gets delivered.

Zongjun · 28:53

So be on the lookout for that and let us know if you'd like to be on the wait list. And with that, thank you so much for listening and we'll see you in the next one. See you in the future. Take care.