Notes at Origin: Hand-picking Honzu Shaded Asahi Cultivar in Uji

Ryan · 0:00

Hello and welcome to the Specialty Matcha Podcast. My name is Ryan, this is my co-host Zongjun who also goes by Sam. Hello, hello. And we're the co-founders of Sanko Matcha. Products we launched this podcast to discuss our learning journey, matcha share startup stories and interview experts right now we are sitting right next to this 100 year old camphor tree looking directly into this beautiful riverbank of Uji and as we just finished our first tencha picking underneath a honzu-shaded tea garden. It's something magical about this moment. We.

Ryan · 0:35

Wanted to record our initial raw impressions. So we're actually doing this from my phone. So if the audio is not perfect, apologies in advance. But we had the wonderful experience. We're very grateful to have gotten to do handpicking tencha of Asahi cultivar trees that have been honzu shaded here in Uji. We're not allowed to disclose who it was, so we're not going to give any revealing identifiable detail, but we wanted to document and describe the experience of like, what is it like?

Zongjun · 1:05

What is tencha like? So Sam, what were some of your first impressions? If someone asks you like, hey, what's it like to handpick tea for? For tencha to be turned into matcha. I think the first thing that I notice is the smell underneath this. Really floral smell coming out from the tea trees. There was something wonderful and the temperature difference as we enter underneath honzu.

Zongjun · 1:29

It was pretty sunny and hot day today in Uji, but it was actually very cool and almost a little bit cold underneath honzu. Yeah, And we had the experience today of being underneath kanreisha or sort of the black quote UN quote synthetic shading cloths, but still on a raised tana so you could walk underneath them.

Zongjun · 1:51

And as you know, we were walking around Uji afterwards. You, if you really look closely, you can see the heat radiating up from these black tana, from these black cloths, these black coverings. So the temperature difference was enormous between the honzu and kanreisha.

Zongjun · 2:12

So it's much more comfortable. And actually when you're hand picking, you got to get pretty close to the ground. So sometimes you basically have to completely squat to have access to some of the branches and close to the earth.

Zongjun · 2:26

I would say it was almost like chilly. I had a couple moments where there was a little breeze pass through. It felt like I was walking into like a cellar, like when you walk into a really old house that goes deep underground or into a cave, very similar humid kind of, you know, 50°F type breeze and, and feeling which was which was really interesting and the last thing I would expect because it's actually quite a hot day here.

Zongjun · 2:56

Yeah, totally agree. And so picking the tea itself is very different than of course picking Chinese tea and also very different from picking sencha. So I almost need to unlearn my previous experience picking other teas to pick, you know this honzu shaded Asahi which is going to be made for tencha. So the trick is to feel the tenderness of all of the new grown branches and you snap the entire branch. You don't pick like individual bud or you don't pick individual leaves or you don't pick the, you know, one bud and two leaf or one leaf kind of composition. You snapped in the higher branch

Zongjun · 3:36

off and you know part of the stem is going to later be turned into hojicha and the leaves itself is going to be turned into tencha themselves. So that was very interesting and and we also learned that, you know, it's not the toughest leaves that are the best. It's actually the leaves that are underneath the bushes. They kind of get covered further by the, you know, leaves on the bush so that they receive even less sunlight. But that tastes the best, the most umami. And some of them, I guess, receive so little sunlight that they might have a little discolored. They actually look pale than white. Yeah, some of them were were

Zongjun · 4:15

very white, very pale, almost yellow and these young tender buds that were underneath and you know, it's interesting. So you know, before the harvest probably about a month ago now and whenever you're doing tencha production, you remove the apex bud or the bud that's on the very, very top.

Zongjun · 4:32

And what happens is when you the apex bud releases a hormone that goes all the way down that particular branch and sub branches that is suppressing the growth of what we call secondary meristem. Just like we have stem cells in our bodies that are undifferentiated tissue.

Zongjun · 4:50

It can basically replace any or most of the different type of cells in your body. And the biologist thought it would be confusing to call these stem cells, stem cells and plants, at least that's what my biology teacher has told me.

Zongjun · 5:04

They call them meristem cells and they're undifferentiated tissue. So basically can turn into any part of a plant and they're basically the lack of that hormone that's suppressing its growth as a signal to grow. So you have all these mature leaves and a little bit bud, little baby bud that's being hugged right in between the junction between the mature leaf and the stem and it starts to grow. So what you actually do when you're harvesting, you pull the branch towards you and you start at the base and many, many, many leaves down, nestled down there are these buds and sometimes they grow, then they grow into

Zongjun · 5:41

to tender young leaves. And that is what you pick. And sometimes they have the chance to grow themselves into having many leaves now, or sometimes it's just a a much smaller leaf. That's what Sam was talking about. When you remove the entire branch, it's just this new tender part which sometimes can grow quite large. So from when you pull one single branch of the plant towards you, you might be able to pick your actual plucking motion might be anywhere from 10 to 15 plucks working your way all the way up. And it's even and more difficult when the main, the main branch that you pull has sub branches,

Zongjun · 6:20

because then it's like trying to, if you think like a big Christmas tree, you have all these branches and sub branches and trying to remove very specific parts of each. You kind of have to work in an organized way. So that was kind of a hamper to efficiency.

Zongjun · 6:34

But no, it was really cool. And as you're doing so, your body needs to lean all the way over towards the tea bushes. It's a killer to my back and my waist, my lower body. It was none after standing there in 3 for three hours, it was quite painful. And if you look around, it was all of these 6070 year old grand grand grannies and grandpas are picking tea around you and they were a lot faster than me.

Zongjun · 7:02

So that was almost a little discouraging and. I think the oldest person there picking tea was like 85 years old. Yeah, so. And we were only there for three hours for about 25% of today's, actually. It's quite daunting. You look across these entire fields that are all going to be tencha and you think to yourself, Oh my word, wow.

Ryan · 7:24

Just the amount of work that goes into hand picking tea. My back hurts too. And we were only doing it for three hours. And it it's it's uncomfortable work. I'm sure there's worse work. We've been knowledge workers are all our whole careers.

Ryan · 7:41

So like doing this type of manual work is very new to us. But you know, I am so much more grateful for all of the tea pickers and I have actually changed my position on honzu shaded or non honzu shaded tencha matcha. I I'm no longer ever going to mix anything with tencha tea or let anyone else around me. No lattes, no mixed drinks.

Ryan · 8:10

I don't care if like it's like Noma or 11 Madison Park or like La Bernadine chef making something like the amount of backbreaking work of actual human pain it takes to harvest this type of tea is, you know, I think it's painful.

Ryan · 8:27

It's painful and it's just the harvesting part, you know, like honzu and all of these shading works goes for days and months. And these, you know, structures are hard to fix. For anyone to be able to create a honzu structure, someone needs to actually physically stands on top of the tunnel and be able to sense where where does the skeleton of the tunnel is so that they can step their foot on top of it to spread the rice straws. And so it's actually very dangerous work. We've learned tea farmers in Uji who had their relatives doing so and end up breaking their ribs because they fell down from the tunnel.

Ryan · 9:06

So it's there are a lot of very challenging difficulties and efforts went into all of these productions of honzu shaded some matter. Yeah, and some real human sacrifices. It's pretty interesting. There's a pretty strong case actually, especially as farmers age, that honzu is arguably the sustainability of this method just from a danger and workplace hazard perspective is quite high. And we were doing some independent exploration of our own a couple days ago here in Uji, walking around the Shirakawa region.

Ryan · 9:42

And our goal was to see like, get a real impression of the number of honzu shaded plants there. And I'm pretty sure we saw like 70 or 80% of what's in Shirakawa, at least that's what we could tell from the satellite pictures. And we were literally just walking on the highway for hours, like half the day and looking at all of the structures and all the action going on.

Ryan · 10:09

And I think we saw three, maybe 4 Shirakawa. And typically it was a substructure. And then the rest was kanreisha or the the black synthetic cheesecloth. That's a lot easier to work with. So the more context that we have, the more we realize that it's not really the end all be all. And it is like really the pinnacle of human effort, but you know, at what expense.

Ryan · 10:35

And we've also heard too anecdotally that the taste difference isn't huge. So from a workplace hazard like, are we putting people's health on the line by creating such demand for this when when it doesn't make the world's largest impact in the tea, even though it's a heritage method?

Zongjun · 10:54

Yeah, but you know, Ryan, what, what is our position to make such comment? You know, like that's true. We we've been talking to all these farmers. They were talking about all of these laborers works, but also by the end of the day, they were like, this is traditional.

Zongjun · 11:09

This is how tencha was made for hundreds of years. And they are spending their effort trying to preserve this really dying art. And, you know, really mad respect to all these people from, you know, different area in in Uji. And we've heard that, you know, there are other there are places in Japan starting doing honzu too. There are honzu starting to be constructed in places like Yame.

Zongjun · 11:31

And I think this is a great news for this, you know, traditional art. There is something really magical and beautiful standing underneath that straw canopy, looking through all of the sunlights, kind of creating this little thin light spots scattering through the entire tea field. Yeah.

Zongjun · 11:48

The actual like color and like temperature of the light, so to speak, feel very different under the honzu than it does under the kanreisha. So like the actual spectral like light that is making it to the plants is different.

Zongjun · 12:03

You can feel it. You can see it. And the temperature is really obvious because, like a lot of these kanreisha we saw are at least three layers. They're actually pretty thick. And between the layers, you have, you know, space for air to kind of flow through and, you know, kind of carry a weight out of the heat being retained by the color of the kanreisha. It's black, takes a lot of heat, but for honzu. So it's really just one layer above us. And it's so much, you know, obviously more cool than kanreisha.

Ryan · 12:34

It's kind of amazing. Yeah, that's true. That's true. Although I just really hope that this, the matcha boom doesn't put undue pressure to incentivize producers to do it when they just don't have the human capital like the actual skilled people on the site to not only create but maintain these structures, especially over the course of the season. Kind of really that that story of how dangerous it is really was something I never even considered. So, you know, there's multiple sides to these these things. Well, it's creates wonderful tasting matcha, that's true. And I will be much, much more grateful in the future consuming tencha honzu.

Ryan · 13:15

shaded Asahi or any other cultivars? We saw some other cultivars being planned underneath honzu too. And it's, you know, it really brings people new appreciation to this wonderful drink. The rate of picking is also something that I really appreciate. I think Sam and I together with just a little tiny bit of help in the demoing early on about how to do it, we did. We, we did.

Ryan · 13:44

Because these plants are in big rows. You're only doing half of 1 Bush at a time and then you move and then the other half would eventually be picked by someone else who's on the other side of the row. Kind of makes sense. And I think we move down about 8 plants in three hours, so about four tea bushes with a little bit of help. And we collected about.

Ryan · 14:07

Underneath 2 kilos each. Yeah, just underneath 2 kilos each, so between 3 to 4 kilos. And that's of leaf that has like these fresh stems in it. And of course it's fresh leaf. So there's a lot of water content. I forget what the percentage is, but it's got to be at least you you take like 20% of that weight is what ends up making it is matcha. Oh yeah.

Ryan · 14:28

Like, you know, the shrinkage rate is about 5 times for a lot of these teas in general. And you got to take away all of these, you know, stems and things. So it's another 20% of, you know, decrease from that weight. So very little, very little tea. Actually remarkably unclear.

Ryan · 14:48

If we have picked more honzu shaded matcha now, then we have consumed tencha honzu shaded matcha, then we have consumed. I hope that we have ever in our lives that have contributed back the the amount of effort that the singular processing step has kind of wild. It is wild.

Zongjun · 15:09

Something also very interesting that I learned is that so I, I was actually quite curious about how the winds are not going to blow out of these straws away doing honzu shading. Because in some other parts of Uji or further out into Wazuka, Ujitawara, people are constantly talking about this wind damage of kanreisha hitting on the tea bush, creating some bruised on the tea leaves. And all of these winds in higher elevation to mountains kind of sometimes destroy the, the shading and needs to be constantly fixed.

Zongjun · 15:42

So you know, I, I asked the question to our farmer today and they said that there's very little wind actually underneath that area that will do any damage or blow any of the straw away. So I guess there is also a physical or geographical limitation of where can honzu be done because you know, if it's in some of the more mountainous area, it there's just really no way for you to be able to hold all of the rice straw together as canopy.

Ryan · 16:12

That's interesting. I actually never thought about that until you just said that there's a lot of local constraints around production methods. That's pretty interesting. Yeah. So it's really a limited technique, not only being limited by human or, you know, laborers, but also by geography.

Ryan · 16:31

That makes sense. That really makes sense. Something that I was very surprised by was the vibe. We were the only foreigners there. And I would have expected that when you're coordinating with this many tea pickers because there were a lot of people there. And it's the busiest time of year for tea farmers in general who are putting in these crazy hours and constantly working and I'm sure getting very little sleep, sacrificing for all of us so that we can consume and sell matcha is that it was so calm. It was the atmosphere was also so positive. Everyone was laughing and joking and there was some chit chat. I couldn't understand it because

Ryan · 17:15

I can't understand Japanese, but everyone's interaction was so positive and everyone was just so grateful and gracious to everyone there. In my mind at least, like a little bit more chaotic, but it really wasn't, It just felt really genuine in a way that I, I guess I didn't, I didn't think what would happen under a such circumstances.

Ryan · 17:39

I, as someone like myself, I tend to get a little frazzled when you have to do a lot of coordination with a lot of different people. And there's all this time pressure and those, all these complexities and you have all these people who have various levels of experience working on this thing that you spent all year getting to this point.

Zongjun · 17:58

Because you know, most, almost all of the farmers here, the good farmers only harvest once per year. And like all of your eggs are in this one basket in a few nice days because they don't pick when it rains like this, all this. It was more like a, you know, community gathering for them to, you know, do some work and chitchat. I'm sure it was is actual work.

Zongjun · 18:20

Yeah, yeah. But it didn't feel like that. Yeah, it doesn't feel like. It all day. They certainly do not get that a project manager anxiety that you do. But yeah, it's super friendly. Everyone obvious obviously feels like know each other for a long time. And I was asking one of the farmers that, you know, how is the interaction between different gardens and farmers within Uji?

Zongjun · 18:43

And this farmers told me that it's actually a super friendly and small community. Everyone helps each other out during harvest and processing. So, you know, like it's you really get this kind of, you know, vibe like almost like a, you know, Miyazaki movie from, you know, all these mountain villages or small villages. You know, people are friendly, people are nice and people are just right there.

Ryan · 19:09

You know, I think a nice nice life makes me almost want to retired here. But actually, like, a Miyazaki movie is such a fantastic way of putting it. It almost felt like a fiction, so much so that we didn't notice or feel any of the pressure. And like, even the farmer who who invited us was like asking us.

Ryan · 19:29

And, you know, if we have any questions, feel free to ask. And they were spontaneously explaining things as we were going for like, I don't know, a good, like, half hour. I felt so guilty. It's like there's so much going on. It's like it's OK, just you can leave us. I'm sure you're so busy.

Zongjun · 19:45

But they were so. Nice. Yeah. And, you know, this is really the busiest time of the year and we do not have a proper translator to do the communication. So we had to relied on my very limited Japanese and the farmers were like very actively using, you know, Google Translate to help facilitate the communication.

Zongjun · 20:05

So we were, you know, very grateful about that. And you know. And as we really convey the message that we really want to learn about tea farming, about Hitsumi, about honzu shading, they were being super transparent about all the information and the questions that we ask. Yeah, when you're really this close to the product into the farm, the amount of gatekeeping really just seems to vanish. And much is such a unique product. It's so weird in so many ways because it's honestly like from a really high level perspective, sometimes being a student of matcha, trying to learn as much as we can about this product, its history, its legacy and its

Zongjun · 20:46

nuances is that it feels gate kept a lot of times at every single level, including the preparation through all these ceremonial institutions and what all the cultural associations people put behind it. And like, you know, the, the tea schools are one of the one of the more compelling or interesting things about the tea schools that I think they use as motivation for the students and access and mystery is that there are a lot of secret teachings. So if you are in or a sink, I'm multi sink. And I'm sure the other schools have some of this, although I know some are more transparent than others. There's a lot of this concept of

Ryan · 21:23

secret teachings. It's kind of like you're almost joining a, you know, a secret society or a living legacy, but you can only see more and more of it until you get into higher and higher levels progress. So it often feels very gate capped. And we're also really interested right now learning about the wholesalers and the chashi and the tea blenders. The tea purveyors also feels very, very gate capped. We were doing some retail learning of how products are being positioned in Uji and they're also trying to see the macho shortage first hand, which is totally real. You can see out of stock and quantity limits here in Uji. We're here in May for, for

Ryan · 22:02

matcha cans. And so only you can only buy one at a time. And we were at one store and they only had two products left. And I asked, they're the same price, but they had different names. And I asked what's the difference?

Ryan · 22:14

And we, she, we kept hearing over and over they're the same, same product, same product. And I'm like, well, how can they be the same product? They have different names. And then Zongjun helped facilitate the communication a bit, and we learned that one was for Omotesenke, 1 was for Urasenke, and it's the same blend but two different poetic names. Different names.

Ryan · 22:39

So this really adds another layer of the complexity of the naming scheme in in Uji or in matcha 1 product can literally be the same but having different names because their usage or their end customers. So they take this full circle.

Ryan · 22:55

I mean, it really feels very gatekept. There's all of this complexity to learn when you're learning it, but whenever we're interacting with tea farmers, it just seems to vanish. If you can like have the opportunity to meet tea farmers and talk to them and be in the field. I've never had that feeling at all. It's like all of the stuffiness and associations and secrecy and complexity, it's just brought all the way back down to earth on from the ground, like in the soil, like it's just the raw thing and people are much less hesitant to share information. Yeah.

Zongjun · 23:32

And they are like much less enclosed to the outside and also much less enclosed to each other to all of these tea farmers. We have heard that and we have seen them gathering in all these processing facility, helping each other out to create better tencha or better, you know, other types of tea.

Ryan · 23:53

So it, there is a really, you know, strong sense of community that exists here in Japan in the tea world. So that's quite, quite the opposite there, I guess to, to, to some other, you know, communities that we saw. Yeah, absolutely. So Sam, if anyone's listening, and I'm sure everyone who's a regular listener is definitely interested in doing this type of thing in the future. Like what general advice could we offer people who want to have experience doing hand picked tea either in Uji or in other places?

Ryan · 24:26

And you know, how, what are the mechanics that they could do to go about getting opportunities like this? Like if we were to deconstruct, how did we end up there today? What lessons can we share with others that might be valuable?

Zongjun · 24:41

Yeah, definitely. First of all, try to build relationship before tea harvest season. There's really very little chance for you to be able to get a hold of a tea farmer in which that you do not know before. To have them respond to you and have them help you to schedule, you know, some time to, you know, sit down and learn, you know, learn your story, learn your personality, learned, you know, what do you want to do here and then lead you to the tea garden to take tea. They are like spinning around like tornadoes trying to get things done in midst of all these, you know, chaotic situation, you know, got to

Zongjun · 25:21

arrange different tea pickers doing different, you know, cultivars, got to do all the schedule of the tea processing right after the fresh, fresh leaves being collected. They are busy. So definitely try to come your make your visit to these tea farmers, you know during off seasons for the first time. Get to know them before asking to participate in the tea picking.

Zongjun · 25:47

But that's of course for Uji and for other regions. If you just want to, you know, be able to stand in the tea garden, you know, experiencing, you know, plucking tea leaves off from tea bushes, there are other regions outside of Uji that are much more loose. So places like, you know, Wazuka, places like Ujitawara, there's a lot of these farms that actually have connections with local schools and they ship, you know, buses, buses and buses of students to all these tea fields to participate in, you know, tea picking. So in those areas you definitely will have a better chance, you know, participating and you

Ryan · 26:26

know, getting to learn the first hand experience, you know, without, you know, having too much planning in advance. And a lot of the producers that are in Uji proper are so inundated with requests to meet and with business inquiries and that it's not uncommon to hear stories of them just not having time to respond will take a a long time and a lot of persistence a probably to get that that first meeting and would be much easier in general with some form of introduction typically. So if you wanted to form direct relationships with them, the time to do that was probably a few years ago before they were so inundated.

Ryan · 27:10

And, you know, specialty matcha was less of a thing, right? It was much more novel and the idea of going and and not selling your tencha to the wholesalers, but to someone that was going to sell it on as a single origin, single cultivar products, relatively new. But everyone's rushing in.

Ryan · 27:25

It's a big land, a goldmine land rush. And actually we eventually want to source them some tencha for our mills. But we're doing this purely academically. Everyone that we're talking to, we're just really there to learn.

Ryan · 27:37

And then to share the content either anonymously or unanonymously here. I'm on this podcast to share it with everyone else. So also intention really matters. And also, so getting some background knowledge, walking in knowing what cultivars are and some, you know, a lot of the basics around matcha production and history, et cetera, goes a really long way.

Ryan · 27:59

Like no farmer wants to be be that first entry point. So like one of the general good pieces of advice for all startups and all businesses to be interesting. And a lot of these people who are contacting them are starting up a Matcha business and you can just pick a random location in the world and, and they're Matcha brand.

Ryan · 28:21

And I could see myself if I was a tea farmer, just not being that interested. Like everyone says they're interested in preserving tradition, innovating on the product and showcasing to consumers, etcetera, etcetera. So I'm sure after you see this enough times, you're like, OK, well, I already sell all of my product.

Ryan · 28:39

I'm already dealing with a lot of these B2B accounts and I don't have the capacity for anymore. And I'm getting like 3 emails a week like I'm probably just going to stop responding. And that's approximately where we are with all of these Rockstar famous farmers.

Ryan · 28:54

And Uji proper? And so I think there's a lot for property sourcing where you're forming direct relationships. The real land of opportunity is going to the places that are not as famous and the people that you do not see online.

Ryan · 29:08

And we ourselves are not there yet, but we have heard a lot about other regions what are much more obscure and off the beaten path, both in Kyoto Prefecture and other prefectures. And the difficult part is knowing who to contact. That is a game that we are still actively trying to figure out as well.

Ryan · 29:27

And there's, it's ironic of me to say this because we're sitting here in Uji having that, you know, worked as a Rockstar Uji farmer because they're all Rockstar farmers. But it seems like that's where all the opportunity is, where these people are just not getting absolutely inundated to the point where they just cannot respond to everybody.

Zongjun · 29:43

Yeah, which is definitely a resi. It's ultra competitive in terms of, you know, getting yourself in front of the line and to be able to just speak to anyone. But for, you know, all the other more obscured tea farmers or tea areas out there, it's challenging, it's difficult.

Zongjun · 30:01

Frequently, these people will only just have a telephone number sit somewhere on the newspaper or on some very obscured website. And that's the only way that you can contact them. And you need to have a car. You need to be able to navigate, you know, through all of these regions to get to them. And you need to speak the language because, you know, they really would not be able to, you know, communicate to you that easily.

Zongjun · 30:26

You know, a lot of them probably don't even know very much about how to use a cell phone properly. So using Google Translate might might be a little bit challenging to facilitate a trans, you know, conversation with them. Now maybe for some of the older farmers, yeah. So if we were to summarize, it's very difficult right now to meet the people in Uji proper.

Zongjun · 30:46

If you can, that's wonderful. Introductions definitely help coming in with the right amount of knowledge and there's just like completely by our perception by people we've talked to in the industry. There's a lot of opportunities for other regions outside of Yame and Uji proper and Wazuka and Ujitawara, there's lots of other places making great products. That is true.

Ryan · 31:08

That is true. And we have seen some really young farmers previously farming other types of tea like kabusecha or Yokudo starting to convert or starting trying to learn how to farm tencha in other regions. So there's hope and there are probably a lot of upcoming opportunities in those places. Yeah, absolutely, which would be really great just for the specialty movement in general because that kind of expands the portfolio of options for consumers. There might be some really interesting terroir expressive places that are producing some fantastic tea. And you know, not all cultivars are suitable for all environments too.

Ryan · 31:47

So like when you're talking about terroir and environmental factors and in any particular geography, you know, what cultivar you have is very just similar to wine. I think there's a lot of grapes like Pinot Noir that are just super ultra sensitive and really can only be grown in certain environments, but very similar for cultivars too.

Zongjun · 32:08

So, you know, some are going to be better expressed in certain regions than in others. Yeah. So expanding the horizons a bit would be super cool. I mean, there's probably room for 100 new Japanese specialty matcha companies and each focusing on a different area.

Zongjun · 32:26

Like there's really a lot of opportunity here. And quite frankly, I think that's where we're going to head next and focus. A lot of our effort in coming years is, is trying to find some of these regions that are making great product. Just no one talks about it or it gets shoved into some gigantic blend.

Zongjun · 32:44

And it's probably going to be good for consumers too, because all of the tea that's coming out of Uji is just going to get more and more and more and more expensive. All of this hand picked tea. And a lot of the tea here is the price is going nowhere but up for multiple reasons.

Zongjun · 32:59

Not like it's the shortage, it's the economic environment. It's the demand. It's the demand being, you know, uh, you know, causing things like the shortage. So, you know, just increasing the supply of single origin, single cultivar can expand beyond what's, what's currently out there. So, uh, it's going to become more of a luxury product where it's just not very accessible.

Zongjun · 33:23

So even as a consumer now, we should enjoy the prices that we have because I bet in three years they double. This is the rough proximate X explanation. And anyone in the Chinese tea world really knows this first hand with Pu'er prices. I started buying tea, Pu'er tea in 2013 and and I remember thinking that was kind of expensive at the time. And I recently went back and referenced some of the Pu'er cakes that I own and I'm aging and they like forexed in price and they're not even like that special. It's if we learn from that, it's time to age some tencha in your freezer.

Ryan · 34:04

Yeah, Maybe if you have the ability to mill it fresh. So we should really enjoy these prices despite how high they are while they're still at an accessible level. But by expanding the horizons for these different specialty products to other regions, we have the ability to increase supply of of the transparent products.

Ryan · 34:24

Or you can learn something and it's probably a great intersection of value and quality because it's not famous and because the demand will be relatively low. And then the hardest problem that that brand is doing is the consumer education piece, which brands are doing anyway, right?

Ryan · 34:43

Like most of the matcha companies that are selling product are selling product to even B to B or most of them are selling it to people who don't necessarily know a whole lot about about matcha. So place like eat a town, which is pretty close to Uji, I think it's an hour or two away, could be someone's Uji, you know, without all the legacy and history. But you know, from a product perspective, you know, telling the story of the matcha there and the different terroir and micro growing environments.

Ryan · 35:10

But there's all sorts of interesting stories to be told to any consumer who's just coming in so fresh. Not everyone needs to be taught Uji, Uji, Uji early on and umami, umami, umami. It's at some point, it's no longer going to be where value lies, which is where the vast majority of people drinking matcha, you know, if they care about the price. And it definitely matters.

Ryan · 35:34

And we would like to see higher quality options that are artisanally produced in the mid range. That can be someone's quote, UN quote, everyday cup of coffee, you know, the product that's Tezumi or Asahi, or you know, from cultivars that are difficult to grow like Asahi or like Saemidori. There's just not much of them.

Zongjun · 35:55

They're very special, finite experiences for people to have. Yeah, absolutely. We are. We keep talking about this so much a shortage, but, you know, as we were even, you know, roaming through Uji, there are a lot of these land waiting just to be farmed.

Zongjun · 36:13

There are a lot of these abandoned land. There are a lot of these tea farms that are not necessarily making tencha. There are a lot of potential for Japan to produce much, much more delicious tea in the future. And it's, you know, just waiting for us to discovered.

Zongjun · 36:31

Yeah, we on our walk through Shirakawa, walking from, from Uji, you know, center Uji, like right near the train station and branching out. It was really interesting. We saw a lot of abandoned tea plantations. There was a completely abandoned tea plantation two blocks away from the Oklahoma Tea Garden, the very famous one from Horii Shichimeien. If you walk to, if you go into the Horii Shichimeien retail store, I don't know if they have it anymore, but they did the first time I went.

Zongjun · 37:02

There's this little map and there's this little hike that you can. It's not really a hike. It's like a 10 minute walk up the hill where you can see one of their gardens. So we, you know, we popped up there and started our long adventure there.

Zongjun · 37:16

And then two blocks over, bam, abandoned tea field. And it's pretty obvious that it's abandoned. There's weeds everywhere. Nothing's kept. All of the structure shading structures are completely dilapidated. All falling apart.

Ryan · 37:30

Things are getting rustic. It's clearly a abandoned tea field. Arguably from one of the single greatest plots of land to grow in the entire. World. Yeah. It's like you see a abandoned grape vineyard right next to Romanée-Conti. It's kind of, you know, hard to understand. So it's also the sad reality here is that there's just not enough, you know, labor, there's not enough people here to continue to support this industry. It's just, you know, a lot of people who really care and work very hard.

Ryan · 38:03

But you know, there's still a succession problem here, even though this region's getting all of this recognition, which is a little bit concerning to see considering the probably what our astronomical prices they could charge for tea made here if they wanted to. And then tis obviously things I.

38:21

Would have if I could really just letting go my mind sitting right there using them. Not everyone's so money motivated. OK, I want delicious tea. I want to buy more than one person per can dry and. That's true. That's so real, that is painful.

Ryan · 38:39

It's very unfortunate. So, uh, that was our adventure there. Uji picking tea. I think this is a fine place to stop. Umm, We're going to continue to record umm throughout our experiences here in Japan for the 2025 harvest.

Ryan · 38:53

Umm, and do these real time takes or near real time takes. Umm, so you get our raw impressions of what it was like. And, uh, thank you so much for listening and we'll see you on the next one. See you. Stay tuned.