Tea farming, tencha processing, and cultivars with Pau from Tea Nursery

Ryan · 0:00

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. And today we have our old friend Pao from Tea Nursery joining us again.

Ryan · 0:19

Welcome back, Pao. Hello guys, thank you for having me again. Thanks so much for coming back on. For anyone, any of our new listeners that didn't listen to your past interview episode, would love if you could sort of reintroduce yourself and where you're based and what your background is.

Pau · 0:34

Yeah. So my name is Pao. I'm born in Catalonia, in Spain. I work now in Wazuka in a tea farm in there. So I'm based in Kyoto, South of Kyoto region. Tea wise you probably have heard of Uji mostly, but Wazuka is a little bit more close to Nara and my background is from coffee from coffee roasting.

Pau · 0:55

Many years later, I kind of like made the transition to the other side in a way. And then just before transitioning to the tea side of things professionally, I also started a blog about tea, I wanted to learn more. And I just collect a lot of random notes and read a lot of scientific papers and just kept all the notes for myself.

Ryan · 1:17

And at some point I just wanted to start publishing part of it. So that's, that's more or less like the, the broad strokes of my work in a way in, in tea at least. Random notes. It's a really an understatement. It's such a digital gold mine. For anyone that's interested in like super in depth like knowledge about tea cultivars or tea farming techniques, definitely go check out Tea Nursery. It's.

Pau · 1:42

Such a wonderful place. It's also the perfect starting place for a rabbit hole research journey because you do such a good job with the references. So like it's. Thank you that, that this whole thing is very important to me because sometimes it's like like, yeah, this is like that.

Pau · 1:58

They're like, OK, where did you take the info? But unfortunately is, is also like, I need to do a better job because there is already like some articles where like 123 links, they just die. And it's like maybe they change the URL or if it's a reference from a paper, of course it's, it's always there with a DOI link.

Pau · 2:19

But sometimes like a blog from a farmer just goes down and then just the link just disappears. So it's a little bit complicated, but I do my best for references is actually I that's how I start the articles in a way. There's a bunch of references and then start like putting it together a little bit, I think. I think it's very important to just like, fully understand it. And to double check, I mean, that's the worst part about learning anything about tea.

Ryan · 2:42

It's like you kind of have to take someone's word for it at some point. And then, like, you have to like, reconfirm. Because even when we've talked to like, some farmers both in Japan but in other countries as well, tea farmers, you realize that some people have very strong opinions. And you're, like, taking it all in, like, yeah, yeah, yeah. And then, like, you go and talk to someone else and, like, they have a very different story.

Pau · 3:05

And you kind of have to do your own references to figure out what that's true. Yeah, I agree. I agree. That is actually like a very fun part of like the writing because sometimes you like have the opportunity to ask some people and some some of those people actually researchers. And it's like, I have this very specific question if you have the time and you would like to answer like here it is. They are like just like the most opinionated answer. It's like, oh, I didn't expect this from this person. And then you, you, you read his paper and you read his e-mail, and it's like two very different

Ryan · 3:37

things. And it's like, oh, this is the opinion of this person. And this is actually what the data shows. It's like sometimes It's very interesting. Yeah. Actually, when I meet new tea people, that's like the quickest way I can categorize them at how long they've been learning about tea. Because sometimes, especially for new entrants, they learn so much more about tea than the average person that they start to really believe that they're an expert and they talk in absolutes.

Ryan · 4:01

And then people who've been studying tea for a lot longer and have kind of like reality over time has caught up with them, realizing that like, you have to constantly revise your knowledge and frameworks like talk. They talk in a very different way.

Ryan · 4:16

When when you notice that they use like a lot of hedging language, like very uncertain and like shakes their heads all the time, like you know you're talking to a more experienced tea people, you just get. Shown the door enough times, realizing or or like completely embarrassed by someone that knows way more than you enough times.

Pau · 4:37

And then it's then you realize that there's so much more context than anyone could ever learn in a lifetime. This stuff. I think, I think I think so, especially as I've read more and especially being more in the field like this is like my second full season in a way.

Pau · 4:53

Like you understand less of the specific when you understand more about the context. And I think sometimes we kind of start from the specific start from the rabbit hole, which I absolutely love. But it's like, oh, why, why are we actually doing this? Now?

Pau · 5:06

This is done by this, because then when you do this, this happens and then this happens and then this happens. And that's how you did it in the old time. Now I see. So the, the context is, is very important. And I think understanding like more and more every every month, every season that we that we go, it's like the small details, but they are like all like interwived in a very, very, very deep way.

Ryan · 5:29

I think that's very interesting. That's super interesting. So how was the 2025 spring harvest season this year? In Wazuka, we heard that, you know, quality is super good. In Uji this time we heard the production is slightly lower, but the quality is super high. So is that the same case also in your region, Pao? And did you learn anything new compared to last year? I would say so last year we started harvesting in the farm where I work, of course, like the 23rd of April. And this year we actually harvested on so the 1st of May, which was super cool because it's like super great and very important significant date about

Pau · 6:12

two years ago after or something you had to. Yeah, is the 88th night after spring. So that's like after the beginning of spring, 88 nights, and that's when you start the harvest. So usually the first or second of May is just like, I don't know, in Chinese it will be like the King Ming.

Pau · 6:30

It's like that point in time where it's either pre-Qingming or post-Qingming. So it's like kind of like that style. And of course in Kyoto Prefecture, it's kind of like hovers around that area in the South. They started much, much earlier than us, but two years ago it was very hot.

Pau · 6:46

So actually they started like the 15 or 16th of April, so two weeks before extremely hot this year, slightly later than last year. But also it was like a very cold winter, slightly longer cold winter and then it just rate a lot. The weather never really picked up temperature wise. I think that's that's where part of the increase in quality comes from.

Pau · 7:15

So he was OK. I think that at least at the beginning of the harvest, the quality was like very, very good. The teas I could try super great. But then during harvest we've got like a lot of rainy days. One day and a half rain, then you have to stop. Then you are one day growth late because the plant will not really grow that much when it's raining. But then after the rainy just like accelerates. So the last week of harvest they were like against the clock in a way, like you were like maybe a few fields like one or two days later that what could have been optimum at least visual visually wise.

Pau · 7:52

So I was talking while with one of our farmers and a couple of them were like the stems have grown not not too long or anything like that, but you can feel that they are slightly harder than yesterday or like 2 days ago.

Pau · 8:05

But it was raining so we could not do anything. So that was, that was a very, very interesting thing to see because I usually like, I just look at the leaves like that. They look good. Like, I don't know. I don't know what to tell you. They want to know.

Pau · 8:18

But if you take the, the stem count 3 leave, this is more or less where we want to cut. And you can feel how flexible they are. Like, oh, yeah, it actually has changed. Oh. Interesting. I was, I was very interesting. And then there was one section of the field that had like a little bit of frost damage, nothing too bad, but we got in the afternoon. There is this alarm that sounds when there is frost expected during the night.

8:42

Every couple days you will hear that like frost is coming tonight, like we hope nothing gonna happen because it was like 2 days before harvest, something like that. It's like this, the critical, critical point. There was just a little bit of damage in a few areas, but that's it. So that was that was good.

Pau · 8:58

Would you guys like go turn on the fan? And they turn on automatically like. They turn on automatically. Yeah, I mean you, you put them to turn on automatically or just ignore even if it's like below certain temperature, just you just turn them off.

Pau · 9:15

And you can also they have like control panels, like there's like a thermometer, like only if it's below 5° or if it's below 4° or something like that. So you can you have a little bit of control at least. And it was very funny.

Pau · 9:30

It was very funny because you could follow some of Wazuka farmers in Instagram and they actually like taking pictures of their control panel for the father. Like, yeah, in this way we are turning it on. And in this one, maybe off because it's a little bit more like shaded. So maybe it doesn't need the cold air style. Like that's that's the content I want to see. Yeah.

Pau · 9:51

Perfect. Interesting algorithm. It was very fine. It was just like a metal box with like a knob that is like 1 until 10 or something like that. They're just like the farmers are just taking pictures of that. It's like it's super funny.

Ryan · 10:05

I found it super funny. It's very wholesome. How does that system work? I would think that having like air blown at tea leaves when it's cool is going to cool them off more. You're getting rid of moisture, right? Well, you're moving air, like if you take a river for example, and it's like super cold in winter, like as long as the river flows, it will never fully freeze or it's going to be very difficult for it to freeze.

Pau · 10:32

Maybe on the sides you will have like a lot of ice, but the center part of it, the, the water will flow, right? So it's the same. But with air, like as long as the air is moving, the cold air will tend to sink. So the, the, the fans are like scraping that cold air and preventing it from settling and creating ice.

Pau · 10:50

Sometimes also like those fans are like, I don't know, maybe 5 meters tall, 6 meters tall. So the air might be slightly hotter there. So they just moving the air and just raising the temperature maybe half a degree is enough to move the air away, move the humidity away.

Pau · 11:07

It would have like a lot of moisture in the ambient. It just like keeps it a little bit like moving. So it will still be maybe cold damage, but not like ice damage in a way. Interesting. But sometimes in certain parts of the mountain, if you know that the the the wind currents above the mountain are cold and you just turn on the fans, then you're injecting super cold air into on top of the plant. So that's when you just turn them off. So there is some sections where like we know that the how the wind comes like especially if you are at the top of a hill, it's just going to be cold.

Pau · 11:44

But if you know that it's like a very windy area, you might just check day by day, like, Oh yeah, it's going to be frost, but no wind. We're OK. It's going to be frost, but it's also going to be windy. Maybe let maybe let's just cross our fingers and some farmers, they can even use like roof, like the the roofs for shading.

Pau · 12:04

You can use that as a the frost prevention technique. Like I mean that's how they discovered that the shading improved flavor many, many years ago. And of course they didn't understand the chemical reasons, but. Yeah it's the kanreisha originally was for anti frost. Exactly.

Ryan · 12:20

So it's kind of the same idea, but just like with wind in a way. Very cool. It's pretty, pretty sophistic. I've never seen like fans like being used in farming like that. Like I think in vineyards sometimes they just like literally put like buckets with butane on fire just to warm up the the field.

Pau · 12:38

Yeah, I've seen that there's like mountain candle like. Yeah, it's actually, it's actually very pretty. It's like, it's like, I know why you guys are doing it and I hope everything is going to be OK, but they look very pretty, yeah.

Ryan · 12:50

It must be so much work like. Putting those out, I've actually heard of, you know, a very cold winter and like some very low temperature climate is very good for, you know, farming and certain crops because it kind of killed all the insects and insect lava in the soil. So is that the same case for tea too? Or have you noticed the difference? For insects above ground, I don't know. I think if you have problems with like nematodes and stuff, it's probably beneficial, but certain cultivars don't tolerate cold weather that well.

Pau · 13:27

Time Midori is extremely weak. Again, extremely. It's like very weak against cold weather. So it doesn't really doesn't really like it too much. Like we have one field with Time Midori and in winter I'm always like checking to see like, Oh yeah, actually you can just see the leaves just like peel away in a way with cold weather.

Pau · 13:46

But in the South, like in Yame, for example, I think they had also like a little bit of frost this year in certain areas. So even in warmer regions you are you have the risk of this kind of things going on. I think. I think my insect, I mean above, above ground for sure.

Pau · 14:02

Like it just destroys everything. But also like is the mantis eggs are like in the Bush usually and they are late. They laid the eggs in autumn, late autumn. So I guess if they die during the winter, then you have problems in spring because they are very good predators of insects.

Ryan · 14:20

So it's one of the best insecticides that you can use in my opinion. Of course, if they if they die then there is no one to police the fields. That's right, there are good insects and bad insects. Yeah, ladybugs, mantis, and I think there's a couple types of spiders that are OK as well. There's some spiders that are like, quite quite bad. Yeah, bad because they're poisonous or bad for. Other well, they lay they like they act like on the soft stems and they they just leave like underneath and they just like take the SAP of the of the leaf they produce like 1. Of the butts, yeah.

Pau · 14:58

It's like AI don't know like how do you say a blood sucker one of these leeches like glitches, but like 1mm, 1mm size type of thing is the red spiders. Yeah, it's not not that good if it gets out of control. The the red spiders.

Pau · 15:18

Yeah. It's super tiny. It's not really. Spider. It looks kind of like Mite I. Think. Yeah, it's a type of pests that infest not only tea, but also out of crops, too. They're yeah, pretty bad. Yeah, they love simulatory. It's very tasty.

Ryan · 15:35

Cultivate. We do too. So when like a lot of people go to visit tea farms like us included, and other brand owners or people doing tea, various forms of tea tourism, like everyone has their rose colored glasses on, everyone's so happy to be there.

Ryan · 15:53

It's like really like euphoric time. Like what's could you like help give everyone a picture of the nitty gritty like less romanticized version of tencha processing and what that looks like? And like if we remove sort of the romantic antic filters of like a type of tea processing, like where is it Like where does it like suck to be a tea farmer at that time of year?

Pau · 16:16

Like how is like to get a little better sense of like what the actual day-to-day looks like? For the tencha factory, I think that the worst part is for sure when they are operating it and those ovens are like at 300° each oven and you are next to the oven, you know, like that's that like just like a huge, huge room and just is just like very sweaty people, like just next to very hot stuff. And it's just like, yeah, this is, this is how we do it. Like a lot of sweat and physical effort steaming too. So a lot of the humidity is also like quite high in some parts of the factory.

Pau · 16:52

Sometimes it's quite, it's quite rough, especially like unloading as well. We use harvesting bags, so it's like maybe 20 kilos per bag, sometimes more, and you have to unload that from the short track, put it into the container, and then you have to kind of be on the short track and just pulling the bag and just letting the leaves into the container. Maybe every track is like 300 kilos ish, sometimes 400 kilos of leaf that you are actively lifting above your head just to drop it into a container.

Pau · 17:24

So imagine doing that as your job for like many, many hours and then having to go inside of the room. Maybe it's like 40 something degrees in there sometimes. And then even if you are in the separating room where the the leaf and the stem, it's like gets dried at different in a different dryer, it's it's dusty, it's like it's dust everywhere. Everything is green or a shade of green. You are just like lifting 20 kilos at the time, all the time, all night, basically a lot of effort. It's into the night too, right?

Pau · 17:54

Like what are the operating hours? Into factories usually like operate 24/7. It's like one of these. It's like a old style bread oven. Like once you turn them on, you just don't turn them off, you just keep going. Especially for tencha is like kind of like a little bit of a bottleneck. Usually you always have some leaf to go through. So those ovens are very difficult to heat up. Like it's just like a lot of calories that they that they take to heat them up.

Pau · 18:23

So they just, they just keep going. And there are some farmers that they harvest during the day and they work like part time in the tencha factories in the evening sometimes if they have the time. So there's like a lot of a lot of that too. So everyone's just working like 12 hour shifts or? 8 hours or more, Three teams or more or more. There is people working 1820 hours per day. It's a hard job.

Zongjun · 18:47

What is the management structure of a tencha factory? Do you have special people specialize to operate the facility or do the farmers themselves, you know, are kind of the operators or it's kind of like a mixture of the I?

Pau · 19:03

Think it's both. Of course there is always people that understand better the process and usually they work only on the tencha factory. But if you work for a company that owns a tencha factory, most likely you will be maybe harvesting all morning and then the afternoon you will be in the factory. So they can do kind of like both. The good thing, like in tencha, there is less, of course, there is no rolling.

Pau · 19:27

So there is less decisions that you have to take as in like, oh, it's still wet, more rolling, more pressure, like let's move it to the next machine. Like it's just a steaming. Make sure that this cooked to the degree that you're looking for in the oven. There is things that you can adjust. That's the two main things.

Pau · 19:45

And then just make sure at the end that everything is dry, everything is well packed. The stems are separated correctly. Of course it is still going to be aracha, so it needs to go to refining factory. But those are the type of physicians.

Pau · 19:57

But there is there is farmers for example, that they might especially nowadays, they might have to send part of their production to a tencha factory and part of the production to another tencha factory. And it's like, yeah, I prefer how they work in this place or I prefer how the tencha takes on that place. And that's, I think like very.

Pau · 20:17

I don't, I don't know, I don't have like a very good insight into that part because I've never I've seen tencha factories and I've been there. But of course you are not spending six hours with them during one entire season.

Pau · 20:29

So the the the small adjustments that they that they do, I, I don't have like a lot of insight on on that, but that is definitely things going on like if it's a brick oven or it's like a more modern metal last cutting edge technology or something. But generally in characterism.

Ryan · 20:46

But this thing was because almost everything is a little bit more brick combination I would say. Interesting. We've heard that the infrared heating of these brick ovens really lend to that, like the taste of like Kyoto process, Kyoto Prefecture.

Pau · 21:01

Yeah, when I was visiting Research Center in Shizuoka, they had like a machine. It was like 0% brick. It was just all stainless steel or a variation of stainless steel. And we're like, OK, I'm like, what are you doing with it? Like, oh, there's a machine that they want us to try. And it's just like they do the firing, but with just like inside of the machine with like maybe some coating and stuff like OK.

Pau · 21:24

Interesting. Because the oven was. Like create that infrared effect. Yeah, I don't know if like maybe they have like something inside or gas or like heavy oil or something like that. Well, like at a much, much higher temperature to achieve the same effect. I I don't know, but it was considerably small. It was like half the size of a brick oven too. So I found that like very, very, very interesting because those ovens are are quite long sometimes. That's very cool.

Pau · 21:52

You know, like tea industry is really a place in Japan that you can see like cutting edge modernism clash with traditional values and traditional technique. It's always interesting to see this kind of effect. Yeah, I think especially because I work in Kyoto, of course there is like very infrastructure that I don't know.

Pau · 22:12

There is some people that have a brick oven from like 80, 90, hundred years ago. It's like, Oh my God, the factories are like legacy buildings in a way. And then you go on holidays to Shizuoka. I'm going to just say hi to this farmer.

Pau · 22:28

And you enter the the factories, like, wow, huge square building where you have a space in between the machines and you have machines are stuck on top of machines and like this so cool. They were like, yeah, well, I, I come from Kyoto. Like you should see our factory.

Pau · 22:47

It used to be an old lumberjack, you know, like it's like just like refurbished a little bit. How do you do it? I was like, I don't know. Yeah, it's, it's very interesting. Sometimes there's some factories out there. It's like, it's like a dream when when you compare to to Kyoto, like like machinery is different, the machines are the same, the concept of the machines is the same, but you can very clearly see this comes from a different time and place, I think.

Zongjun · 23:12

Yeah, we've seen some really old tea processing equipment in Yame that still retained surprisingly, you know, similar details to a lot of these modern machines, but they are made out of wood and it's really cool to see kind of like the evolution or the lineage of all these, the tea processing equipment.

Pau · 23:32

Work, we have a twisting machine. The the twisting rolling machine is the how do you say like foundry, foundry metal? It's not like a sheet of metal. It's like they they pour it into a mold probably it's like 3 centimeter thick piece of chunk of metal for the roller.

Pau · 23:47

And then the entire base is just boot is like maybe like 70 or 80 year old machine. And it has like the flywheel at the side when the they had these like belts on the roof usually to operate them. And then there's like an electric motor and it's like always like, you know, the electric motor came much later than the machine itself.

Pau · 24:07

They just like slapped it on the side, screw the switch on the side of the machine. But the machine used to be powered in a different way. So cool. They are so red, right? It's like 5K the. Power. Yeah, you can see like a huge wheel on the side. I was like, yeah, you don't use that anymore. Like they put like an extra gear that you can see. It's like a different material and an electric motor. Wow.

Zongjun · 24:29

It's very cool. It's like a 5K machine. It's super cute. It's a very nice size to just do tea for fun in a way like that, you know, in summer or something, a small Tesla or something. Very cool. You know, someone should really do a documentary of the, you know, on the evolution of tea processing machine in Japan. That will be something very interesting. I have a question, kind of a very nerdy question and something I've never really fully understood is where and how fertilizer is applied because it's really important. We recently tasted some samples of like no fertilizer and fertilizer, same cultivar, same

Zongjun · 25:05

region, same processing, same everything. And, like, I was shocked at the difference in taste. And it seems to be really driving, especially the umami, but a lot of the complexity as well, like is you spray it on the bush, you spray it on the ground, you till it in the soil.

Pau · 25:23

Does it depend on if it's synthetic or natural or a mix in the way that you apply it? I have no like and when and how often. I have no, like, conception of how this is actually done. Yeah. Well, in I think independent of like if it's organic or synthetical, all those things is mainly like solid fertilizer like pellets or like rice husks or like canola.

Pau · 25:48

Acidola is just a chunk, a solid chunk of something and liquid version of it. And it is usually sprayed on the soil. OK. Or like kind of like not dumping because like it's not like you're going with a bucket and like there you go.

Pau · 26:04

I think it's spraying on the top. I think it's slightly different. I've never seen it for fertilizer, but I've seen it in coffee as in like for the for the leaf, like as a coating to protect the leaves, but not as a fertilizer. It's like more like against UV radiation or something like that.

Pau · 26:21

But usually liquid fertilizer is much more like all dissection needs help or something is going on or super, I don't know, high quality competition, great, great tea because it's like super fast absorption for the plant.

Pau · 26:36

Like the pellets usually like no, no, no, you just spray it on the, on the on the ground. The ones I have seen like maybe maybe there is some type of fertilizer that is sprayed on the leaf that I don't know because we don't really do that much. Our main farmer likes to do that alone because he just put some music and he's just like alone on the field. And sometimes you can see him singing and stuff. So he has he's like he's solo type. One of the few things that you can do alone in the field and just like chill.

Pau · 27:07

The the times I have done it is mostly pellets and it's like slow release. Like you throw it and it just like slowly get into the soil. Then most of the times it needs to be further breakdown by the microbes on the on the ground and then the plant can take it and absorb it.

Pau · 27:24

Especially for organic, I think that it's it takes like much, much longer like the degradation and then being able to be assimilated by the plant. But I think that the easiest way to the easiest way to understand the application is to start from the end of the season. In autumn you do the harvest.

Pau · 27:42

In autumn, forget about it is mostly bancha. You do your trimming, that's probably one of the most important things that you have to do that prepares the canopy for spring already. And then you just like throw a bunch of fertilizer for the the winter just to support the pirate plant from all the three harvest.

Pau · 28:00

If you do 3 harvest, you're just fertilizing. But in like thinking long term like this is mostly for winter starch creation, like for the roots. Then the next one is list listing our region like of course is different region by region, but like early October, late November, you do that, then we move all the way to beginning of March, mid March. Then it's just like, do we just promote more quick absorbent fertilizers in a way it's more like for growth of the plant already growth of the leaf part and we get those first shoots and that's what we retrim middle of March. That just like takes mass,

Pau · 28:42

trashes the plant a little bit, promotes more branching. And then once you start to get the, the butts on the branches, the initial branches that you will actually harvest in, in spring, that's when you do the the other application like early April. I would say something like that.

Pau · 28:58

That's again quick absorption because you want that fertilizer to be absorbed and that's what's going to be on the flavor part of the application in a way. Here is where I've seen be used the liquid ones for your super high quality gyokuros or tencha competition or sencha competition, whatever they might choose. Like OK, this field, we use it for submitting to the competition.

Pau · 29:21

So they use this liquid super good fertilizer or something and they apply it only in certain areas or if they see some part of the field struggling, they might supplement a little bit more. OK, that's early April. Then you're just moving to harvest.

Pau · 29:35

You don't have time to do much more. There is shading to do as well. For example, if you're shading, then there is bunch of harvest, then there is trimming. So we already like late May, late May to June. Then you do summer fertilizer after the stress of the harvest and it starts to get hot and the plant is kind of like pushing to do a second growth around 50 days after the harvest, 50-60 days after the harvest. That's when you have the summer hard 1. So this is more like slow release I would say support the plant after the stress, just give it more nutrients to compensate for the summer quality. And then you are already in

Pau · 30:11

autumn. So then you just harvest autumn and then you start the cycle again. To be fair, I've not done that much fertilization and we actually have one field where well now soon to be two fields where we do nothing. We just do the trimming.

Pau · 30:27

When you trim the Bush that is also kind of a fertilizer in a way. You just drop it into the floor and you just let it naturally compose. So that's the only fertilizer we use in that field. So the opportunities for me to learn these things, it's there, but the actual okay, let's go fertilize.

Pau · 30:45

Can you show me what is the mix stuff like We buy this, we put it there at this time. And then there is farmers where they do their own compose, they buy the ingredients and they do their own mixes or they ask a company to, okay, make me this formulation. There is farmers that sell fertilizers to other farmers and they like, I don't know, like quite fascinating. They have their own compost.

Pau · 31:09

They actually make compost for other farmers because they like the material or something. Interesting. Do they do people always use like local materials to make these? I'm. Not always, not always. I think that there's fertilizers for different things. So I think if you are more like super high quality tea, like something that you will do for competitions or stuff like that, tends to be more like super high grade on the synthetic side. Just because you are dosing just that element into the plant and it's like, oh, maybe this is for the roots or this is for the leaf or this is for growth or this is for whatever it might be.

Pau · 31:47

Very complicated. Yeah, I mean like the plant needs different different things at different periods of the of the year. So it's like, I don't know, taking vitamin supplements in human trials, some people need iron, some people need B12 if you're vegan, for example.

Pau · 32:01

There's like different things. So it's kind of it's kind of the same. And sometimes understanding it is very complicated. The rice farmers that are actually tea farmers, they might use the rice has because they just have a lot of them. Why?

Pau · 32:14

Why shouldn't you just just use it? So there is there is like a lot of things that you can do. I guess if you are in an area where is it very easy for you to get fish bones, you can use that rapeseed oils canola seed like the the how do you say after pressing the canola seeds?

Pau · 32:30

There's also like a common material I guess bones and stuff like that too from ground bone bone meals called in English I think. For calciums, probably. Yeah, like shells, shells, shells and stuff like that. That oyster shells I've heard, I think.

Ryan · 32:47

Yeah, there's many, many things that you can do. What are some of the physical signals of a tea plant that is undergoing some stress either from the environment, the climate or from shading? And what are the methods of farmers that usually kind of counter that kind of stress to help the plants? So I think there is a few signs on the spot that you can see what is more like damage stress.

Pau · 33:17

Like the shade is physically doing something to the plant. Like in the case of like doing direct contact, if you don't have it tight enough, there is a windstorm. It just hits the the the leaves. It might like rip the leaves off or in summer, like the the material gets like super hot and it just like parching the leaf a little bit.

Pau · 33:39

So of course the the plant will suffer for those reasons. Most of the stress that I've seen is like from the year before is a problem that you the overdid something last year and the plant is recovering now. And one of the things is like the air trees, right? So the tea plants are trees.

Pau · 34:00

The bottom side of the of the bush never has leaf. Like once you get like 7-8 nine leaves down there is there is nothing. So the leaves just drop. So that natural. How how do you say it? The defoliation I think it's called in English like they just drop the leaves. If you overdo the shading, the the the leaves drop during the shading, you overdo it.

Pau · 34:21

If you shade direct contact 30 days you are potentially damaging the shoots on the top but the mother leaves at the bottom. They're dropping because they or they will. They're deeper than they are, like down the plant because it's shaded and they drop or they just drop for stress or? Yeah, it's like a, it creates a different timing on the plant. I would say if you do very long shading, the natural loss of the of the leaves happens later.

Pau · 34:53

Then you enter somewhere with less leaf that you would usually have in the in the canopy. Then you shade again in summer and you have again less leaf in autumn. And then in autumn you need to have enough canopy for it to survive winter. So if it has to recover through autumn and winter, then the next spring you don't have enough leaf to actually like have the same amount of production, if that makes sense. You're borrowing from the future basically because the management.

Pau · 35:20

Yeah. It's not like because you have harvested too much, which is also another problem. But like the shaving might give you a boost in quality of course, and also in yield in some cases. But that is at the expense of like draining the plant from energy that it will have used the next year because you are removing too many leaves. Then maybe you have, I don't know, let's say 30% left less leaf in autumn.

Pau · 35:48

It survives through the winter and then in the spring it doesn't have enough leave to make like a push up. It has first to make a few leaves, gather energy and then push up. So everything gonna be like gets too delayed the. Growth gets.

Pau · 36:05

Started. It's a little bit like that especially summer as well, like you get less leaf then you are shading way too long and it's hot and it's humid and maybe that is pests so you are losing leaf and you have like a potential outbreak or something because it's like a hot steamy.

Pau · 36:24

Room under the under the shade, right? Yeah. And then it's like, it's just like snowballs in a way or Yeah, especially in autumn. If you don't reach autumn with a healthy canopy, you have to you have to trim and then it just it just like shooting yourself on the on the foot a little bit. And also one thing that I don't know if it's going to happen next year, they worries me a little bit is like because there is so much tencha production going on right now, usually would maybe rotate.

Pau · 36:54

So like we are shading this field, then the next year we will rotate, we shade another field and that one will naturally recover because it's more drained from energy. So let's let it recover. So now if you are shading both fields like this year, you might get like super high quality, a lot of yield. But next year I worry about we are going to have like a drop in quality and in yield like because this year I think average was like 12 to 15% less yield than compared to last year.

Pau · 37:23

So I think it was of course they do the average for prefecture wide. So I don't know exactly what they're they're looking at. So if on top of that every year we have less fields and on top of that we are always shading and not having a like a good rotation, I think it might be a little bit complicated. So there is things that you can do like the trimming helps, skipping summer helps, there is a push to do double shading spring and summer.

Pau · 37:52

And we've heard that that really like it forces the plants to do like an Iron Man or like a triple marathon a year like it's. Because the shaded. Cultivation is hard. Because all all the the starch is just drained from the plant all the the starch that they they used to as a main, I don't have a degree in agronomy or anything like that. So just please take everything with a spoonful of salt. But if we imagine starch as the fuel and then you are growing the plant over shading it and with 80-85% less sunlight and like the plant because of the shading is losing leaf. Like it's like everything is like stressing the plant. Then you give it like what 3-4-5

Pau · 38:38

weeks of rest and then you just shade it for another 20 days. And then it's like 40 something degrees and humidity through the roof and maybe there is some insects biting the plant. It's kind of kind of off for the plant, I think.

Ryan · 38:51

And the energy reserves of the plant, they have a limit even with 30 utilization. Then you have to put more fertilizer to compensate. And then the plants just get dependent, you know, where they just get addicted to, to that, that rhythm. And cultivars don't have a taproot. So they, they have what they have on the surface. They they don't drill too much down. Do the natural fields that you guys have that you don't fertilize, do those grow taproots or deeper root structures?

Pau · 39:20

No, they're, they're cultivars. We have one that we are recovering right now that is a zairai. I'm super excited to harvest it next year. But we had to just like it was like 2 meters tall or something like that. It was abandoned for slightly over slightly over a year. So we have we're diving under the plans just to cut them. And now it's starting to grow back. All of that is very tall.

Pau · 39:46

For Japan. Yeah, Yeah. Well, I mean, it was, it was abandoned. That's I've seen, I've seen taller. I was not so bad, but it's yeah, we started the process in January, late December. We just cut it down from 2 meters, something down to like up to your knee more or less like 40 centimeters, 30 centimeters.

Ryan · 40:08

And now it's starting to push up, but the design eye is like 100 something years old Taproot. So it's just like, yeah, OK, I lost like 80% of my height, no problem. The thing that you were talking about with the shading and losing more and more of the mature leaves after each successive 1, is that the reason why we see longer shading times in Uji city? Like if you hear about producers in Goku Shaw or Shirakawa they do one harvest a year but I've noticed that the shading times are closer to like 40 days or 4550. But I've noticed from in Wazuka and Ujitawara they're usually around 3 weeks.

Pau · 40:49

And is it the reason is that they're doing 2 harvests so they literally can't, but the Uji producers can really push it because they're just doing 1? At least in Shirakawa they mostly use roof which is different because the plant has ventilation. They they use roof style shading. Like the tunnel?

Pau · 41:07

Elevated tunnel. Whatever they use, the tunnel system they have, the plant doesn't have pressure on top of it. You're not creating this greenhouse effect. You are just like have a way better airflow for the farmer. I mean, I love roof style because you're on the shade harvesting, which is always, it's always, it was always nice, no.

Pau · 41:27

Absolutely cooler and. Yeah, and I mean, if you're already handpicking and you're having like super extra quality because of that, why bother harvesting in summer if you don't have to? I would say, okay, but in Wazuka there is many, many areas where we just cannot build roofs like we are, we are in the mountains like some, some fields are you are you are going to sleep like you're going to slip away with the harvesting machine that that's a that's a given.

Pau · 41:55

Like sometimes there is some people that I work with that wear like shoes with like the, the thing that you wear for the ice, like nails on the on the, on the boots, because it's, it's so steep. And if you, if you sleep, if you, if you fall with the harvesting machine, you are just going to do like, it's like when you go to the hairdresser and suddenly like, you could just have like a huge Nike symbol in the side of the, of your head suddenly.

Pau · 42:20

So that's a problem that maybe in Shirakawa is not that bad. I mean, it's, it's, it's the slope, but it's not like super, super steep. If you have like a lot of wind currents, the, the roof makes like a sail effect. So it might RIP the entire roof out if there is a windstorm.

Pau · 42:38

I mean also the the money investment, the metal pipes, the tension cables. Then you have to have these hooks to put clip the shapes to the hook and then just have them slide up and down. Next year you have to switch them up. So it's like a lot of work.

Pau · 42:53

But for the plant, I think it's slightly better. But they will try to compete for light. The the leaves grow thinner, they go wider, they go rounder as well as the usual shading talk flavor wise as well. But I think it's a slightly different mentality.

Pau · 43:09

In Ujitawara for example, they have some mountainside as well, but their focus was more on gyokuro already. So they already are using like a lot of roof as well. In Wazuka I think it's more like was more sencha side of things. So the, the, the big tencha push came a little bit later. So just have direct contact.

Pau · 43:32

It's much easier to pull in and out. You don't have to do the roofs. You can just put those shades in another field next year and rotate like that. I guess I was OK. It's pretty, I mean it's pretty small if you size wise to Japan, but in in Kyoto we are the the biggest surface I think with like 555 hundred 60 hectares.

Ryan · 43:58

I don't know if that's active hectares or like including abandoned fields, but it's it's quite a lot of area that is 90% on the mountains. So Paul, when we were walking the field in Wazuka, you were pointing at some of the bushes that have like white leaves in the field.

Ryan · 44:20

And that was super interesting. And you told me about your experience of wanted to create a batch of tea with that specific type of a phenomena or genetic trace. And we have also learned that, you know, with some extreme shading, you can actually turn the tea leaf white to a certain point. So if you try any of those like white leaf tea, and if so, like you know how, how does how do they taste? I have tried.

Pau · 44:44

So like the one I showed you is a mutation is a branch that I don't know, something happened. The leaf is white, but only in spring, which is very interesting now. And now it's green and I lost it again. I don't know where it is anymore because a key print it and I was like, no, but yeah, it's only, it's only white.

Pau · 45:01

It's like a creamy white color in spring. Then the one that you are talking is like 100% shading. Usually it's like 85% maybe if you do double layers like 98, but that one is like as close to 100 as you can physically get and that just like picks the chlorophyll.

Pau · 45:23

But then once there is just not enough sunlight, the shading is very extensive, 2 weeks plus the chlorophyll just like gets like just dumped. Just there is no more chlorophyll there. It just, it just goes down a lot. Shading increases chlorophyll content both for A&B up to certain point and at some point when it's it's too prolonged shading at 100% shading, it just goes down actually. And that's what makes it go white. I think there is a few other vegetables where they do a lot of other things like a type of yeah, rhubarb that they grow indoors.

Pau · 46:01

Yeah, something, something like that. It's kind of the same idea. I I've tried both like yellow, white mutation cultivar. There's a guy that has three rows quite interesting. And the one that they do with this extreme shading get all the benefits from like theanine, more amino acid content, all that just with like a very thin leaf than if the processing is quite it's very sweet.

Pau · 46:26

It has something different. I don't know. I think I think like L-theanine content and caffeine content also like gets like in a different balance that maybe we are not used to If you your point of reference is sencha. So it's kind of sweet, but it's lacking something in my opinion.

Pau · 46:44

I think I like sencha because the balance of sweetness and astringency is very nice and it's kind of like suddenly like for kabuse, it's like you have a little bit less catechin, a little bit more amino, so it's like more sweet, less astringent. But on the white tea there is just a chunk of flavour that is just not there.

Pau · 47:02

You know, it's like you have carved out like with, I don't know, like a surgeon blade, this flavour out, it doesn't exist anymore. So it's like nice, but it lacks something in my opinion. It looks funny, which is always cool. It's very interesting tea, but I hope they don't do that too much of those plants because it looks brutal, like the type of shading, it's kind of interesting. What's your chamber for the plants? I think.

Pau · 47:26

I think they I read research paper that they recommended to do it with cultivars that are already like high levels of amino acids just to boost even more that brothiness into it some. Narino 100% shaded. Narino would be so cool. Why Samidori like maybe, I don't know, perhaps. So it's like when when they talk about like high producing, I mean cultivators like Saemidori, Tsuyuhikari, all of those which at the same time are not the strongest ones, then you are like just shaving 100%, two weeks or three weeks. I don't know how that plant is going to do in a few years. It turned that into a matcha and

Pau · 48:10

it's like a white powder. Yeah, right. It will be very interesting to it will be very interesting to try. But also I think is like the yield also like how do you say when it's growing in those conditions there is branches that they just die like and then when when like you are harvesting, I think it's less than half of what kabuse field will produce something like that. So sencha will produce certain amount, kabuse will produce a slightly less tea, but this one is like less than half of that, which is like a huge loss.

Pau · 48:45

And of course, when you are harvesting, you might be harvesting the survivor leaves, but also like picking up the half that once. So I think I think you also have like to be like very, very, very careful when you harvest and when removing the shade as well, because you can RIP the leaves out. It's like very, very complicated to scale probably even if it's like super tasty.

Pau · 49:06

Might be a nice a challenge for new, I don't know, shading technology like tunnel shading or something. It's not not very common to do. Have you guys tried? No. No. Very curious though. We sought a kind of like a Japanese Kickstarter page of someone turning that they call it like Hakio Hakiocha right into a matcha.

Ryan · 49:30

And that happened like back in 2018. So we missed it. So Paula, you shared a pretty interesting sample with us blind. You said you handed it to us. You said give it a try. Let me know what you think. So we we tasted it and I've since revisited it after knowing what it was.

Ryan · 49:49

And I've noticed that it has a really interesting effect in the after taste and in the after cup. Because in Chinese tea, like if you drink like an oolong or roasted oolong or something, you finish it and then there's this wonderful roasted sweet fragrance that's left in the cup. And I had one this morning before this call and it had exact same flavor.

Ryan · 50:11

It's this for anyone who's into like Taiwanese tea. It's just this Hong Shui kind of roasted note that you, you get. And I was getting it. It's the only time I've ever had it in matcha and Sam and I were guessing what it was and I think we were like half right. Could you share a little bit about this method? What it was was what it is, how it was made and like where like it came from.

Pau · 50:35

I like I've never heard of this like Nishio matcha and tencha, right? Well that I think is OK. So that tencha is until after harvesting. So it's pretty much the same machine, harvested, grown, shaded blah blah blah blah. But the interesting part starts in the post processing part. So you would start your tencha processing steaming then. But the fly Nets or like just removing moisture, then just dry, dry, dry, dry, dry, dry, dry a little bit more, peel the stems away and you have the aracha, maybe refine a little bit more.

Pau · 51:11

And then from there they move it to a hoiro so that the paper table. Maybe you have seen it in hand rolling the video. So it's like a washi, like a thick washi Japanese paper. It's like a table that is probably a little bit lower than it should be for your back.

Pau · 51:28

And then there is like usually like a metal plate below the paper and at the bottom of the tape, the table maybe like good 30 centimeters down. There is a gas burner nowadays. So the the paper heats up to 80 to 100, up to 110, 120 maybe if you really push for it in a good in a good paper and you can just in a way toast the tea. So those are usually the old method of like rolling sencha by hand before machinery.

Pau · 52:01

But of course before sencha was kind of developed like they had those kind of the same tools for tencha production. So all the the drying for tencha, like of course, there was no, the modern tencha oven didn't exist at the time.

Pau · 52:16

So it was done kind of in this way. So it's like kind of combining both things that I'm just realizing now it might be a little bit confusing. Are you guys following me? Yeah, yeah. Yeah, OK. So the initial part, just like the more modern part, steaming, then a break open or something, then the steaming and then you get the aracha and then he uses the hoiro. So he just puts it on and in sencha. This would be the firing step where you just like you're not roasting, but you're inducing fire to get develop, develop the flavor a little bit more.

Pau · 52:49

So he's doing that with a hoiro and this guy in particular, he's from Yame, like, yeah, I don't think he's a particular technique from there. I think it's more like probably how they did it in the old times. There is some people that still use some hoiros for finishing competition teas where I mean you have very low old output, but some of these old hoiros are able to be used with coal as well. So all these like the part that you were saying to me about the, the, the oolong like charcoal roasted oolong part. I think I think it might come from there because some of these hoiros are like coal powered.

Pau · 53:30

It just kind of like induces a different something into a tencha, kind of like blending the old method with the new method and just the finishing, finishing it off in that in that way and just like slightly toasting in a way the tencha, but just very carefully. And while he's doing that, he might be able to adjust like, OK, we start from low temp to high temp or like from high temp to low temp and achieve different results at the same time.

Pau · 54:00

He's with like the usual thing like with chopsticks or with like tweezers or stem. All this one is yellow. All this leaf is whatever is too white his sleeve and just refined refining, refining, refining. And then you have this different way of heating and I guess like also the the paper will have to induce part of the flavor as well. Over time as you roast batches and batches and batches, that paper kind of gets some interesting flavor and then you just send it for grinding.

Pau · 54:29

Then it got to me. Then I put it probably nine months in a not refrigerated environment at all and then I give it to you. So it was probably not on on Optima optimum performance a flavor wise. But I just like this kind of processes like yeah, there is this old man, he just there just with his hoiro and it's his way of like forgetting about probably having to deal with something else. He's just there toasting away.

Ryan · 55:01

It's pretty very. Cool. It's it has a very interesting kind of like a chocolate like dry cacao kind of flavor when we try it. It was a very interesting attention. I mean matcha that we have not had that kind of flavor profile from anywhere else before. Thing that this type of batches because you are doing so little and you can just like if you're using gas, you can just like regulate if you do it in a closed oven like you just put it comes in, comes out and you try before, afterwards, OK, too much heat too less heat or during processing, but these extra polishing and refinement, I don't know gives it different. It's arguably what macho closer

Pau · 55:47

to the what macho would have tasted like before the invention of these brick furnaces for the tencha ovens. Yeah, I would say so. It's the tools that they used for sure is like back to the past a little bit. Of course, you don't have maybe the period of waiting that they might have had in the old times. Because you go to the mountain, you pick by hand, you put it in a bamboo basket, you walk down.

Pau · 56:14

Of course, you might have had, I don't know, at that time maybe 200 people just with hoiro and maybe manual steamers and stuff like that. So for sure that there was like a little bit of withering and a little bit of like more, in my opinion, more interesting aromas probably being developed.

Ryan · 56:34

And then you have this like fire coal probably at the time or boot of some sort that is your hoirotei something I don't know. It's probably pretty interesting. Just for our curious listeners, if you ever wanted to see a physical hoiro, there was 1 sitting in the Kanbayashi museum in the Uji that you can check it out. Very cool and well.

Ryan · 56:57

Preserved. So it's called Hoiro Matcha. That's like, what? Is it even commercially available? I don't think it's called Hoiro Matcha. Hoiro is just the table. Of the equipment. I was introduced to these by a good friend of mine. I was like just like OK this is very interesting let's try to to pull the string.

Pau · 57:18

It just, yeah, I don't know what you're talking about. This is just a special tent. I do from time to time. There is no special name. There is maybe not availability public forward. There's more of a thing that he does and he sells to a few people.

Pau · 57:33

You can go there and help him out and stuff like that. But it's not like a thing anymore, unfortunately. But I think the guys from Yoshida and in Uji, you know in the aura area, they have a hoiro, a coal powered hoiro and I think they use it. Not sure if for some of random tencha, but for sure for a hand rolled gyokuro.

Pau · 57:57

I think that is done in the hoiro, but it's actually with charcoal. So it's the old hand rolled the style, but on top of that it is with charcoal. But I don't know the specific. I've never had the opportunity to to try it. But we went there to help him build the bamboo roof at this spring.

Pau · 58:16

And I was just like, do you have that hoiro with the famous charcoal hoiro thing or like, yeah, do you want to see it? Or like they just show me like it's slightly different from the from the modern ones. That's just my jump, you know, give me old tools. Pretty interesting.

Ryan · 58:33

Do you think that someone that's something like people could do as more tea companies try to add value to the process, like milling it fresh, people are buying ishi-usu. Could people in theory do this like light toasting to the tencha they buy before milling it?

Pau · 58:49

Or is it like, is there a really strong learning curve? Is it? Is it a very difficult thing to? I think it's probably both, but when you buy tencha at least for probably the usual, usual channels that tencha has already been dried, probably fired in the specific regional preference. So you are kind of like re toasting on top of that, which might be interesting to do.

Pau · 59:17

Like I mean, there is no one stopping you other than you can only see the result if you have a grinder to grind in your place of. Like with coffee, like the final step of production is is just how do you say on the consumer city in a way or matter. Everything is done at the production place. It's like not that they are the coffee from Kenya is being roasted in Kenya and then shipped to you. Maybe, but most of the time you just ship it raw and then you roast it.

Pau · 59:50

It's for tencha, already being like steamed it or the probably fire in the Yame style or not fire it like in the Uji style for example. So you would be building on top of the work of someone else. So you can definitely can as long as you have a stone to be able to run it or send it back to Japan for grinding. I don't know, maybe why not I guess. But like, maybe that's just like my hot take on on this. It's just like sometimes it's just good to not have to leave your mark on the product and just let the product shine on its own.

Pau · 1:00:29

You know, like, I think as Western people, we always have this impulse of like, I want to do something to this product because, I don't know, as a coffee roaster, I can perfectly understand that. I want to be able to decide I'm going to roast it like this because this is how I think it should be done. I don't know, like, you have through specialists in this in Japan that they are, like, doing their own opinions about this. So you are like, kind of like cancelling them. Sure.

Pau · 1:00:58

Yeah. Yeah, yeah. My my English book of learning that and that word might be too strong, but sometimes it's just like, yeah, there is this guy in Japan. He has a hoiro. He can't or sit in there. It's a cool dude. Like, please enjoy, you know, like why should I just put one last stroke in a masterpiece? Like when the master has already done that? I would at the same time go for it. Like it's super.

Pau · 1:01:24

It's probably super far. I've I've I've taken tencha from the factory and put it in a roaster and like make hoji tencha. I just don't have a grinder to to grind it when I did it like a year ago I would say, but it's definitely toast very different from hojicha, for example.

Pau · 1:01:42

It's like a very different, I don't know, thermal curve I would say. Interesting. Because the density and the cell walls are intact. And yeah, maybe it's just like my coffee roasting brain is like, why is this not happening? Why is not following this?

Pau · 1:01:58

Yeah, because one thing is being the other ones leave. Of course, it's gonna be roasting at different rates and it just takes a little bit to to switch up. But I think there is already some people roasting hojicha outside of the outside of Japan where they just buy bancha or sencha or kukicha. They're roasting.

Pau · 1:02:15

So the next natural step would be to buy black tea, Japanese oolong, even Taiwanese oolong, and roasted closer to their final consumer. And maybe half. This is the one that we get, and this is the same one, but we just give it a little flair overall.

Pau · 1:02:33

Why not? So I can understand both. It's like my farmer tea farmer heart and my, I don't know, roasting nerd, like kind of colliding together. It's a little bit difficult sometimes, Yeah. That's interesting. It's two very different just like perspectives and approaches actually because I mean, a lot of it's just intention, right? Like the tension is like so close to a finished product other than the milling that like it is the finished work other than the milling and like then modifying it. It's like very different than green coffee, which. Yeah, it's.

Pau · 1:03:08

Not the finished at all because you can't even like consume it in that form. Yeah. And you know, the idea of roasting can really change the flavor profile of the Tencha. It's almost like, I would say, can be perceived as adding milk, you know, into matcha, right?

Pau · 1:03:25

It's it's you're. You're changing a lot of the original flavor that had been achieved with a lot of hard works. Yeah, like there was, there was a guy that, I don't remember who, but we were talking about roasting our level like, yeah, like if he also likes tea a lot.

Pau · 1:03:43

So he was like the end cup of tea is the heart of the Brewer in a way, right? Like they are brewing it, they are pouring their heart into it and that gets into the cup in coffee. The roaster is that person, not not the barista, of course, of course, too, but like the one that is making like 90% of the position is the roaster.

Pau · 1:04:03

So in coffee, it's like the roaster's heart is the roaster, but when you're brewing sencha, it's like the Brewer is the. So it's like kind of like that with matcha kind of like the same. I think like it's kind of an act of intention to me at least. Interesting.

Ryan · 1:04:19

So very, very philosophical today. So we invited David from Tezumi on the podcast, I don't know, but 456 episodes ago, and he said something that like really just changed my perspective on Zairai. And it never occurred to me. You can basically have like different lineages of Zairai. And I think he was somewhere in Wazuka and he was saying that one of the tea farmers was like, yeah, these bushes are all Uji Zairai.

Ryan · 1:04:46

And like, they're more umami in profile. And these are all Shizuoka Zairai, which are actually just the seeds of Yabukita, because back in the day it was way cheaper to take someone else's Yabukita seeds than to actually like grafts. Create new.

Ryan · 1:05:02

Baby Yabukita plants and that there's a lot more nuance to the Zairai conversation than what like most people generally talk about. We'd love to learn like more about that, what you've seen from farmers, what you've tasted and like, if and if there's any like preservation effort.

Ryan · 1:05:20

I know that like apples, for example, there was some big team, I think at Cornell that went to like Kazakhstan, which is where I think apples were first cultivated. And they went and like collected tons of genetic, A genetic Bank of all these different apple seeds.

Ryan · 1:05:35

And a lot of them got replanted, I think somewhere in New York State. And there's this huge like apple farm genetic Bank of things so that they can pull like different traits from different bushes, etcetera, so that those didn't get extinct. And I know that and David told us that 70% of or maybe it was higher than that, maybe 90% of Wazuka was all Zairai in the 70s and then it's just gotten ripped up. I mean before, like the official registration was in 1953, that was Benihomare, Yabukita and company. There's like 13 cultivars, something specific like, well, so you can say like probably until the twist, like everything was Zairai, Like everything was

Pau · 1:06:25

not, not Zairai it was just tea was like tea. Was that like there was no concept of what do you mean preserve, like carrying the genetic material to to the other to the next one. You know, like what you plant seeds, you grow tea, you have tea and then you harvest.

Pau · 1:06:41

That's it. Like there was no this nuance of like, we can take this for these and propagate it and just make clones and have everything homogeneous in a way. And that just has many benefits for the farmers and my consistency wise, I would say. But of course, it takes out a lot of diversity as well. But I'm checking very fast here.

Pau · 1:07:07

Like my notes on the zairai, for example, Asahi Zairai, Asagiri Zairai, Asatsuyu, excellent cultivar, Zairai, Benitsukuba for black tea, Zairai. It's like there is so many of them that they have Gokou, super famous for gyokuro, for example. Also Mata is one of my favorite ones. Zairai, like what else?

Pau · 1:07:32

Some of them are seedlings from Yabukita, siblings from Samidori. But like we don't know the parent, like we know 1/2, we don't know the other half. So it just gets labeled as Yabukita and Zairai. So that's the the the fields that they were grown from seed, they are called Misho usually. So like I don't know Yabukita Misho. So it's like seedlings from Yabukita. So we know that 50% is Yabukita.

Pau · 1:07:57

We don't know the other half but probably the Yabukita dominant traits. They get carried to the sea so there has some semblance. For all these cultivars actually mainly have two origins, right? Like they're either coming straight from Zairai and you propagate them or they are some sort of intentional breed of different, you know, trace of plants that they found it interesting.

Ryan · 1:08:21

So like, do people still constantly trying to discover new like Zairai and then replant them, replanting them as, you know, new cultivars? And also my question will be like, would it be more difficult nowadays? Because like you, you have less and less tie, right?

Pau · 1:08:37

And people are doing all these cultivar planning in all the regions. Yeah. OK, so well, there is, there is a lot of there's a lot to uncover there, I think. No, no, no, no problem. I just, I I'm just one to one thing like Zairai is 100% from seed. You can know one parent not know the other parent. Then it's like I don't know seedling from. If you know the usually you know the the the flower component, the flower parent you will know if it's Yabukita then into seedling from Yabukita.

Pau · 1:09:13

If you don't know the flower parent then it's just because then you just don't know anything about it. Does that make sense? But then cultivar doesn't need to be intentional. Like you're taking a Yabukita flower and asset to your poem and you're doing this this like the modern style of doing it. But there is still sometimes some cultivars that they'd allow.

Pau · 1:09:34

We took the seed from this field is the field with Yabukita and next to it there is something else. We planted this and this plant came out and it looks gorgeous. So they just selected it like that. So it can be just like by lottery, like genetic lottery as well. So that's what they do.

Pau · 1:09:52

On these seed banks that you, Ryan, were mentioning, they are actually not actual banks of seeds. I've never heard of that for tea bushes. I'm sure they have seeds on a seed bank for sure. OK. But not like probably like super public but what they do is like a listing.

Pau · 1:10:13

The few research centres I visited they always have one field where they have the cultivars that didn't make the cut in a way. So for every cultivar that gets registered, that might be like 5 to 6000 cultivars that didn't make the cut. And the final, the pre final selection might be around like 30.

Pau · 1:10:34

So from those studies, if they have one, OK, definitely we want to register this one. Sometimes they have two that they really like. And then let's say #3 #4 #5 they're like, OK, we have done all the study. They are good, but not good enough.

Pau · 1:10:47

So let's plant them in a field, call them library fields. And they just have maybe like 3 or 4 plants with a tag of like this is 36-2 or whatever. OK, very similar. And it's like a field of zairai, but where you have actually identified every single plant. OK, but they just didn't make the cut. But maybe some are Yabukita parents. Some of them are pure zairai.

Pau · 1:11:14

Some of them is like, Oh yeah, in this one we actually radiate like a bunch of atoms into it until it the DNA broke down and a mutation happened and this thing came out. So there is there is six of those as well. Like, it's pretty, pretty interesting.

Ryan · 1:11:27

Nowadays, nowadays all of the, you know, gardens and tea plantations are more homogenized because of all these cultivars. We are seeing less and less zairai. And would it be difficult for people to, you know, find new interesting tasting, you know, new bushes?

Pau · 1:11:44

Zairai? Yeah, yeah. So for first, well, I don't know, I've seen this mention like first generation cultivar, second generation cultivar and I kind of like follow that. But like first generation will be your Yabukitas, like first time registrations and stuff like that. They were mainly just picking zairai planting, see what works, see what doesn't work.

Pau · 1:12:07

And then the 4th generation cultivar. So the current ones are more like, no, we take this one, we take that one is very intentional. So zairai is almost never used nowadays, but there is there is cases here and there like a farmer just makes seeds for fun and he might register a private cultivar but it's pretty rare.

Pau · 1:12:26

But sometimes they say like OK, we have this super tasty cultivar but is extremely weak against something let's say Saemidori for example, not super resistant to cold. So they might take a zairai from Saitama, which is a very harsh weather area. And those bushes are naturally like selected by their their environment.

Pau · 1:12:49

So a lot of the cold resistant cultivars in Japan come from that area. So they might say like, OK, let's bring a bunch of zairai pollen and put it into the Saemidori and see what what works. So that that's, that's one way to do it is a little bit less common nowadays because you already have like a pool of cultivars that there is like information about that you can say like, oh, actually like this one is cold resistant, but the the genetic trait is not dominant.

Pau · 1:13:18

So it might carry over. It might not carry over, but that one is also cold resistant and its trait is dominant. So there is a very high chance that the new plant will have some behavior like that as well. And with zairai is like, OK, well, let's make 10,000. Maybe something magical happens and we end with Narino version 2.

Pau · 1:13:40

You know, you never know. So it's less less predictable. There's definitely things with that, but not so much nowadays. Or if they do like this experimental and stuff. The thing I think it's important to recover a little bit more design, right? And I think from people from like like us, like the the nervy cultural people like they are like now there's like a push for you cannot, you cannot understand cultivar as a consumer if you are not teach about zairai in a way, right? It's like they go hand to hand.

Pau · 1:14:14

So there is going to be with time, maybe more people interested in zairai and then maybe abandoned zairai fields will come back online like the one we are recovering at work, for example, stuff like that. And then maybe there will be more incentive to talk about zairai and have more just genetic diversity, because I know I'm talking a lot about coffee in in this podcast. But like coffee has a problem on on its cultivars that the the genetic diversity is is supernatural. Like there is not a lot.

Pau · 1:14:47

The world coffee research organization is one of the things that they try to do is like put out coffee cultivars on there. But one of the problems that they have is like, I think there is like a, I can't remember, it's many years ago, but maybe like 1 to 3% diversity on variance. Like the plant is 97% the same something, it might be like 95, I don't know.

Ryan · 1:15:10

But it's like something brutal. It's like there's only 1% of like variation exactly. And then with, with three, if we lose all these regionality, genetic, poor genetic regionality in the plant in the future, we might, we might have a little bit of trouble, yeah. Like the Cavendish banana too.

Ryan · 1:15:29

And then coffee, coffee that that virus is like super like devastating, I've heard. Yeah, and especially because there is one key thing that you just cannot get when making cultivars. You don't have a taproot, you just don't. You are just missing missing a physical part of the plant like all that drill root.

Ryan · 1:15:51

Why don't you have a tab root? Because you are taking a branch, you are just cutting. So it makes I think it's called in English Radisson. So it's like side roots but there is no one one tab root like 1. I don't know how to say like a mother route that just drills down. It doesn't grow like that.

Pau · 1:16:12

It only grows when you have a seat as far as my knowledge goes. So that's why many cultivars have like routing problems at the beginning when they are young is because the the rally cells is like a very weak system. Then once they are on the field they settle and like then they can get around.

Pau · 1:16:33

But you are you are losing access to deeper soil and probably the soil there has more extra moisture. So they are more resistant to drought. They they just get access to different minerality from the soil as well. So like like there is like a lot of a lot of things. So that's also why the zairai from different places have more expression in my opinion.

Ryan · 1:16:56

I know in Taiwan erosion is a huge problem and I'm sure in Wazuka too, that with because I know that some of the really steep slopes, I think Da Yu Ling in particular the highest, it's like 2000 plus meters in Taiwan. It's an environmental disaster because it's just mono crop of Qingxin Oolong cultivars and they get a big storm. There's a big and then like it's causing all these landslides because yeah, I but I never made the connection. So I guess there's there's no taproots and there's no. The, the, the, the, the plans are literally sitting on the soil.

Pau · 1:17:30

They are going, I don't know. I mean, they are, they are going deep. What, like 15 centimeters deep, 20cm deep. Whoa. That's way less than I would have guessed. Like it's it's not, it's not a lot I would say. And especially if you are in a slope, there is really literally only like the upper side of the slope where the plant can really grip. The other one is just there.

Pau · 1:17:52

It's just like sitting there. And if you over fertilize the roots, there are there's no reason for the roots to go down. There's a reason for the roots to go up, right? In fact, there is, there is some cultivars that in nursery stage, they have to win to make like wind breakers because the roots just like sit flat on this one. Like it's like you just place the plant. You don't plant the plant, you just place it. I was like, the roots just don't know where to go. I was like, are we sure this cultivar is it should be registered or something?

Pau · 1:18:25

We're like, yeah, it's actually very tasty. And actually all the tasty cultivars have some root problem. I don't know why. It's like you either have like a very good flavor or a very good root system, you know, like there's no in between.

Zongjun · 1:18:38

It's very funny. Just say idea because like I know in like grape they will graft some cultivars on top of like very old like root system from a different types of grape. I wonder if like people would do that for tea when you have the zairai root and then you graft on top of it.

Pau · 1:18:56

They do that with coffee sometimes where they would plan robusta and then they will just chop it down and plant an Arabica on top of it, which is like very funny on tea. I've seen a paper they were trying to for cultivars like they don't do good route to just like just do grafting, But I I never seen anything. Yeah, definitely.

Pau · 1:19:18

This one is grafted because then it means that you can only propagate from that graft. You know what I mean? Like Yabukita is a tree. The original Yabukita is a tree with its stat root. You are just taking cuttings of that tree. If you graft, you have a tree that is something else and the grafted part.

Pau · 1:19:36

So like you are using the roots of another plant, but when you do the cuttings, you will still have the roots of the grafted part, not the one that you're using now. So you're not taking benefit from the better root system of the other plant, if that makes sense when you propagate.

Pau · 1:19:54

Or you can just like cut out of the branches of two original plant and then graft the cultivar on top. Of it yeah but like what I meant it's like it's difficult to for me to explain but like if you graft at least as far as my understanding goes you want to take like you would have to have a zairai field and graft only Yabukita yeah but you would not be able to take cuttings of that cultivar grafted because then you will lose the the good root will not it will not translate to the to the children yeah it's getting too complicated I I lost you guys I'm sorry it's. It's alright.

Ryan · 1:20:31

Probably makes more sense in my in my head, but yeah, I I think it's definitely a thing that you can do. I don't see much reason to do it. Yeah, Part I, I would say part of the difficulty is you because you graft a cultivar on top of a zairai, but you won't necessarily be able to prevent the zairai from shooting out its own branches. So you might end up having a mixture of zairai and cultivar in the field which which can be that's. One thing and then every route from every tree will be different too.

Pau · 1:21:05

Yeah. Oh yeah, yeah, yeah, that too. Because in wine they plant, they know that is this variety and then they graft another variety. So they know all the roots are this type and all the top plant is this type. But with zairai is just going to be every root is the the different 1. So you end up in the same place.

Pau · 1:21:23

But like the leaf part, at least it will behave something similar. I think it's interesting, but I've never never seen it in in in action. Only a couple papers here and there. Yeah, sorry, it was a very convoluted explanation.

Ryan · 1:21:37

Do you know when they like RIP up these Zai Rai, old Zai Rai fields? Like I, I know like the Okonoyama Okono Yama tea garden from Horii Shichimeien where the mother tree I think was like 400 years old. But I think that like little plot of land has been cultivated for like half a Millennium. And I'm assuming that's not all zairai anymore. And when they ripped that up and planted cultivars, did one of like when a garden is that important, just like the prefectural Research Institute come in and like, save cuttings or seeds or like, you know, for something that's been cultivated for so long and you have that

Pau · 1:22:15

like little lineage of zairai. Yeah, it's so. Important where these cultivars are coming from, does that get saved or? Is I I hope, I hope it does. I hope it does, but I don't know to be honest. I know that for example, Asahi and all of this was farmers that they take from zairai like whatever they do their own cultivars, maybe for fun, maybe because they were just interested in developing something new. And then they were like, hey, this plan looks cool. I take all these notes, here it is. Please run tests and tell me if it could become a thing in a way.

Pau · 1:22:53

Or maybe they pass out and then there is someone just transfers those seedlings to the closer Research Center and they take care of them. So I think usually the cultivars from Kyoto when they don't get registered or before they get registered, they have kill can and then a number.

Pau · 1:23:11

So Kyoto is prefecture keto Ken number 126 or whatever. So Asahi and Ujikari and all of those, they have their own kyo Ken number in a way. But there is a few of them that is like Koyama. Koyama 69 I think is I said no, like Koyama number or whatever. It's Koyama is the the farmer that made the seedling, but he just transferred it or someone transferred it to the Research Center.

Pau · 1:23:38

So in the past they have moved that material when they brought seats from Sri Lanka or like India and stuff, they moved that material to the research centers. In the present time, if they recover from important fields, I hope they do, but I don't know. Is it's horrifying thought because like all these old tea farmers with all this, because we were talking with someone in Goku show and I think they were saying that everything was I right until like the 70s or 80s.

Ryan · 1:24:06

And like, this is like Primo cultivated for who knows how long and it's family by family as everyone's moved to cultivars. Like all this genetic diversity. You really hope it didn't get lost. Yeah. And especially like, I mean, of course, it's your land. You can do whatever you we want with it. But like some of these like 10/12/15 generation fields, especially I think in the case of Jimmy Yan, he is one of the seven famous fields of Fuji.

Ryan · 1:24:37

Like was this like Chicago? I think it was the Chicago warlord. He said like yeah, 7 fields, top, top crop. Like there is like maybe even a deeper link to the past that should be like recognized as maybe, I don't know, like geographical denomination of source, just like we have like intangible human heritage.

Pau · 1:25:02

I don't know, like intangible or tangible Japanese site or something. So, yeah, it makes me a little bit sad when I, when I hear about these, these cases. I hope they they recover some of the material when when they do for sure. Yeah, I guess people at the time really viewed, you know, tea plant or cultivar very different way than we do nowadays. They don't necessarily see the value of like all these thyroid, you know, you have a very top selling new cultivars that can be sold for higher price and it tastes good. And you know, why not like similar things happened in in China too, like in Wui Shan,

Pau · 1:25:41

it's one of the most pristine woolen production region. And back in I think the seven, the 60s or the 70s, identical thing happened. Like they introduce all these like Stracian and roadway cultivar and they just like destroy all of the local bushes. They call it Thai Cha.

Pau · 1:25:59

It's the Chinese Thai right name for Thai right. And they plant all of these cultivars. And now they are trying to, like, rediscover all of these old, you know, local tea plants that kind of survive. From that's the thing like also sometimes they are not the farmers themselves choosing the cultivars.

Pau · 1:26:18

They just like get like like, I don't know, pressure market market pressure or like sometimes it's like a researcher from wherever is like, yeah, this cultivar good for this area you're doing Mata is a cultivar suited for Mata.

Pau · 1:26:33

And then what are you going to do is a specialist giving you like high level advice? Of course you're going to plant it. But then maybe 10 years later, you it's like, actually this cultivar was super weak against this thing. I just ravaged the entire the entire region for whatever. That's what's happening.

Pau · 1:26:50

Kagoshima with Yutaka Midori, like, yeah, yeah, this cultivar super good. Eight years later, everyone was on the on the rat because it didn't taste well. They had to figure something out. So there's like a lot of like drama.

Pau · 1:27:03

And then everyone went against the this scientist like, oh, hey, what do we do? Because it's the second most grown cultivar only in Kawashima, so it was like a huge loss for some farmers until they developed a way to process it and make it tasty. Interesting, interesting.

Pau · 1:27:21

But you know, it's like patching, maybe patching the, the, the cultivar genetic material. I don't know is, is, is like a little bit like like that. And for example, let's say that these matter super boom last for 20 years. So people that are starting to replant now, they will get certain recommendations of like, oh, maybe you have to plan a Sahi if you want to do a hand picked line of matter and then whatever.

Pau · 1:27:48

It's like maybe they are not able to sell out. But actually I just want to have in Satsu 131 and do oolong about the market is pressuring you to have certain cultivars, not certain other things and that you just have like a loss of diversity on top of that I would say.

Pau · 1:28:07

That's a great point because like, like identical thing happening. We too, like people actually still plan some of the local cultivars. But the problem is like all these big companies of, you know, buyers, they would just not buy that cultivar.

Pau · 1:28:20

Like you end up planning some things that just cannot, won't be sold, like no one's buying them. So you kind of have to switch to this like more popular cultivar in order to survive. Really. Yeah, it's just a label. It's just a label problem like and I saw this in a lot of like people that are starting not not just matcha companies, but T companies in general is like, oh, is it organic? No, it's natural.

Pau · 1:28:44

So it's kind of organic. Can I label it as organic? Like no, it's natural. What are you looking for T that has an interesting history. Are you just like looking for a term to put on your website? Let's say, I don't know, random thing Asagiri Mata. What's that?

Pau · 1:29:00

Do you have a Sahih? Do you have a committee? No, OK, bye. It's like, well, OK, have you tried it? Like it's like they are. They are just like hunting for these terms. And. That's that's not good because then the consumers of that people, they will always see like with this single origin, sorry, single cultivar push that is always the same 5 to 7 cultivar names and then organic, yes, organic, no kind of relationship or blend.

Pau · 1:29:28

And it's like they're already like influencing a lot. And it's like that IS170160 registered cultivars in Japan. Like enjoy, you know, once would be more suited for one thing, one for the other is just enjoy the tea tapestry of genetic diversity, not like on what you want to put on your label because it's what you have learned from Instagram that is good. Like, I don't know.

Pau · 1:29:57

I just have like a lot of like very strong opinions about this. I love it. I mean it ultimately it's an access problem and it's an awareness problem. Yeah. Yeah, exactly. And also, if you sell leaf to a factory, you are not processing your own leaf. They they might just, you just don't have the choice to OK, what is this leave going to be used for? And if you work in a cooperative, they might actually enforce you like, no, you have to use this fertilizer. Even if you don't want to apply fertilizer, you have to apply this one.

Pau · 1:30:32

And it has to be this cultivar because everyone has to to be the same in certain products of the cooperative. So they might actually like also like force you to do certain things. Like I know of a few farmers that have this problem. Like, yeah, in my day job, I have to do this. I have to do this cultivar.

Pau · 1:30:49

I have to do it this way. But then they are like doing like super crazy roasted black tea and kamairicha and like stuff like that on their free time. It's like a little rebellion. Like the pressure goes from many, many places and the farmers are they just like holding to like the last chain slide out to it like that. I'm sorry, I just had to.

Ryan · 1:31:12

I just have to say it. Let it out, Pennsylvania. Let it out. I mean, this, there's so much innovation going on, just a matter of finding it and learning about it and giving everyone the context to appreciate it. So I'd love to taste all the genetic diversity. I just don't know where to buy it, like just as purely as a consumer or like what it is.

Ryan · 1:31:32

Because like even some of the stuff on your blog, some of the cultivars I've never seen commercially available. And like, where are they going? Like, that's an interesting question. Like if it does go to like black tea or goes into oolong or goes into some senchas, do they just get where does that detail get lost on the way to the consumer?

Ryan · 1:31:53

Like with all of these weird interesting new cultivars? Like is does it get lost, I guess at the cooperative level, at the blending level, rent level? Maybe the production is too low. Yeah, exactly. Like most of the farms, they just don't sell direct to consumer is a thing that has traditionally not happened is like a very recent thing. There is a few farmers here and there that they're like really pushing for it and they have of like weird names like even me, sometimes I, I read like I know that this cultivar exists is the first time I've ever seen it and the farmer itself was like, I've never seen it as a single

Pau · 1:32:27

cultivar. I've seen people that have it, but it gets into a Co-op product and it just gets planned and it just like it just gets lost to the consumer or sometimes it's just like contract sales to blending house or whatever.

Pau · 1:32:41

And then they just like loses the transparency there. In Japan, there is this tradition of like the, the, I don't know, the grower, the farmer grows, the blender blends, the wholesaler packs and the retailer sells like every, everyone does its job and it's a chain and you just follow the chain and keep going. And now it's kind of like breaking a little bit more and more, but not all the farms have the energy, the knowledge to do it.

Pau · 1:33:08

Maybe they do it in Japanese, but like they don't have the ability to do it in other language channels. For example, there was a guy in Shizuoka, he studied for two years in the States in agronomy school or something, something like that. So he speaks a little bit of English. Even so, his website is kind of like half English, half Japanese.

Pau · 1:33:29

Or he doesn't sell. He doesn't sell abroad, he doesn't ship abroad because just he doesn't really understand fully like export regulations and stuff like that. So there is like always like the missing piece And for most farmers it's always like they only speak Japanese.

Pau · 1:33:45

They have a phone number. If you know them, you can buy from them. They are not listed anywhere. They are just they just have maybe their shop, they sell some shincha. They might be able to tell you what cultivar goes in what, but everything else they move it through the auction because they might get potentially less money, but it's like kind of like more safe crowd.

Pau · 1:34:11

I think as we go, maybe farmers will start to do direct to consumer maybe 1020% of their production and then maybe see how things go and then maybe year by year increase. But it's more like relatively young farmers or like now that some farmers are transitioning, if they have like inheritance going on, stuff like that, the young people might just push for it because their social media knowledge, Internet knowledge, they can do a simple website on their own or they have a friend that makes website because that's one of the interesting jobs out there that most people do.

Pau · 1:34:53

It will it's creating a new foundation for direct to consumer sales in farming in general. Like it's very interesting if you follow this couple months, I've been like super disconnected from the Instagram kind of things. But like the presence of farmers of Japanese farmers in Instagram selling their products is insane. It's like Peach farmers, grape farmers, strawberry farmers, onion farmers, They are they everyone is there. I think that's how they are discovering like the direct to consumer on the internal market.

Pau · 1:35:28

So once there is a little bit more of like a better translation tools maybe or someone from the government creates a platform to make easier, even easier like exports, maybe we will see a little bit more single origin, single farm, single cultivar, are these kind of terms popping up a little bit more? And then from there it just snowballs and snowballs and snowballs.

Zongjun · 1:35:52

Last year you wrote about like this very interesting article about, you know, the whole matcha shortage situation. Can you share any updates on, you know, how does progressing and you know, how does changing the industry and what the government and tea farmers are doing right now in response?

Zongjun · 1:36:08

Do you see more people switching into matcha production, tencha production or, you know, shifting cultivars that being growing their field? Because I know that there are a lot of, you know, traditional like sencha or gyokuro farmers start changing to, you know, farming tencha.

Pau · 1:36:25

So Ma did this kind of like is a good question because it kind of connects to what we have been talking through the podcast and especially through the last through the last one. But when I brought that article, it was when I think just after Koyama input the famous now famous Instagram post like shortage here, problems, we're cutting limiting amounts and stuff like that. And everyone was like a little actually is happening. So I think I remember writing that article in maybe like 2 hours with like a very like hot headed like thing and then having to edit and edit and edit and edit. So yeah, there were like a lot

Pau · 1:37:03

of like feelings on that on that one I think. But I think I think it stands quite well. I would add like I didn't know, like let's imagine that Wazuka always shades 50% of their fields. That is including kabusecha, gyokuro, matcha, stuff like that, right? I think it has definitely increased. I've seen more people shaving.

Pau · 1:37:26

I've also seen many more bundles of shading cloth before it's cut prepared for the field on Kay Torres just zipping in town as well. Like oh, this guy bought 2 bundles of shading. This guy bought 1 bundle of shading. You know, you can see like who is going to shade more that year or has to renew some shades if it's a significant increase. Nothing extremely crazy, but definitely has gone up. And one of the interesting part is that, but everyone had to kind of like rush for the tencha factory because of course they are already like kind of at capacity. The Wazuka has a lot of output for tencha, but of course like nothing compared to other

Pau · 1:38:12

prefectures. So the factories are already small. There is not a lot of storage area. They were already like kind of like at the capacity in size ones. So how do you get more people to work the factory if it's a factory that runs for 20 hours or something like that and they kind of like refine during four hours and then the next morning they start again. So there's been a lot of longer waiting times for leave to be processed because you can just, you just have one speed. Like of course you can make it happen slightly faster but not significantly faster without having some quality problems perhaps.

Pau · 1:38:51

So you have withered matcha. Yeah, exactly. But I mean accidentally. Yeah, which might be an interesting flavor thing, but at the same time, like everyone is hungry for buying tencha. Like the price like 3-4 times higher than last spring. So everyone was like, OK, we have to buy some tencha. What's going to be the price?

Pau · 1:39:15

The farmers didn't know. Then the the auction open, and then just like the price just through the roof. As you progress through the harvest season, of course, you get to the main part of the harvest and that's just the bottleneck. It's just like, OK, we have to harvest this field, but you have to actually call the tencha factory before like, hey, can we bring leaf today?

Pau · 1:39:34

Are you full? Maybe we can take 3400 kilos. Don't bring the 600 that you would may be brought usually, which means that the next 200 kilos are harvested maybe one day later, which means bigger leaf, which means maybe less quality. So it's like it's like the problem we run out be. I mentioned in the beginning of the episode because it rained. It delays things one day, one day and 1/2. And then you have like certain laws of quality on top of that. You cannot bring that to the tencha factory. Maybe you are three days late.

Pau · 1:40:10

So it's like complicated. And there is some farmers which very smart of them. They have been sending half tencha one side, half tencha on the other side. And then they just like pick and choose the factory that they like the most. And they try to bring more and more to that factory and use the other one as a supplement factory. Like Hedge which?

Pau · 1:40:30

Is very, very, very smart. Yeah. They're like, OK, so this is this is my leaf. They don't have don't have a say on how the tencha is going to be processed. If you bring it to certain factories, right? They're just going to process it the way that they do and you get a product at the end and then you try they was like, well, this is not what I imagined, but this is what I got. But if you have different factories that you try and you're like, OK, well, let's try to make continue our relationship with this person or a little bit more with that one. At the same time, if you have to work with a different tencha factory, they have their own old

Pau · 1:41:05

customers, like very long established relationships with other farmers. So most of the times they can just maybe welcome one more farmer, but maybe not three more farmers because they just don't have the containers for it.

Pau · 1:41:18

They maybe don't have the space to store that much tencha. They don't have like many, many things. So it's a huge bottleneck. If you sell to the auction, once it gets to the auction, then the price is super high. Some lots made it slightly later to the auction.

Pau · 1:41:34

So some partners will call like like a big jump at the beginning. And luckily at least the price maintained very high through the season. So even though they had to harvest a few days later, price wise, probably OK for them I would say.

Pau · 1:41:49

So that's complicated. And then comes the problem with like, OK, now I got my tencha after dealing with logistics on the tencha factory, who's going to grind it? Because now the grinding facilities are like, yeah, we have 50 stones free to sell and grinding as a service, right?

Pau · 1:42:10

But now they are at capacities like, yeah, we cannot take more customers. They were actually we are shedding customers like a one year before when everything exploded like a from March. We can probably still work with you for the industrial grinding, but we cannot do stone grinding for you anymore because we need the stone for ourselves.

Pau · 1:42:27

I think they are all of them, all the all these factories they try to like connect you with someone else that might offer those services. But I've seen some things are being shipped quite far away to be ground and then shipped back to the farm when before maybe you would just drive to the next town where there is a grinding facility and you will just get it some days or weeks later. Ground us powder.

Pau · 1:42:50

Usually those facilities would also offer packing. So now for the farmers, they have to search for a tencha factory, they have to search for a new grinding facility. And if the new people that they are working for, they don't have the format of packaging that they use or they don't offer packaging as a service. I think this is the thing that I've recovered probably this week is like how painful is to pack matcha. We've heard it doesn't matter the bags of or teams is such a complicated process.

Pau · 1:43:19

If you are a small farm and you do like again, single origin, single cultivar things, it's not like you can use the very automated machinery because you have to clean between batches. So there is a like a loss of material there that you maybe cannot or don't want to to do. If you have kilos and kilos and kilos, you can just use machinery, but there is like a lot of handmade manual packing going on still.

Pau · 1:43:43

This is something I've really never got the insight into. And recently I've I've learned it the the hard way I would say. And just that just means that the lead times are insane. Like for the tencha now we have moved past through that because the season is over. Now we move into summer tea, which some farmers have already started in was OK.

Pau · 1:44:05

So the tencha factories are going to be again super busy. But then we have the grinding bottleneck. Maybe you will get your tea in two months because you have to wait rate for grinders to be available and that means that you, your product will reach the market September, November, that's very late. It can be a good thing, it can be a bad thing, I guess, depending on what's your strategy. But the bleak, the big blending houses are starting to release now.

Pau · 1:44:31

I think I've seen a couple super nice spring products coming out now and they have the capacity for it. But the usual farmers, I know that they do good matcha, but they are not super well known and it's not blended from houses or anything like that. It's like, yeah, we'll have when we will have stock, September, maybe October, we don't know.

Pau · 1:44:53

Literally because they can't grind it. Or we are. Or packing takes forever. Yeah, we're actually waiting for people to pack it. Like we can sell you a couple bucks to you as a retail customer, but if it's a wholesale that needs 70 kilos of matcha because everyone is trying to just get as much as possible, especially big accounts, they are just going for door by door almost like OK, do you have, I need 200 kilos, can you sell me 50? Yes, no.

Pau · 1:45:22

OK, can you sell me 100? Yes, no. And they just make decisions like this in a way like very simplified, right. But everyone is like kind of really, really struggling on the sourcing part, which puts more pressure on like we need to pack fast and just move product because some of these farms are operate.

Pau · 1:45:42

My farming is not super profitable. If you want to have a good product next year, you have to start making good trimming, good fertilization. And in some cases, if you work that way, end of summer, beginning of autumn, if you don't have the cash flow to buy amounts of the tools or fertilizers or materials that you need for next year, you are, you are like your hands are tight. You might not have enough cash flow to operate well for the next year because all your all, all your profit will come very late in the in the year, which means more depth to more farms that are already kind of in our situation. The winners win and the losers

Pau · 1:46:23

lose extra. Hard, yeah. I mean, like farming is almost no safety net. Like the government is there for weather damage and stuff like that, but I've not seen, I have never had to resort to those kind of things. And everything is in very particular speech and this helps and subsidies and stuff like that. Maybe I'm lacking a huge part of knowledge on that, so I'm sorry about that, but it's it's a very tricky situation. On top of that, where we talked at the beginning of the episode, long shading, maybe you don't do good rotation. So maybe next year it's going to be worse yield than this year. But this year we had low yield,

Pau · 1:47:08

super high quality, but maybe next year is going to be medium quality, even lower yield, kind of like brace, brace, brace yourself because this year has been confusing for everyone and a lot of adjustments. But the plans, I don't know how they will take it. And the infrastructure problem is going to still be there. 90% of the farms or wholesalers, they are also going through a rough patch where they might have the cash flow to like buy from farms that they have not worked from, but they are also like paying like insane amount of money for the same amount of material that they were buying last year. Yeah.

Pau · 1:47:47

Another, if that is going to be covered by consumers and them or only from the consumers, the matcha price will go up. If your daily latte instead of being $7.00 is like $12.00, how many people are going to continue consumption or move to another drink or move to? It's like it's so complicated.

Pau · 1:48:10

Yeah, super fragile. Yeah. I feel like the price is going to be there anyway. So despite the shortage. Yeah, because I think, I think we're going to be seeing spring prices in summer leaf tea and I don't know yet because we have not started.

Pau · 1:48:27

We are getting some some people are getting some tension. I will like it's going to be interesting to see the shift in summer because that is not everyone loves right. Everyone loves spring matcha and super high grade matcha.

Pau · 1:48:42

But like for latte, everything that runs to for export is probably part of summer or only summer tea. So that is maybe what is going to affect the your average consumer, someone that is already a little bit more into matcha and they are sourcing a little bit more carefully.

Pau · 1:49:01

Where do they buy from stuff? It's more like the spring side, but like all your coffee shops for latte baking ingredients and stuff like that. The heat is going to come now in summer in my opinion, which means that they will get the tea maybe in December, which that's like super crazy, but maybe industrial grinding is not going to be a problem.

Ryan · 1:49:24

It's gonna be interesting to see. So overall, I think that maybe with a few details that post still holds up relatively well I would say. Yeah, still very relevant. Recently, Yeah. Yeah, it rings. It rings very true from everything we're hearing. Yeah, I read it too when when we were organizing the the podcast because I was live.

Pau · 1:49:45

What did I say like 6 months ago? I don't remember. I just like send it to you. Then I published it and I then I just forgot about it. I was live. I think it's basic, one of the best or if not the best article on the matcha shortage that's out there. I think I saw in your newsletter it's getting a lot of exposure, over 1000 views.

Pau · 1:50:04

Yeah, it's it's by far the most read article on the website, which I mean, it's not like a day thousands of people visiting my blog every day, but the. People who do are really either own tea businesses or really deep down a rabbit hole.

Pau · 1:50:21

Yeah, I think so. I think so, yeah. It's ranked by high, but it made me conceal. Should be to a Part 2 or like whatever. Like then I is like, I'm just going to be like very hot headed again. I don't just want to talk about matcha because certain of the similar problems exist for the sencha part and for all the things.

Pau · 1:50:44

And to be honest, my life from March until literally like last week was not nonexistent with the spring harvest university and like post harvest and then press summer harvest and start like that. So now it's like when I'm like turning the wheels or like, OK, now we can, we can write another, another article maybe. How do you say a postmortem of the of the spring harvest, something like that, something like that? Yeah, that would be fun to like.

Ryan · 1:51:13

Well, we highly recommend our listeners to read that article. That's still super relevant nowadays. Thank you. Thank you so much, Pop, for coming on. It's a great note to end on and if dear listeners, if you enjoyed this, please consider sharing it with a friend and we'll see you on the next one.

Pau · 1:51:30

Thanks, Bob. Thank you. See you in the future. See you.