Zairai, matcha milling, and more with Pau from Tea Nursery

Ryan · 0:07

Hello and welcome to the Specialty Matcha Podcast. My name is Ryan. This is Zongjun, who also goes by Sam.

Zongjun · 0:12

Hello, hello.

Ryan · 0:13

And we're the co-founders of Sanko Matcha Products.

Zongjun · 0:15

Yeah, we launched this podcast to discuss our learning journey in matcha, share startup stories and interview experts.

Ryan · 0:20

And we're very happy to have returning guest, Pau, back onto the podcast. Thanks for joining. Welcome back.

Pau · 0:26

Hello. Thank you for having me again.

Ryan · 0:28

Thanks so much for coming back on. So we have a real grab bag of topics. We've kind of had this accumulating list of things we wanted to ask you. So we're going to have hopefully a mixed topic podcast today. And I know you recently attended a zairai festival and super curious sort of what that was like and maybe some of the teas that you got to try and what the word is on the ground of how producers and consumers are thinking about zairai tea in Japan.

Pau · 0:56

It was very interesting. I saw it out of nowhere, to be honest. In in Instagram actually, I just saw it through one of the professors from Shizuoka University that was this one of well n one of the speakers or slash the speaker because there was almost only two of them.

Pau · 1:12

It just came out of nowhere. It was organized by some students from the Shizuoka one of the Shizuoka universities. Honestly, it was very cool to see a focus on just zairai tea, or not just tea or any type of tea, but zairai in specifically. For this professor in particular, he taught last year in the Global Japanese Tea Association one of the conferences, the Kyoto Conference, he was trying to get as many samples of zairai as possible and kind of like look at the genetic of the zairai and see similitudes between zairai because sometimes we speak of like, this is selected from Uji zairai, selected from Shizuoka zairai, but what does actually that mean? So he was like pinpointing the genetics and at that point he st was still in the research but now he has finished a very big chunk of it. So it was more like a presentation of those some of those results at least. And just talking like what is zairai? Like we say loud zairai is tea grown from seed, but he was like, okay, is zairai old tea bushes? Is zairai tea bushes that have been just have a tap root?

Pau · 2:23

If they don't have a tap root, they are not zairai, but what is the actual working definition? So that was that was that was interesting. It was aimed a lot to the Japanese people that was there. I was surprised because for being such a thing was like maybe tea eighty to hundred people, perhaps. Some farmers here and there.

Pau · 2:43

The students that were organizing it, of course, but they ran quite interesting tea club at the university where they go help some farmers and stuff. So it was like a a good mix, and then there was like some general public, I would say. Maybe tea drinkers from Shizuoka Prefecture, they just showed up. So that that the talk was super interesting, the the the morning talk.

Pau · 3:04

Yeah, we c we can go more in details if you want, but it was quite broad. Tasting wise, there was four farms. One from Niigata, which was very surprising. Kita Kitamura or Kitayama, I think it's called. I can send you the name later. It's kind of like the most northern limit production in Japan. It's like it's like a lot of snow, like their spring harvest is very, very late.

Pau · 3:28

I was talking about that, but they do some fermented tea just because they have the possibility and just different picking grades and different har hardness of the of the leaf at those times. There was someone from Shizuoka in Umegashima, which is quite isolated in the in the mountains, is very famous for growing wasabi, actually. Yeah.

Pau · 3:50

And they have an abandoned gold mine from I'm not sure if it was the Tokugawa clan or something like that. Wow. There is nothing nothing nothing else really. And they have a few a few tea that also the same thing. The the spring harvest is like late June. Which is sometimes they say like they cannot make it to the spring market in Shizuoka auction.

Pau · 4:14

They have to wait until the summer auction opens, which is not very good for them, unfortunately. But they have a few zairai fields there with the old planting system where it's almost individual trees. So you can I can send you a a picture later because they have a very old zairai field, one that is some bushes grown into each other. So it looks more like a like a brain, like a brain scan with all the waviness.

Pau · 4:39

And next to it there is like a Yabukita or something filled and it's just like completely straight, completely uniform in color as well. So you have these kind of three I don't know, generations of of or planting methods next to each other. Nice concept. It's a very cool farm. I was there two, two and a half years ago. It's one side of the road that is the the road for the cars. There is a suspension bridge and then there is the fields. There is no way to access those fields with a short track or anything. You have to work. And then I went to the conference and and I met this guy was like, wait, you are the guy from Umegashima. You have this field on the other side of the of the of the suspension bridge. I was like, it's it's you. I've been I've been to your field. And you were like okay, okay. So that was quite quite interesting.

Pau · 5:26

And there was a couple a couple other farms, all like zairai, some for Sencha, some for wakocha. Yeah, it was it was very very low-key, it was just serving some tasting, you could buy some tea. There is someone doing from the tea seeds and and stuff like that, was making like soaps, like lip balms and stuff like that. Trying to diversify, I guess.

Pau · 5:49

Was was quite interesting. It was like well, some of them are zairai, some of them are abandoned fields that you can just kind of go in and and use. So

Zongjun · 5:59

How do you see people's, I guess, general attitude towards zairai in the conference? Do you see people view it as more of a novelty, something cool that people just want to show it off to each other? Or has there been any more serious discussion on is there any commercial value or if we can scale this up into something?

Pau · 6:20

I think on one side that is something that that's maybe why the students and in particular this teacher wanted to make the summit is to talk about it. Because on one side the farmers that they were selling, of course, but also the few farmers that I could recognize in the summit. The of course, like okay, yeah, we have of course we have some fields with cultivars.

Pau · 6:44

But we don't want to lose the zairai fields because we think it's it's important to maintain them. Not as in plant extinction, like to preserve the genetic material of the plant itself, but it also they have a very long history. Like, okay, this field was there when my great grandpa was there. So it's possibly more than X amount of years old. This this needs to be preserved for historic reasons as well, or for family reasons or as well. So there is these layers of like the flavor is nice, we think this is pretty cool. Has history of the family heirloom in in in a way or family heritage as well. So that's that's one side. Then for the general public is you have heard the word, but you're not entirely sure. That's the

Pau · 7:31

General feeling I got. It's like, yeah, we know what tea is, obviously. But what is zairai is a different name for Yabukita or Okumidori. There was a couple people that were like, yeah, we know that it means is a historical traditional plant. Was like well yes, but not not really. That's a thing where it's interesting to okay, what's the definition of zairai?

Pau · 7:56

Is like a tr traditional method, right? There's a traditional plant, okay, but what is the traditional plant? From seed. Okay, so it's like a plant grown from seed. Okay. Why from seed? Because it has these characteristics. And by the definition of having a genetic expression on the plant, the field, one field, I don't know, will have a thousand, two thousand, three thousand plants on it. You will have all these genetic diversity, right? And depending on how they have cross pollinated each other in that particular village, they will be a little bit different in Shizuoka than the ones that have had different conditions in Fukuoka, for example. So over time there is some differences. But maybe the original plants brought also have an origin.

Pau · 8:42

Right, be it China, be it India, be it indigenous from Japan, that there's no we don't know, right? And yeah, just people just like just brain exploded, like, okay, it's tea made from a plant grown from seed. Yeah, okay, let's go. That's in the in the selling area that was kind of like the the general like okay, it's just like information overload. I was like, Okay, yeah, definitely a complicated topic.

Pau · 9:07

Also I I think expressing all of that in Japanese for Japanese people is also complex as well. Like okay, well they have their approach, like let's see what the talk is about.

Pau · 9:16

But he starts like, okay. So I'm this professor. I teach all these students that have volunteered to to do the the summit. So let's let's talk zairai, which is our research topic currently. So but like first we need to know what is zairai. Is it an old plant? Is it traditional plant? Blah blah blah blah. Like, okay, yeah, here we go. I think it he he did it he's a very good presentator, too. So he tied a little bit like the historical side. But then it's like, okay, what else does zairai have? It's like, okay, so it's memory, right? So it is a seed or maybe a plant, probably probably a seed that was brought by probably monks from China, was planted in these locations. They came at different times.

Pau · 10:02

They came from different locations in China. So you have that genetic diversity. And that genetic diversity has suffered certain growing conditions over centuries, right? So the predisposition of those plants will be X. You bring it to Shizuoka, you plant it, and you have, I don't know, Hamamatsu, for example, kind of like at the south of Shizuoka, closer to the sea, then you have Tenryu.

Pau · 10:26

Pretty high up in the mountains, then you have Umegashima, which goes at almost 1,000 meters of altitude. So to have all these differences. So even that expression put into three different locations inside of the same prefecture will suffer different conditions. Yeah. Through the centuries.

Ryan · 10:44

Changes as it propagates.

Pau · 10:46

Exactly. Through the through the centuries, it will suffer certain things. So okay, in this area there's more pest.

Pau · 10:52

In this area, there is more like frost, and the plant will slowly have mutations as well, like and will gain some characteristics, but there is still a big chunk of the source code of the plant that is the the same for that population, right? So he's looking at that. Go to Shizuoka, take hundred and fifty samples and look at the genetic expressions or not the entire I don't know how the human genome, right? Where they know exactly each bit what what it does. But something a little bit more broad stroke, but looking at that, it was like can they can say okay, Shizuoka is this expression. Like we can see that they share this amount, this area might be a little bit different, this area can be a little bit more.

Ryan · 11:36

Classify it, like, making the work backwards, saying it's

Pau · 11:39

Exactly. So it's you start doing this and you say like okay, where are you getting like why is it what is it interesting to know like the zairai from this sub area of Shizuoka versus this sub area of Shizuoka is like ninety percent the same. Like, okay, well yeah, probably they came from the same place and slowly they propagated. But once you compare this to Kyoto, to Fukuoka, to Akita, which they found some zairai there as well. You can verify history through genetics. It's like okay, if we know that Kyoto is the first place that he was planted in Japan, which that's another hot topic. And if we know that Eisai landed in where the Sasebo area is now in in Nagasaki Prefecture, then he moved to Fukuoka through Mount Sefuri and then he just travelled to Kyoto. Half

Pau · 12:32

Those three places if they have tea planted share the same genetic characteristics, yes they do. So we can verify that well, we don't know which one was the first place, but we know that at least maybe they share eighty percent the same genetic variability or or expression, which was super interesting. Very cool. Kyoto, Kyoto and Shiga they share a lot, which for proximity probably makes sense. But then you have Shizuoka, Aichi, Shizuoka, a little bit more like Saitama area. Completely different genetic expression. Once you come between those three, it's closer. But compared to Kyoto, it has nothing to do. No. So okay, who was the monk that brought the tea seeds to this area? I was like, you can say it was probably the legend says it was it was this guy. I have the names here. So Shoichi.

Pau · 13:23

Shoichi something, what's the name? Shoich Shoichi Kokushi. So you can say Shizuoka, Saitama, Gifu area, Ibaraki area, they share quite a bit. So they are probably we don't know again which one was the first place, but we can verify at least that yeah, well, there is a a a high chance that someone that went from wherever, from China or something with seeds to this location.

Pau · 13:48

Then later on, if same person or different person over time, it spread to the the neighbors. And then there is Kochi Prefecture. And Kochi Prefecture is like fully red and it's like, yeah, there is we don't know. Like who put it there, where it comes from, doesn't share similitudes with no one else except for a little bit Kumamoto and Kagoshima. So there is this kind of like mystery triangle.

Pau · 14:11

And they say that in Kochi, maybe tea could be endemic from there. So what they sell the where they say Yamacha, the mountain tea, tea that has been growing in the mountains for centuries, probably was already there. No one brought it there. It was there. There is no way to to say if that's true or not. But if it's true, super cool. We had tea in Japan.

Pau · 14:34

At least in Kochi. If not, it has to come from a very different genetic expression from the rest. So either it came much, much, much early or much later, or like it comes from a very different area, very different material. So we don't know. So there is parts of history that you can air quotes verify through the genetic expression, of course.

Pau · 14:59

Well, Kyoto versus the Mount Sefuri, who planted first in Japan, histories told by the people that write history, right? So sometimes it's like a little bit you cannot trust the paper trail, right? But genetics add like another layer of complexity of like, yeah, we can say that these two places, even though that they are very far away, they share a lot. So it's probably high very very high chance that the same person distributed those seeds or from the original seed material they propagated and then they brought some to the other place. So I thought that was like just like on on the head it was just like a moment of like wow and then he just started banging on that and like okay well then this genetic material has its through the natural selection.

Pau · 15:46

It it will have the epigenet epigenetics. So it will naturally can learn things and express them in the plant. So I don't know. In Saitama there might be from time to time plants that are highly resistant to certain growing conditions. Or in Kagoshima there might be plants that show natural traits to resist the environment they have there in terms of pests. If we lose zairai in terms of breeding material, you cannot recreate it because it has taken such a long time that when we are breeding cultivars with cultivars, like at some at some point you are narrowing the genetic window so much that yeah, you might get like an extremely beautiful perfume, but you will lose hundreds of other possibilities that are maybe more generic, but they are kind of like another set expression.

Pau · 16:35

The problem with growing bananas, they all come from one type of tree. We're like, okay, well, if if suddenly something comes and just eradicates all that cultivar, then what what what do you do? Where do you pull from? Because you don't have thousands and thousands of other plants that are maybe naturally or or as a group resistant to that. So it was like weaving all these things like the history first, the definition second, the tracing of the genetic material inside of a sample and then comparing it prefecture by prefecture. I thought that was like it was it was excellent. Honestly. If I had had more Japanese level, maybe I could have pulled maybe a a couple extra layers of the onion, I would say.

Pau · 17:20

But I was just taking notes like like crazy. I was like I was sitting in in first row and from time to time I was like trying to take pictures of the of the presentation he was giving. I I I I could see him like looking at me like, huh? And then I was just like pestering him after the presentation of like, okay, well what but this I don't understand the Japanese and he very kindly in English explained a little bit more as well. So wow, we did like a a little bit of potty potty of ideas. It was it was great. It was great. Then we went back to the tasting and people were a little bit more like, this is iDot, whoa. What prefecture does it come from? And what do you think is it resistant to? Was like very, very different vibe from the from the morning tasting. Yeah. Did you

Ryan · 18:04

Did you have any crazy zairai this time?

Pau · 18:08

No, no, no.

Ryan · 18:09

Anything surprise to you? Like flavor wise?

Pau · 18:11

Th there was not many. Because there was only four farms. But also like there was one farm where I think they had one sencha and then they had like three black teas and two white teas. So I have never tried white tea made with zairai. I think that's not true. I tried zairai white tea once. So I didn't have much to compare and also the paper cap which to me I feel the paper for whatever the the reason might be. But I bought some so yay, I I will I will kind of try it at some point. But all the teas were correct, all the teas were different. And I think that's the the most important way and it it also shows that zairai sometimes kind of like gets like shove to the side of well yeah, this is the another type of tea or I don't know the the the the old style tea. It's doesn't really the difficult tea to grow. And it's like okay, yeah, we like okay, do you have Yabukita, do you have Koshun, do you have something? And it was very wa op eye opening in that sense. But I don't know if that answers the the question.

Pau · 19:19

Yeah, totally.

Ryan · 19:20

We've been thinking a lot about this in the context of shaded cultivation, especially within the context of Uji because during the Edo period, really, Uji was the only place doing any shaded cultivation. So you have this crucible of, I don't know, three, four, 500 years of zairai propagating in these fields in Uji. And then when we've talked to some of the Uji farmers, like, when did you make the transition?

Ryan · 19:46

From cultivars from zairai. And everyone says, it's around the 60s or 70s or maybe bleeds into the 80s. And then you have this huge bank of genetic material. And I just don't think it would have been possible to save all of it at the research station. Maybe some of it, like it's, or if they even had the foresight to do it back in the 70s. Like, did anyone realize what they had? Because, you know, shaded cultivation is, I don't know, would you say that it's like more extreme than the difference between two areas within Shizuoka? Like maybe it's even a stronger fitness function to get rid of plants that would die or they didn't taste good but that could survive under shade for, I don't know, 30, 40 days.

Pau · 20:33

Hmm. Well, I think one is how you apply the technique. Like you of course everyone can shade, but like how do you read how the plant is reacting to the shading? Or like I don't know, last year was very dry and the plant is tired, or like we cut too much, or like I don't know, something happened. Okay, so next year we want to not shade to let the plant kind of recover a little bit more.

Pau · 20:57

Well you you can always shade, but you don't know how you are getting into the shading either. So I think sometimes we forget about field management. It's not like you have the plants and you shade them, harvest, take it out, come back next year. Well there is you have to feed them, you have to trim them, but if you trim too much because you lose focus in that section, next year there will not nothing be will be growing well there.

Pau · 21:23

So there is a lot that happens before you actually get to the shading part. On top of that, like the Uji region or what the Uji city area more closely, perhaps, had this advantage of like well, we were the only ones shading, so maybe the the know how of the how to make the shading, they have an advantage just just just because of that as well.

Pau · 21:47

They have they have the the the dam, for example. That regulates the temperature of the area a lot. There is like a slope, but this is a gentle slope. It's not like super crazy. So the roof will hold, it will not fall off if there is wind. It's a little bit maybe more on the sandy side. So it will kind of drain very well. So the plant has a nice environment to be in. It's like a milder environment that it might be in certain parts of Wazuka where it's like very steep, the the the the the wind just comes and it can have like much more frost events, for example. So all that will affect even even with shading. Shading is not always necessarily a a a good thing, I would say. So of course it it will react differently in in in different in different locations. On top of that

Pau · 22:36

I think it was well the the guy that discovered or well discovered isolated the plant that would become Yabukita, Sugiyama Hikosaburo.

Pau · 22:46

At his time there was not the concept of a cultivar. To make tea plants, you would just take seeds and plant seeds and you will grow them and some will survive and then you just replant what whatever dies and you just go on. And you kind of like let the environment do its thing and you just pick when they are ready. If you're doing hand picking, okay, this plant is not ready, let's go to the next one, and you just work like that, right?

Pau · 23:11

But he was the one that had the idea, actually, yeah, all are tea plants, but obviously they are not the same plant. This one is shorter, this one is taller. So that was the the crazy guy, yeah, they are all different, they are all different expressions of a tea plant, like people. Yeah. Then first well, he dies. He never got credit for his work really, but there was already a little bit of research into tea and how to improve production. And one of the small parts of that was what would become tea selection and tea breeding later on. So that's why people would go to India and bring seeds and was like, well, the plants in India are different. But of course the different parts of India will also be different between each other as well. Right. But well they're still figuring things out. Then on 1953, first registration of cultivars.

Pau · 24:03

But some of them are isol isolated on the twenties, some of them are isolated in the ten, some are isolated in the forty, so this is mismash. Okay. Then everyone starts to switch to cultivars. In particular, well, Yabukita was kind of like the biggest winner of those initial ten or thirteen, I don't remember exactly how many there were, right?

Pau · 24:25

But then there is other farmers that start doing this. They go to the zairai fields and they observe the situation of okay, this one looks pretty nice, this one looks pretty nice. So before the registration, there was already people that they were growing their own collection of isolated plants. So some of the ones from Kyoto might be the the more famous ones because even though some of them never got registered.

Pau · 24:51

They are called Koyama number sixty-nine, Koyama number ten, or other is other people. That those are the surnames of the farmers. Yeah. So Koyamaen, they had their plants and they donated them to the research center at some point. And some of them went into becoming Asahi and Gokou and things like this, right?

Pau · 25:13

Yeah, but not well not Gokou, but the the older strains, like Samidori, for example, Asahi as well. They come from farmers, they made their own isolation, maybe they did a little bit of study of them, but they were like, Okay, this this material, please, research center, take it. They just continue that research, they were like, actually, yeah, these plants are very good. But you are doing that selection of the wild population with the techniques of Uji.

Pau · 25:38

So of course you are gonna be primed to select what is interesting for the tea that you're making. Yeah. But you are doing the selection and the reshading potentially too, observing how it behaves. So maybe that's why certain cultivars isolated from from Kyoto, et cetera, they have more affinity to that. When maybe plants isolated from Shizuoka.

Pau · 26:02

They were not isolated in that context. They were isolated more into like, okay, well, we are starting to do a lot of fukamushi, deep steaming tea. They are isolated thinking on that. And now that we are not really doing as much development of new cultivars through wild populations, we are just looking at cultivars that we know they exist and forcing a cross on each other, that context is gone. And I think that's also one of the things that the research was trying to get into. Like we are not selecting any more from wild population. We are doing very selective targeting. Which is very simple.

Pau · 26:39

But can we identify genetic markers that will tell us, like, okay, this section here defines color, this section here defines size? Can we go back to wild populations of thousands of trees? We just take a sample of one leaf of each, take a snapshot of that code, and say, like, okay, these 50 plants.

Pau · 26:58

Have very strong relation to a beautiful aroma that is compound X and results in milky aroma, whatever. We are already priming the selection into forcing that to be passed on the offspring. So we could potentially shrink breeding time from twenty years to maybe ten years. Because right now we are just forcing flowers and pollen.

Pau · 27:21

And it's just genetic lottery. You just do 5,000 seeds, you don't know what you're gonna get, but you are looking at the mother and the and the flower and the pollen. And looking, okay, we know this one is resistant to this, we know that this one is not resistant to this. Can we force this trait from one to the other? And just crossing fingers that that happens. But if we can know okay, this plant has this gene that we like.

Pau · 27:46

And on top of that is how how do you say this in I don't know this is a specific scientific term. Is it's not recessive, it's like a strong gene that we know it will dominate.

Pau · 27:56

Dominant, yeah. Yeah, dominant. It's it's dominant. Then that is great. That's why having a healthy wild population from different prefectures can be useful.

Ryan · 28:06

As a farmer, can you like just rip up zairai right now if you owned a field? Could you just get rid of it? Or are there rules in place where you have to be preserved and then documented before you rip up that genetic population?

Pau · 28:21

To be honest, I don't know. I don't know. I don't think so. I would not think so. Also I think depending on where that zairai field is, the leftovers tend to be in difficult access areas, so it might already be abandoned.

Pau · 28:36

Because the the the fields that are in prime locations will have already been switched to cultivars.

Pau · 28:42

Whatever, Okumidori or Asahi or whatever. And if it's in an area that is more convenient to you as a farmer, of course you will also have move them into other other plants unless you have a particular affinity for that zairai field or or whatever. I don't know. Maybe in Uji, Wazuka, Yamashiro because we have this it's not a registration, but it's like the landscape kind of is like a little bit more protected. There was like the Uji, Uji region tea fields, landscape protection, something like that. Maybe you have to let them know that you are doing that, but I honestly I don't know. And I would doubt it. I would doubt it.

Zongjun · 29:24

Were there any discussions about local zairai genetic diversity or similarities? Cause you know, when you interbreed zairai in the local area, you're basically creating a cohort of plants that share similar genes. It's almost like a proto cultivar, can say. So how different are they? There more similarities when you do all these genetic crossover?

Zongjun · 29:51

Are you crazy?

Pau · 29:52

This was very interesting because it depends a little bit prefecture by prefecture and that might come from the original population that was developed there. And also like how that population was maybe propagated to start the tea industry in a different prefecture. So Kyoto, for example, from the research of the professor, Takashi Ika, that's the name of the professor from before. We can see that Kyoto is pretty much the same.

Pau · 30:24

Across the across the board is like where he had it in in blue color and there is a couple streaks of a different color but it's almost like I would say ninety ninety five percent is like of the same area. Of course the volume of samples will be a little bit different too. But then you go into Shiga, which is next to it, and eighty percent is blue, but there is like a little bit of yellow, a little bit of like another color here and there but like a few streaks here and there. Shiga is relatively long. It touches on the east with Gifu, it touches on the west with Kyoto. So maybe also that that is came from like a sandwich, a little bit like from each side. So you have you have that Saga and Fukuoka is completely different color. They are again two prefectures that touch each other, and that was the old.

Pau · 31:12

Landing zone for people coming from Korea and people coming from China. That might be one of the reasons as well. So Shizuoka is also like pretty much homogenous, but then there is this little area of samples which is completely different. It's much similar to Kyoto. So maybe it's the areas closer. I didn't they didn't specify location by location.

Pau · 31:36

But there is areas that share a big chunk of traits. There is areas that of course they don't share as much. I think that that was quite interesting. But generally like when you the the legends, right? It's like I don't know, like the general sayings is like all the teas from Shizuoka tend to be the the aroma is very very important but in Saitama it's more like about the the the firing and they have this kind of like aroma from the processing perhaps. So that also plays a factor. Maybe because in Kyoto we have this tendency to do light steaming, almost no firing for example.

Pau · 32:12

That also affects the plants that you will end up over time selecting as well. So yeah. Yeah. The the the regional the regional preferences or I don't know. If you grow a lot of tea there, but your main business off season is growing something else, maybe you don't put as much effort into selection. You just grow the tea for growing it. And naturally each village will have a much different variation like some parts of Shizuoka, they grow tea, but that's not necessarily their main input actually. So those are the ones with the most amount of variation. You look at Makinohara, which is tea is the its main thing, is much more homogeneous. So it's it's a fascinating topic, but again, it's like it was so much information and I think it it it it needs a little bit more

Pau · 33:03

Research behind it, proper research, I would say that maybe we we can get into a conversation in five years is like, actually you remember when we talked about these things? Yes. So but I I it's something that it it really makes my brain just like start running like okay where why does this region has this profile and that has the profile is like well this everything is blending together the the original material, epigenetic of what material has suffered through history and then the reference of the people working there, the influence of the market they are into, like it it keeps like going like this. I I think it's fascinating.

Ryan · 33:49

Yeah, that's fascinating. It really needs to be preserved. I emailed the Kyoto Tea Research Center to try to get some hard numbers on the decline of zairai. And they pointed me to some really great data. And I found, I think since it was 2003 or 2005, something like that, 80 per, there's an 80% decline of the zairai fields just in Kyoto Prefecture. If you look at the number of hectares

Pau · 34:14

That's that's a lot, but if it's such let's say recent data, two thousand three, you said?

Ryan · 34:19

Yeah, I think so. Yeah, or 2004.

Pau · 34:21

If it's from so recent, it's it's already maybe five percent of the land.

Pau · 34:26

Yeah, true. So even losing one single field, it already shifts the statistics quite a lot.

Pau · 34:33

So like that that that's another thing. Like we went from hundred percent zairai to maybe ten, twenty percent zairai, like what, like on the seventies probably, seventies, fifth seventies, eighties?

Pau · 34:46

And it's been shrinking more and more. So it now every every every field counts, literally. Every every single field will shift the statistic quite a bit. Like every actor will move it, especially in Kyoto where the the amount of land also is not that big if we compare to Shizuoka Kagoshima. So yeah, that's that's that's another thing too.

Pau · 35:07

But yeah, it would be interesting to look at those numbers and see if there is much more recent data because now with the matcha boom I've seen a couple that there is always a a baby field somewhere that it's been replanted or maybe someone took over an abandoned field and they just gave up on that and just replanted from zero because it was maybe easier. But it would be interesting also to see like is someone planting zairai. When you are replanting, are you replanting from zairai or you are you're replanting from Okumidori to Koshun, for example? Like what what what is the actual changes? Like that that would be very interesting because I've seen many new fields with roofs, which that's another another topic, for shading.

Pau · 35:51

But I've seen one, two, three.

Pau · 35:53

At least five baby fields in the little area of Wazuka where I go through every day.

Pau · 36:01

So there is definitely new new fields coming online. The abandoned ones, not so much recovery, unfortunately. But there is land

Ryan · 36:09

Available.

Pau · 36:10

If someone wants to put like two or three years of effort on recovering something.

Ryan · 36:14

Cool. We'll do it.

Pau · 36:16

We did at work, we recovered two years ago zairai field that got abandoned. In theory is ninety to a hundred years old, zairai field. It's it's zairai because every plant looks different. So that part is very easy to verify. The age well, I think that it there's there is definitely plants that are growing in the bronze pot where it's like seedlings from over time.

Pau · 36:37

Have been growing in in strange places. But my it's definitely zairai. We don't know if it's a hundred years old or not. But it's it's been very interesting to have something two meters tall and just pop it to ankle level and just coming back and it's like looking super nice. It's not very dense, obviously, but we're waiting. Okay, this summer is it the first harvest? Or is this autumn the first harvest? Or what what what what do we when do we are able to actually finish the job? Like it's been two years. Two years, two years and a half, I would say. So we are on the final stretch of like actually becoming productive on that field again. We have done some handpicking, but the plants cannot take a big cut right now. They are like not

Pau · 37:23

Not fully grown back yet, but yeah, it's a rare case, unfortunately.

Ryan · 37:28

What is that entail? I imagine there's a lot of weeding and a lot of pruning, but what are the other technical details of reviving an abandoned zairai plot like that?

Pau · 37:38

First, it's how abandoned it is. Like are we talking I don't know, they harvest the spring this year and they just gave up in summer. They gave up on autumn and you just rent it the same winter, the same year on winter. You're gonna be very lucky because maybe you just have I don't know, twenty to forty centimeters of growth.

Pau · 38:00

Then you just do a big haircut and mah. You know, maybe the next spring is not gonna be fully energetic, plant-wise, but like the plant will maybe struggle a little bit, but not so bad. But when we are talking plants that have grown to two two and a half meters, you have to dive into the field. Like you just bring the chopping machine or like whatever you have.

Pau · 38:23

And you if you you have seen the harvesting, the manual harvesting machines, right? Yeah. So it's a hedge trimmer for a garden. And it has the blower for the for the harvest. So the the trimming machine is that without the back attachment and the the the fan to blow the leaves.

Pau · 38:41

So that would be a a light trimming machine. It's kind of the same as a harvesting machine. The the blades are pretty much the same, I would say. Sometimes you get the harvest machine is to cut one one way from left to right, and the trimming machine needs to be from right to left to not condition the plant to grow diagonally.

Pau · 38:59

When you have an abandoned field, you need a stronger engine, of course, because you have to cut instead of small branches, you have to cut I don't know, one centimeter, two centimeter thick wood.

Pau · 39:12

So the blades are much shorter, they are much much heavier, the machine is much, much louder, unfortunately. And you just drag it across the field.

Pau · 39:23

Which means that for a two meter tall, maybe you want to chop the let's say from one meter sixty up. And you just drag it across, and that would be the thinner branches, hopefully. But that means that if you are 170, you are cutting at that eye level, so you have to hold the machine up with your duck under the tea bushes because you have to walk through the underside of the of the plants and all the branches that you are cutting they are falling on top of you. So diving it's like literally just just diving through the through the jungle and you just cut. You might have someone behind you kind of trying to pull them back to the to the floor, which will create like a very thick carpet which makes the terrain very uneven.

Pau · 40:06

So it's good for mulching and stuff, but it it can create more trouble for you to walk on the field later.

Pau · 40:13

And then you have a neck level bush. So you still have to go down to another meter or so. So you just take the machine again a few weeks later or a month later or whenever you can really. This is usually a winter work and you just drag it across again.

Pau · 40:30

But this time it's gonna be proper thick branches, like some some thickness at least. So you're just dragging that and you are walking on top of the branches that you have cut the previous time. So you're not on the floor, you are working through the old branches, which maybe is ten centimeters higher, which means that now you have to drag at the bottom of the field. So like you are just crunching down and just dragging it across the the floor. And then you break your instead of breaking your neck, you're breaking your back. So it's like it's it's very heavy. It's very heavy work. That's I think one of the reasons why it's just easier to just rent a a bulldozer and just like rip through the field and just platform zero and it's like

Pau · 41:11

It's gonna take you whatever, three years either way. So why why not just put a heavy machinery there? Of course, some areas you you cannot. We we could not and we didn't want to because we wanted to preserve the zairai. But if you are in a flat area or semi flat area, you don't you know that that is Yabukita and you want to plant something else, I don't know, Okumidori, for example. Just rent a machine, you just yeah, they sell they you can run this like it's not a bulldozer but it's like these machines you can rent to fit branches onto to just shred the branches into good chips. Yeah.

Ryan · 41:48

Generator, wood chopper.

Pau · 41:50

There is one of those that you can have on wheels and you just literally chop the plants in half and you just pass that machine on top and it will just get rid of it. Then you just bulldoze, mix the soil and prepare for replanting. Maybe much more expensive, but maybe a little bit more straightforward as well.

Ryan · 42:08

Well if you think of the average age of a tea farmer in Japan, it's no wonder people aren't doing this the manual way to save the zairai.

Zongjun · 42:17

It's a hard decision to make because after going through all this hard work, you're just going to get zairai. It's not going to be sold for particularly higher price.

Pau · 42:27

Well, yeah, exactly. Because the the the market has shifted. Yeah. And also like you are just not making money for three years from that field. Like you're just putting money, you're losing money on that field. Like of course you you just like let it grow back naturally, like it's just time and maybe you're renting that field for close to nothing, probably.

Pau · 42:48

But if you have to rent the bulldozer machine or you do it by hand, it's hours of people, is is petrol, is potentially breaking the trimming machine because you hit a branch and the the blade just gives up and you have to buy a new blade.

Pau · 43:03

And then wait three years, then make tea, then the market of for green tea, the price is going down. And it's just like why why why are we doing this? Yeah. You need you need more fields to kind of support the operation with other things. But then it's up to that zairai expression and the skill in the processing just to make a a good a good product. Good sencha or kabuse even. We do some kabuse made with zairai.

Pau · 43:29

Maybe I'm just prime for it, but I I really I really I really enjoy I I really enjoy them. So

Ryan · 43:35

I love zairai so much. When we were in Bangkok, there was a producer, I don't know where this was coming from, it was the first time I ever heard of it, that was working with the producer in Kyotanabe that had a hundred year old zairai that they were doing tana shading for it.

Ryan · 43:50

And it's just like this crazy weird combination of variables. And they would prepare you a half an usucha. And I think it was, how much was it? It's like $12. It was expensive, but it was still like, when am I ever gonna taste this again? So every day I would go get myself a cup and trying to taste It was really good

Pau · 44:09

Yeah. I think also like for like long long shading zairai is very interesting because it it has much not just the much stronger root system for the plant, but the the root system is complete. It's not missing anything. Or it shouldn't shouldn't be missing anything. So it's probably hopefully much much deeper, hopefully much more robust. So the plant has much more to fight the stress of the of the shading as well. So of course, flavor wise, that doesn't mean that it's gonna be better or worse. But it has other skills, I I would say. Like we have some zairai from tencha zairai that we ground into matcha. I I really I really like it. It's maybe not the most gentle thing to drink, but it's not bitter either. It's like a kale. Dark dark green, a little bit bitter, astringent, but as a as a whole it has like a much more interesting things to offer than just umami or just sweetness.

Ryan · 45:11

Yeah, it's much more.

Pau · 45:13

There is there is profiles for for for ever app for everything. So

Zongjun · 45:17

And more mineral. For our audience reference, that particular 100 year old zairai matcha is from this farm called Dejima.

Ryan · 45:29

Hello, Ryan from the Future here. We had a weird audio issue. Here Sam is referring to the Tenmyo cultivar, which the same producer that has the 100-year-old zairai makes. Back to the episode.

Pau · 45:42

It's but there is so few people that grow it. It's like I love it, but it's always the same three guys that have it, you know? It's like Yeah. But it's it's high I highly I highly recommend it. It's is is a beautiful, beautiful culture.

Ryan · 45:56

Is it really hard to grow?

Pau · 45:58

I don't know, to be honest. For what I the little I know of that cultivar because it's it's one of those Kyoto cultivars that never got registered, blah blah blah blah, and there's almost no information out there. The farmer from Ujitawara I've talked the most about it, because it's the closest one to where I live. He was like, Well, ma ma in Japanese. Like it's not not super easy, not super difficult. But you have nothing to grapple on. There is not a lot of people producing it, so you have to figure things on your own. In the farming side, like, okay, what this plant likes better or doesn't like, or what is it weak against? There is a little bit of basic information. But essentially you are on your own. And because of that, there is people that don't grow it because again, you are on your own. So it's kind of like this vicious cycle that unless there is a critical mass of people.

Pau · 46:49

Growing it and maybe sharing the information, it's it's very difficult for a cultivar to get popular. On top of that, it's not registered. It's specifically maybe for tencha and gyokuro probably it's more like a shaded cultivar. So it's kind of like a very niche application, I would say. I see. But it offers high high risk, high reward kind of thing maybe. So it's it's interesting.

Ryan · 47:10

Indeed, very delicious. I know the last time we talked, I think Obubu hadn't had the stone mills. But now that you guys are actively stone milling, we'd love to learn more about your experience, particularly around variability. We hear that certain stones have certain personalities or that certain tencha mills better than others. We'd love to learn more about your experience.

Ryan · 47:34

Milling on ishi-usu.

Pau · 47:35

Yeah, so I well I I think it's been a learning experience in a very diplomatic way. Yeah, defin definitely especially at the beginning when you build the room, the room is empty, it's like, my god, there's so much space, and then you just put the the machine on it and it's like, yeah, we don't have that much space actually. And you have the the issues of running and it's it's like having maybe I I don't have kids, but maybe it's like having a baby, you know, you're like the stone is making this noise. Is everything okay? You're calling the technician. The technician is like, just leave me alone, stop calling me. Unless something is on fire, like it's gonna be okay. Like just take just check these things and how to how to lift the stone because sometimes you just have to lift to clean if you do another cultivar or like whatever. Very heavy. It's very heavy.

Pau · 48:20

You need to make sure they're not spinning too fast, but also not too slow. Are they running dry, dry? Like the tencha gets stuck, so like how to check all these little things. And then they have like a a plate, like a a cross metal plate at the at the back where you put the stone. But the stone might have a slight variation on on the base. So maybe it's like one millimeter off.

Pau · 48:45

From one side or the metal is one millimeter off, so the the stones will be like sliding diagonal. So you need to check like, okay, is it fully perpendicular to the other stone, but also to the frame of the machine? Like, you know, is it exactly like okay, is it making this sound because it's running dry or because it's touching in some point? Like is it a very rhythmic sound, or is it like it's just all the time the same sound?

Pau · 49:10

Especially at the beginning is like, okay, what is going on? Is it stone two? But I hear the sound from the stone next to it, so just we don't know anymore what stone has a problem. Different cultivars also just grind very differently. Like we grow conventional teas, but also we grow teas with no inputs. So the leaf is all all tencha is dry, right? Like it's it's a very dry material, but the stickiness of that dryness is also very different between, I don't know, Samidori, natural Okumidori. It's a two completely different running processes. So you will see that the stone is producing more or less depending on the cultivar. Same time, the room is climate control in terms of temperature and humidity. So it's it's very

Pau · 49:56

Difficult sometimes to say okay, well, Samidori or our Samidori tends to run more sticky. So we know it produces a little bit less. And at the beginning you need to purge the stone a little bit more. So it kind of gets running and it might get blocked. And then you have to lift the stone to purge it again. Where the natural Okumidori, because it's less is is more dry, it will just go through the machine in a slightly more cleanly, it will just not get stuck as much. So learning those things is is one thing. But also the the the the axle of the of the stone is is not stone, is it's not metal either. It's like a piece of wood. So just by the natural friction it will it will shrink in diameter. So at some point also the the the stone will produce more

Pau · 50:43

Matcha or less matcha because it's shaking sight.

Pau · 50:47

Exactly. It's it's more like it's not rotating, it's kind of like almost oscillating around. Yeah. Like or orbiting around in a very strange way. It's like okay, is it is it just time to change the the center pole or combination of of problems? It's it's been very very interesting, but it's been it's been been quite quite fun. Just you just go into the morning to the ma I I'm usually the the first person at the farm to to go to work. I have like an earlier shift. And I always just park my car, get into the get dressed, get into the room and just like okay, has something exploded during the night or not?

Pau · 51:23

Everything is okay. Sometimes you will see a stone that it seems that it's been running a little bit dry or something, let's check it up. The stone is hot or less hot or the electricity went down during the night because the stones are cold, so we didn't do much at tonight. Stuff like that happens too sometimes. Just learning that is being very nice and just walking to the room is like, we have changed the cultivar yesterday because the room smells different.

Pau · 51:48

Monday or Tuesday we change to Gokou, was it?

Pau · 51:53

And I entered, I was like, whoa, this this smells amazing. Why it smells like so good in here? And I just look up where we have the information. We're we're grinding something different today. And just take two grams as a sample of okay, we're gonna do quality control this morning. Just try it fresh from the from the night. You can also like learn a lot, like what cultivars tend to do better fresh, what cultivars need a week or two to calm down a little bit like the zairai is is one of them is like it can be very punchy cincha. It it has this very aggressive, sharp, grassy note. Just pack it in a can, let it be for a few days, and it just calms down a little bit. And it can be more enjoyable. Of course there's gonna be degradation versus oxidation versus aging.

Pau · 52:40

What of those words you will use. But it's interesting to check day one, day three, day five, seven. Okay, this one tastes much better, fresh. This one performs a little bit better a few days later, or or it holds very well across. It's just it's a different expression too.

Pau · 52:59

So it's interesting it's a it's another skill to to to have and be so clean.

Pau · 53:05

Matcha sticks everywhere.

Pau · 53:08

Green everywhere, it just sticks everywhere. Yeah, it's packing, packing is horrible. Packing matcha is it's like it's a nightmare. At the beginning we were like just like you have to take the samples and put them in bags or not not even to sell, but just for you to have reference samples, it's just like it's always like yeah.

Pau · 53:32

The bag is dirty, okay. We have to clean. But then the zip lock is dirty or the inner seal is dirty and then it doesn't seal well. It's is is very complex powder to pack. Like you see machinery packing flour. And I well I go to the supermarket and just look at the flour section to break and I'm like, How are the bags so clean? The seals are clean.

Pau · 53:53

There is there is nothing and then you just look at the at the matcha, it's like it's green everywhere. It's like it's just so dirty. It's like how d how do they do it? What what what magical machine do they have to to pack this this powder? I I don't understand.

Ryan · 54:06

What tea tastes best right off the mill? On day zero. What cultivars taste best fresh ground right off the mill? You mentioned zairai is good after a little rest.

Pau · 54:19

Yeah. Okay, well, so here we have to be careful because it's in our farm with our cultivars, sure again, so it's like it's like like that. Also, I think I'm a person that does not necessarily like well, I I cannot drink milk, for example, so I always drink it as usucha and I'm not particularly enjoy the grassiness, even in sencha.

Pau · 54:42

The very sharp grassiness. So I'm trying more to some of I don't mind bite bitterness, but I cannot I cannot handle vegetableness. In a way, sharp vegetableness. So to me, from the cultivars we grow and we grow a few. I think grinding wise we do five or six right now. Okumidori is stable. Samidori is also stable but tends to be a little bit more sharp the first day or two, but it's also like you can feel the sharpness and a lot of umaminess coming at the same time. So sometimes it's it's it's it's a great combo to to have. Then it it develops a little bit more milkiness and creaminess if you try it a few days later.

Pau · 55:30

I think the teas with less input, like our natural one or the zairai, they tend to do better afterwards, I think. And I my guess is that because maybe they are a little more naturally feature and astringency equilibrium is a little bit different. They those are you will lose a little bit of the sweetness, maybe an umami and like whatever, but you will also be losing other things, and that might be a good thing.

Pau · 55:55

For the ones we we do. But we are not able to have five stones with five different cultivars. So it's not like you can day you can try day one for all of them at the same time.

Pau · 56:08

We did that mistake at the beginning where we would have one stone for for everything. And that was not a good way to operate. So we quickly changed. So that would be a very nice thing to be able to do. Like, you know, you have three stones where you can do day zero, day one, day two, day three from the same lot. That would be very nice. You just have to take note, but I don't know.

Ryan · 56:33

How about milling output? You find certain cultivars get milled significantly faster than others?

Pau · 56:40

Like what I was talking about the stickiness. That's one of the things you will produce maybe a little bit less, perhaps, with the same electrical input to the engine, which will translate into certain RPMs, right? So my if you keep that the same, you might get a little bit less.

Pau · 56:59

Just because it's it's getting more sticky and it's taking a little bit of extra time to go out of the stone, which means that the feeding is slightly slower. But then you just take a look at the machine at the grinder next to it, and that one has the center pole, maybe it's slightly more run down and it will go slightly faster. So you might have a kilo and a half in stone one and three and four, and two kilos on stone two.

Pau · 57:25

For because

Ryan · 57:26

No, too many variables.

Pau · 57:28

Yeah, or that or is what the Ryan was saying at the beginning, right? Each stone is a little bit different. So that stone is just a little bit faster because reasons. Reasons, we all know. Maybe it has a tiny bit gap more in one section, and that just gets you half a gram more per X amount of minutes.

Pau · 57:49

So it it will accumulate over over or eighteen hours or whatever it takes you to collect that matcha. So it's very, very difficult. Yeah, it's like when I was talking to you guys over over the over this past couple of years and then just running the stone was like, yeah, I no wonder they are going crazy with the their

Ryan · 58:11

Machine.

Pau · 58:12

Because it's like a whole set of other different things that they have to to take into consideration and you just have a stone, you literally have a stone going around. And that's just like so many differences. And it's just going around.

Pau · 58:26

There's no pressure, there is no temperature control. There is like no nothing. So yeah, yeah. It's it's it's crazy.

Ryan · 58:33

Very primitive technology in many ways. Beautifully primitive. I don't know. There's a real romance to it, actually, that it still can be done that way. Yeah. And still produce the state of the art quality. So very cool. I don't know what to make of it. Replicating that on the countertop was very difficult. And in some ways, we didn't even really want to try it.

Ryan · 58:57

Add in more variables, which makes it more complicated, but a lot more options too. And we are running into all these issues about all these noise and misalignment that you were just talking about. Sounds a little bit too familiar. It was very validating that you used sticky, the word sticky, because that keeps coming up with noises, is that some tencha just gets gummed up.

Ryan · 59:20

Gets super sticky and then start making this terrible noise. It's very validating.

Pau · 59:26

Yeah, it's like because we were like, okay, is is it actually sticky? It's like can we use sticky as a word for this? Because if you just my tencha is like what two, three, four percent humidity in the leaf, right? But of course we're talking just about moisture, but that doesn't mean that because there is lack of moisture, it cannot be sticky. And that that was something I was I did not have in my head.

Pau · 59:50

Until a day where I I just honestly not not very not very good but I I was just like evaluating a sample of tencha and I just punched it in my hands and I was just talking to someone and then maybe thirty seconds later I just removed the tencha of my hand and I could feel my skin so dry because the the tencha had absorbed the moisture from my skin. So it's is that dry. Is it's so dry it will suck the humidity from your skin, which is a crazy thing to say. And and then I was like, okay. So okay, this happened. Will it happen with a tea that I know that is much more high in amino acid content. And it happened. I could feel my skin being dry, but at the same time it it the the the tencha leaves were stacked to my skin.

Pau · 1:00:37

And in the other one they will just fall off. So that that was when I say like, okay, so one thing is humidity and the other one is stickiness. It's two different things.

Pau · 1:00:44

So that was quite I I don't know if of course if in those words in English or like the concept in words and the real physics or concept might be a little bit different. But it was it was very, very interesting. Okay, can we talk about stickiness and then how it it it just doesn't travel well through the stone? I I think I think it it I think it's true.

Pau · 1:01:07

But yeah.

Ryan · 1:01:09

We converged on the exact same word, naturally.

Ryan · 1:01:14

Actually, and was when we were milling, someone gifted us a very small sample of Asahi that up some humidity over the year that we kept it. And I think it was so humid. And that was like by far the most sticky sample we ever milled. It didn't mill. It got like, I don't know.

Ryan · 1:01:33

It forms a scorch of like mark on the outer rim of the plate that it just prevents any powder from leaving the grind and then it like grinds against itself and like it almost has a smoky smell like it's generating tons of heat at that little point.

Pau · 1:01:51

No. Well this is gunking up, right? It's like rubberizing itself in inside of the stone. Yeah.

Ryan · 1:01:58

Yep. That's very good.

Pau · 1:01:59

Very good.

Pau · 1:01:59

It's almost like therapy for people working with the grinders. It's very interesting.

Ryan · 1:02:05

So we had Maren on the podcast recently and we asked her some questions and she actually recommended that we reach out to you. And one of the questions, a bit more of a controversial topic, but was curious to get the feel on the ground of this Uji debate identity. Because you have this, you know, Uji can be considered a the Yamashiro region or trademark definition, super expansive across four prefectures. But there seems to be an unusual debate in particular between some Wazuka farmers who want to identify themselves as Uji and some who say, no, actually Uji is a different place. This is Wazuka. We want to lean into our own identity. And curious what you've heard on the ground from different farmers. She mentioned that you might have some better insight.

Ryan · 1:02:53

Given your language skills.

Pau · 1:02:54

Well I I I think it is true there is the the the two ways of seeing it, right? Like so Uji is not a region, it's a city, right? And it's I don't know, it's like a it's a location. The the r the region technically speaking would be Yamashiro.

Pau · 1:03:12

So Yamashiro is North Uji.

Pau · 1:03:14

All the way down until you reach Nara. So Joyo, Ujitawara, Uji, the Shirakawa part, Kyotanabe I guess as well, Wazuka, Minamiyamashiro Mura, and everything in between is Yamashiro. So that that that I think to me that's the end of the debate. It it shouldn't be called Ujicha, it should be maybe called Yamashirocha, but it doesn't have the same ring to it, perhaps. I don't know. So historically that's the name of the the region, which later was fused into what is now Kyoto Prefecture, with the northern part of Kyoto Prefecture, which also very forgotten about, but there is some tea up there as well.

Pau · 1:03:52

So then there is the the regulation of the UGT, right? Uji tea, the brand UGT is whatever, the tea produced in Uji with Uji well Uji method from Kyoto Prefecture. So north to south, it doesn't matter if it's a Yamashiro area or Kyotango area or like whatever, plus the other next attachment.

Pau · 1:04:15

Prefectures, right? So that's that's the other part. It's like the the brand identity, the region identity, and then there is the the farmers that have been grown in Wazuka for a very long time. Okay Wazuka is this village, is our village. So why should we say we are from a different because if it was the region of Uji, I could understand okay, we belong to the region of Uji, but Uji is not a region. So there is all this different vocabulary to express the same thing. Like I am from maybe the the the the side of the team that thinks like okay, Wazuka is Wazuka. Wazuka, especially being big as it is.

Pau · 1:04:54

I think can have its own identity and its own history, but the same way that Ujitawara being much smaller also has its own identity. They make excellent gyokuro. So they don't say they are from Uji region, it's like no we Ujitawara.

Pau · 1:05:11

So ma you can see it both ways at the same time because Wazuka is so big or at or not not necessarily big and it's big in terms of production volume, it's like about half of Kyoto tea comes from Wazuka.

Pau · 1:05:26

There is an incentive to sell under a strong name like Uji brand. So there is these two things.

Pau · 1:05:35

Contradicting each other. On one on one side is like, yeah, we are from Wazuka, we are very proud to have the valley that we have and the places we have inside of Wazuka. And there is a huge variation between the west side, the east side, the the the north valley, the south valley, right? But at the same time, like maybe how you can sell most of your or move most of your product is selling it under the umbrella of the Uji brand. At the same time, people that are working a lot with the Uji brand, especially lately because of the the matcha shortage and stuff and all the things with like material coming from other countries and being blended and said like, yeah, this is Uji matcha or like Japanese tea or whatever, but there is a foreign component in there, be it from China or like whatever, it doesn't matter, it's not from Japan.

Pau · 1:06:23

It's like do we want to be part of this brand now that we know that there is all these other other things going on? So super complex. It's like very like divisive, like no one is getting mad about it, I would say, but there is conversations going on about the topic. And sometimes it's like, yeah, well, the Uji brand is going is is going to is it's going down because of this. We should have Wazuka-cha brand, whatever, which I have seen banners in the village sometimes when they do promotion of our tea in the village.

Pau · 1:06:58

I I don't know why you would do promotion inside of Wazuka for our own tea, but you can see those banners. So there is there is something that we can say Wazuka-cha or Wazuka tea or Wazuka-cha brand or whatever is just not out there. It's not strong enough. There is no one knows what Wazuka is. Not even Japanese people know what Wazuka is.

Pau · 1:07:19

To understand Ujitawara, which is just right next to Uji City.

Pau · 1:07:23

Okay, where where do you work? I work in Wazuka. Wazuka, where what is that? In Kyoto, in Kyoto, Wazuka? Like what? Yeah, you know where Uji is? Yeah, okay, it's Kyoto, south of Uji, south of Uji, Ujitawara. If you go one level down, it's Wazuka. And then it's almost Nara. And they were like, Okay, well, they can locate it. Then you tell them okay, Kizu or or Kamo, which is a bigger city next to us.

Pau · 1:07:50

Okay, yeah, I can see where between Kyoto and Nara you are, but they just don't know that is some somewhere. Somewhere in in between there, right?

Pau · 1:08:00

So even if there is a strong push to spin off the Wazuka brand, it's gonna take like a lot of time and effort and promotion in or out of the country.

Pau · 1:08:12

Although I don't know if I'm a very big farm, I want to sell fifty percent of my tea through Wazuka brand and fifty percent of my tea through the Uji brand. What what what are you? Like are you in Uji? Are you in Wazuka? Are you the Uji farmer, Uji brand farmer, or it it just gets like very watered down. Sorry, I cut you, Sam. Sorry.

Zongjun · 1:08:33

Yeah, no, no, I was just trying to echo with your comment earlier. Is that even from our personal experience going in and out of Wazuka in the past few years, we've been seeing like the brand Wazuka being more more emphasized, feel or much more, you know, brand emphasis on Wazuka tea, Wazuka-cha.

Zongjun · 1:08:56

In the city, in the area of Wazuka and also know overseas. We saw the big Wazuka tea booth in Thailand this time. Yeah. That's Wazuka tea.

Zongjun · 1:09:09

Gotcha. So I feel like you know it's heading in that direction more and more.

Pau · 1:09:17

That is great. D do you know who was running it? It was from our I I didn't know about this.

Ryan · 1:09:22

I don't know. They had some very interesting packaging. Don't know if in Taiwan some of the Dongding Oolong has this sort of paint can. It looks like a paint can. But they used what looks like identical packaging. They had these paint can style cans. Let me see if can pull it up.

Pau · 1:09:41

Okay, that is excellent news, I would say.

Ryan · 1:09:47

There we go.

Pau · 1:09:50

What does it say? Mountain, mountain peak matcha?

Ryan · 1:09:53

Mountain peak they wrote the peak number peak MC and

Pau · 1:09:57

C four six, I've never heard of that, but I'm Interesting.

Ryan · 1:10:03

But they have a big booth and there are banners at the last one.

Pau · 1:10:07

Okay. No, but that that's the where I was I I was gonna get like with all the things that I've said and the different approaches and I don't know social dynamics we have, still Wazuka is probably the best position inside of Kyoto Prefecture to kind of spin off something just because of of size. I want to say also well, yeah, exactly. We have the some of the the scenery from Uji, a lot of those locations are in in in Wazuka. We are not maybe as specialized in one product as maybe Ujitawara, for example. They have kind of like a little bit more reputation for their gyokuro. Uji maybe more a little bit more for the gyokuro, but probably the the the tencha, right? Wazuka in the old times was famous for the sencha.

Pau · 1:10:53

But now we do a lot of kabuse with a lot of tencha. There is a couple of farms that almost only do black tea and a little bit of green tea as well. So there is definitely more diversity than in other villages or cities in Kyoto Prefecture. Maybe that's a good thing as in like a brand, you want to have different things.

Pau · 1:11:15

It also maybe waters it down a little bit of like we have we don't have a specialty, we just do a lot of different things. So I don't know how that would go. But there is de definitely the people from Wazuka like have like a lot of like okay, we there's a lot of identity, but they are kind of like sandwiched between some industry things. So maybe this is what is gonna start like pushing us to say okay can we but this booth for example we didn't I didn't know about if they are doing this that means that there is a certain movement of of energy and resources towards yeah towards doing that in in a little bit more on the future because I've never seen it outside of even Kyoto. Like tea farmers from other regions know maybe of Wazuka, but everyone else

Pau · 1:12:01

Don't know and I've never seen or Wazuka Cha as a as a thing, as a recognized thing in any place. Especially not ab abroad, I would say. You guys it's very I don't know complex. But it's it's very fascinating topic, especially like working and living there and seeing this like over the years, like all this this guy stopped doing this and start selling here instead of going through the normal route, okay, it's going a little bit independent, or this one stopped selling as UGT, they changed the packaging and now it just says produced in Wazuka. You start to see little movements here and there. And it's like, well, at some point, this has to jellyfy into something. That is gonna be super fun to to to see.

Ryan · 1:12:47

Well, it's literally history in the making. We're witnessing probably the biggest change of matcha and matcha culture in Japan and also in the world, like right now. Culture, really? Every year. It's a little bit different, for sure. Speaking of black tea farmers in Wazuka, how do they feel now that according to the new Japanese GI, geographical indication, they're no longer making Japanese tea. You can specify that it has to basically be green tea. They don't explicitly say that, but when you read the actual thing, you realize, wait, this is only describing green tea.

Pau · 1:13:23

No. I don't think it's a problem.

Pau · 1:13:25

Be honest. There is at least in Wazuka that I know of, and I might have I I might be missing, I don't know, that farmer that only 100%, 110% produces black tea. The GI kind of came not out nowhere, but kind of out of nowhere. People just talked about it for a few days and then it just has like poof. Just no one is talking about it.

Pau · 1:13:47

Most likely because it came in between seasons, but not in between winter and spring. It came kind of like in the middle of summer almost. So we were just busy doing other things. So maybe from spring, depending on if there is a push for promotion for the Japanese tea GI or GI Japanese tea or something like that. Maybe there is gonna be more developments, but for now I've not seen much being done. If all green tea in Japan gets the GI protection, there is no real need to actually advertise it either. It's kind of like Japanese sake, there is a GI for Nihonshu. GI Nihonshu have you heard of it? No, because it's literally every single sake from Japan.

Pau · 1:14:32

That is made with Japanese ingredients and brewed in Japan. So there is actually no need to label it as such. Does that make sense?

Pau · 1:14:41

So it's so wide ranging that there might not be a need to make a separate label, a separate line of product that is GI Japan, because then it it gives the sense that all your other teas are not GI Japan.

Pau · 1:14:55

If if if we have five senchas and we have one that is GI Japan with the sticker, all five are G.I. Japan, but only one has the sticker. So it's like, okay, so what about the other four? A more I don't know, a a consumer that is maybe a little bit more like picking the the the details, like okay, so if this one is G.I. Japan, what are you doing with the other four?

Pau · 1:15:18

No, they come from the same place. So, okay, but you don't have the sticker or like whatever. So, it can backfire quite badly. So, I personally I don't think there is gonna be a lot of consumer forward type of that type of packaging. Maybe someone will do because there is always someone. But I think it's a thing

Zongjun · 1:15:38

I saw in the news that Ito En are redoing their classic PETs with the GI sticker.

Pau · 1:15:45

Yeah it it it someone will someone will do it because we can but I think most of this GI registration was just done for the technicalities of being able to protect the product better or not necessarily bet better but at least have more tools. But if we start picking fights of or you are GI Japan, you are not GI Japan. Of course, for actors that are big actors that are using Chinese tencha or Korean tencha, I not that there's nothing wrong with it. It can be an excellent material to use. But you have to say, okay, this material is blended with X. So it's it's a way to just purge that out or force them into trying to source inside of Japan a little bit more.

Pau · 1:16:31

But for s for small farms that produce, I don't know, a ton or five tons per year.

Pau · 1:16:38

There is no need or it could be maybe even detrimental to to use that type of speech, I would say. Because then all your teas will have to have it in the same direction. Otherwise it might create confusion.

Ryan · 1:16:53

Yeah that makes sense.

Pau · 1:16:55

Selling your leaf to wholesalers, yeah. If you're selling leaf to wholesalers, then my y you as a farmer you don't care. It's it's a problem of the Ito En pet bottle to make sure that hundred percent of their leaf comes from from Japan. If Ito En is only selling inside of Japan that product.

Pau · 1:17:13

Okay. I I don't know. The GI kind of makes more sense if you are bringing a lot of volume to the EU because not even the US will recognize the GI.

Pau · 1:17:23

So I I don't know. I think it opens the door to local GIs and that's where maybe the wakocha can be a little bit like more of a thing later on. I don't think necessarily would be for wakocha at the beginning, but maybe you want to protect Kaga bocha from Ishikawa, for example. It's like a very particular type of hojicha.

Pau · 1:17:45

You want to protect not that product but maybe the product production method of that product. That it makes sense. So in sake for example, the first GI was for a very small subset of breweries in in one place. It was like, okay, only breweries that are connected or they are using the water from this river, for example. It gets that specific.

Pau · 1:18:06

Maybe like it's five breweries. I'm I don't remember exactly the details because I had to study this for an exam a long time ago and I forgot it. But it was like very narrow definition, which for the West that's the definition of a GI is location, it's process. Yep.

Pau · 1:18:21

And this product. But in Japan it's more about the link, the quality linked of that product. And in this case it's the method of cultivation in Japan or the method of of production in Japan. So we have the GI for gyokuro in Yame, for example, right? Yeah. There is the Yame gyokuro and then there is a subset inside of it, which is the Hon Gyokuro. It's for gyokuro made only if rice straw like the Yoshizu method. So it's a subset of a subset. So having a very well defined one and a nationwide one that gives you the context for everything in between. So okay if we have the yame rice straw made gyokuro with the traditional method and all Japan, you can go to Chicago and say okay this specific hojicha has a very interesting production method. They don't grow the tea there, but they take this material here and they have a specific process that they follow to achieve this product that is recognized nationwide because blah blah. And it's called Kaga bocha. Kaga from the old name of the prefecture, and bocha as in tencha hojicha.

Pau · 1:19:27

That would be one one.

Pau · 1:19:28

Way to justify a GI in my opinion. They are not making they are not growing the tea there necessarily, but you are protecting the process of making that product.

Pau · 1:19:38

You go to Kamikatsu Village and Naka village a little bit south and say okay. So these people here they have other economic means, which is usually citrus fruits, in the off season. Spring is not the main focus for qi. They do maybe a little bit of sencha, but it's not the main thing. But in summer we have very big, hardy leaf that you pick, you have to boil it.

Pau · 1:20:00

You do twisting, you put it into a barrel, you compress it, you pickled it with the water from that you have boiled the tea in. You do anaerobic fermentation for two to four weeks in a bucket. Could be a plastic bucket, it could be a wooden bucket. Then you sun dry it, you dry it above hundred degrees Celsius later just for whatever shelf stable regulation or whatever. And that is the Awa bancha method. It's from this village, it's this process.

Pau · 1:20:26

You have location, process, and the process informs the quality of the product.

Pau · 1:20:32

Have another justification for a tea in Japan. So that would be, I don't know, kamikatsu Awa bancha. It's probably not gonna be Kamikatsu Awa bancha because the people from Naka village is they're gonna get very angry. But you know, like you have you can start like going places and make these kinds of justifications and studies. But that without having maybe a a nationwide one might be a little bit more tricky. Yeah. Torty at least. For sake driss cases, sometimes it's prefecture wise, GI Niigata, as long as it's brewed in Niigata pretty much and the rice is of a certain quality. It doesn't need to be grown in Niigata, but it needs to be processed and it needs to be bottled in Niigata because the quality of the product is linked to the techniques of the people working in Niigata, not necessarily to the land. So why would you

Pau · 1:21:24

Do you say this in English? Private yourself of a very good product from the region next to it when you are just the processing step. Yeah. So

Zongjun · 1:21:33

The more we talk about this, the more I think that this whole Nihoncha GI is a little bit ridiculous because, know, like as Pau said, like all of these can be linked back to a very granular pain point, right? Like that's what makes up the definition of the GI. With this whole Nihoncha GI, like Ito En can get this label on their PET bottle. What about all the suppliers to Ito En?

Zongjun · 1:21:58

Do they need to be GI too? I feel like there's a lot of loophole that you can just sneak in a lot of foreign products in between. It's just that end of label carrier can verify that I'm sourcing all this material within Japan and then I get this label. But what about all the suppliers? I feel like there are a lot of rooms of laundering.

Pau · 1:22:18

Yeah, well that that's for just just if you boil it down is a traceability problem.

Pau · 1:22:24

So actually it's easier for the suppliers of Ito En to get the GI one because they are much smaller in size and they are just providing the leaf to them. So GI is kind of like the final product, it's not you as a supplier. That's how I understand it.

Pau · 1:22:40

So for me as a farmer, it's very easy to get the GI because I know I only have one field. So and my field is in Wazuka in here, this is the address. Please check. Yeah, there is a field there. Yeah, okay. I move the leaf into my factory and in goes leaf, out goes tea. That's it. The moment you start to move to the auction, the auction here, or you have a direct contract, that's when the traceability needs to be enforced.

Pau · 1:23:03

Yeah. That's that's what the problem is. Like in the old days, most well not most, but part of the Shizuoka auction tea is was Kagoshima tea. Was that the problem? No, no, it was not.

Pau · 1:23:18

Because the the the there was an incentive to make the tea and Kagoshima didn't had a strong brand, didn't have a tea identity.

Pau · 1:23:27

Maybe the tea farmers were a little bit more impor impoverished and they didn't have as much choices to stand for themselves. So now if you're a big player, getting the the GI I don't think necessarily gives you any new weapon or tool. It just gives you more traceability problems that maybe you want to do because you also have a product that it might not be GI Nihoncha. Yeah. I think that's also why they only did green tea because if you are doing okay white Japanese tea, black Japanese tea, oolong Japanese tea is is just then it just doesn't make any any any sense. Black tea is whatever three percent of the market white tea that is maybe fifty farmers only doing it and it's like a kilo per year each or some ridiculous slow lamb low number. So why not call it Japan

Ryan · 1:24:17

Green tea, why call it Japanese tea on the GI?

Pau · 1:24:22

Because if you say tea in Japan, there is the expectation that it's green tea. The identity of the product is green. If you go to China, maybe there is different opinions, but if you go to I don't know, Yunnan, they might tell you like, no, tea means this type of tea. If you go to Taiwan and you ask them what is tea for you, they will say like probably oolong.

Pau · 1:24:44

So tea tea is not tea. For each country the the concept of tea is is different.

Pau · 1:24:50

I guess that's that's true and I don't know, it sounds better, just like GI Japanese tea. Like it you don't need to get into the technicalities maybe either. It's like no, it's Japanese tea. Not not just green, like okay, what what is green? What is green tea? Like people don't even know sometimes like we had a customer many years ago who came into the into the home. Do you sell normal tea here? I was like, Sir, what do you mean by normal tea? Just just tea. Just tea. Well, we have green, we have the no no no, I want normal tea. Do you sell normal tea here? Not those things that I see out there in tea bags. I was like, so for him, tea was a leaf that was outside of a teabag. So it was no no concept of color or anything. It was just the thing in a teabag is not tea. The thing the tea outside of the bag

Ryan · 1:25:39

Loose leaf?

Pau · 1:25:40

Is so sometimes it can be like that. I it's it's like a lot of sometim sometimes it's is is quite surprising.

Pau · 1:25:49

Yeah. Yeah. I think it's it's an interesting it's an interesting topic, but if you do the GI for protection or technicality reasons, mah, you know, it's it's maybe not so inclusive is probably better. I don't know.

Pau · 1:26:04

Yeah, I hope I hope it most of what I say makes sense. I think it makes more sense in

Zongjun · 1:26:11

It's wonderful information. It's amazing how much you can remember from all of these stuff, the conference and everything.

Pau · 1:26:20

It's just I don't know, just context, context, context, context. Just never getting to it's just more context.

Pau · 1:26:28

I think that that's something I really enjoyed with Maren's interview you guys did because she thinks in networks. Right. So she just gets this and from here, before I get to this point, I need to explain all these things. The the opposite of that. It's like I explained you one thing and that lets me explain you twelve other things.

Pau · 1:26:44

And then it's like, okay, this thing is like this because there is this context from here, this context from there, and yeah, it's like it's very interesting. So

Ryan · 1:26:53

Both ways are fascinating.

Ryan · 1:26:54

So I guess as a good wrap up question, I know that Autumn Harvest is around the corner. I think you mentioned just in a few days. So we'd love to learn a bit more about what does that look like for you day to day. Because I know you guys do some Autumn tencha production as well.

Pau · 1:27:11

Hmm. So we we're gonna start in yeah, today is Saturday, so we will start like Tuesday or so. Last Tuesday the we have a tencha factory very ne right next door to our factory. So they started the machinery. You just see it's it's closed for most of the time.

Pau · 1:27:31

And then some someday you just see three days before opening, the people start going in, cleaning, repairing if something needs to be repaired. It was like, the people are starting to work on the tencha factory, they're gonna start anytime now. And one morning you just arrive and you just see a lot of steam coming from the chimney. It's like, okay, yeah, season has started, definitely. There is someone delivering delivering leaf, maybe like the very early cultivars and stuff.

Pau · 1:27:57

We are always like a little bit when that happens, it's usually a c a week, a week and a half later, that's when Ugu starts usually. Just I don't know, the timing of our fields or our cultivars or or whatever. So in autumn we do some tencha for culinary grade, matcha or like bulk tencha leaf because we will have to trim the fields either way. Most of them if you do good field management and we don't harvest necessarily all fields in summer. So whatever you don't harvest in summer, you can have pretty good material in autumn. So instead of just cutting that and throwing it into the floor and just prepare for next spring, you can get decent material to sell for I don't know.

Pau · 1:28:43

Latte grade, cooking grade most l most likely. So there is gonna be a little bit of a little bit of that. Of course, supply demand, like let's see what is the demand for that specific grade? Because for spring grade everyone wants, of course. But autumn is like, well, I heard that like it's not the best grade. It was like, yeah, well, obviously it's it's it's a different thing. But do you want to pay 50 euros a kilo for your I don't know, other for making matcha cookies, or do you want to pay a much cheaper price and probably have a different and stronger flavor? So there is definitely a market for that. So it it definitely makes sense to have part of the production for that. This year, especially, I think it makes even more sense to harvest a lot in autumn for bancha.

Pau · 1:29:34

Because a lot of people did tencha in spring and tencha harvesting can be a little bit deeper than sencha production or gyokuro or kabuse. So you are losing the opportunity to make tonnage of bancha. So the price of bancha in the auctioners has actually gone up by a lot.

Pau · 1:29:55

So it's a good opportunity to make banch is easy to harvest, is a very good tea to process as just keep the factory running, but there is not a lot of difficulty into into making it. For us is a very interesting time because we can teach people processing without having the pressure of re of running ruining twelve kilos of sencha. So it's like a very good practice run for people that are with us next spring just to train them as well. You will get I think it I think the the price for bancha has gone up for like times three or times four. Because there was there was very little supply. The price of Sencha has also gone gone up because of that. But in autumn bancha is gonna be an interesting one to see do we stabilize the price is not enough bancha demand to meet probably bottle tip or material for hojicha material and stuff like that. So those are the two main teas that we will be doing soon. One to maybe try a small batch of something else but

Pau · 1:31:05

Just for for the fun for the fun of it. Just to spend even more hours in the in the factory.

Ryan · 1:31:10

Yeah. Cool.

Pau · 1:31:11

So maybe for our size, a week, week and a half, we will be hopefully wrapping up. Then trimming, more field management until just preparing already for spring next year.

Pau · 1:31:24

It's always it's always good to get out a little bit more hardcore physical activity in the fields. In between seasons sometimes I just go a little bit crazy, it's like we don't do enough in the fields that we have to get out of the office sometimes too.

Ryan · 1:31:37

Yeah, stuff's important. I like doing things with my hands too. I'm getting a bit stir crazy too much just in one place. Indeed. Well, thank you so much for your time. This was an awesome recording. Yeah. Think everyone's going to really like it, especially all the zairai deep dive. We learned a lot. Maybe if they host it again, I really want to go.

Pau · 1:31:55

Yeah, I honestly this this guy, if you can find something published by him, let me just find his name again. Takashi Ika. It's one of the few researchers kind of digging into this topic that I know of. It's gonna be very nice learning to have new appreciation for zairai, I would say. So definitely maybe if they do something else, they can, I don't know, what's the next step in breeding techniques using zairai or is the zairai usage going up? Or because climate change opens new prefectures growing tea, are they gonna choose to grow zairai over something else? We d we don't we don't know. So that's definitely gonna be interesting.

Ryan · 1:32:40

Yeah, gotta pick up my Japanese skill.

Pau · 1:32:42

Me, me too, me too. The the conference was too very intense hours, my brain was like completely like gone by then.

Pau · 1:32:48

The end of it was not okay.

Pau · 1:32:50

Well next year I will come better prepared with a voice recorder or something.

Ryan · 1:32:54

That's a good idea. Yeah.

Pau · 1:32:56

Yeah, it's a great idea.

Ryan · 1:32:57

Well, thank you so much. And thank you to our listeners. If you enjoyed this, please consider sharing with a friend. And see you in the next one. Thanks.

Pau · 1:33:04

Bye-bye.