Specialty Matcha Podcast

In this episode, cohosts Ryan and Zongjun (Sam) welcome back Pau from Tea Nursey and who works as a tea farmer in Wazuka. Topics range from a Zairai summit in Shizuoka where genetic sampling is being used to trace which prefectures share seed stock and to test the legends about who planted tea where, to what it takes to bring a century-old abandoned Zairai field back into production, to the day to day complexity of operating ishi usu stone mills.

Ryan and Zongjun (Sam) are in discussion with Zach Mangan, founder of Kettl, to discuss 16 years of sourcing Japanese tea. Topics range from how the art of gogumi (tea blending) works, drawing on Zach's conversations with Masayoshi Koyama of Yamamasa Koyamaen, to the history of single estate matcha before the Meiji era, what "Uji" means on a label, and Zach's framework for approaching matcha sensory. They close on how tasting other loose life teas can further contextualize matcha, Zach's advice for new matcha brands, and his desert island tea.

https://kettl.co/products/miyabi-sencha?variant=45770145136890

In this episode, cohosts Ryan and Zongjun (Sam) record from Bangkok the day after Thailand Coffee Fest 2026, where around 40 matcha brands exhibited and the Sanko Usu One had to be pitched from a poster because the mill was stuck in air freight. Topics range from how they explain fresh milling next to a traditional ishi-usu, to Ryan's price survey of over 350 matcha products on the show floor, to why they consider Thailand the most sophisticated matcha consumer market in the world.

https://www.wanderlustea.com/

In this episode, Ryan talks with Lorela Lohan, founder of WanderlusTea, a Brussels-based consultancy for specialty tea businesses in Europe. Lorela has spent five years advising small and mid-sized tea brands on market research, margins, and positioning, has tasted over a hundred matchas in cafes from Amsterdam to Lisbon, and has published more than ninety interviews with tea founders on her site. Topics range from why matcha outran loose leaf tea in Europe, to what consumers actually think about origin and Chinese matcha, to why most new matcha brands look the same and what a new one could do differently.

*If you consider matcha produced from shaded Chinese-grown tencha as matcha.

In this episode, cohosts Ryan and Zongjun (Sam) report from Tongren, Guizhou, after touring Guicha and driving another hour into the mountains to see the tea fields. Topics range from EU compliance testing and poverty alleviation economics, to high mountain matcha grown above 1,000 meters, to the made-up choreography of Song dynasty diancha and the 70:30 foam to liquid ratio their host insisted on.

They also get into why Japanese tencha equipment makers are the quiet winners of the matcha boom, and why the commodity end of the market is what feeds the specialty end.

Referenced in episode:

• 12,325 active tea farmers in Japan in 2020 (source: MAFF) https://www.maff.go.jp/kanto/seisan/engei/tokusan/attach/pdf/index-8.pdf

In this episode, cohosts Ryan and Zongjun (Sam) talk with Maren Fichter, a tea educator and writer whose Substack Tea & all the rest covers farming, heritage, tourism, and education in specialty tea. She has worked with tea in Japan, China, the US, and the UK, develops and teaches the Matcha Power unit on the UK Tea Academy's Tea Sommelier course, and is currently based in Wazuka, Kyoto, where she works at Obubu Tea Farms. Maren thinks about tea knowledge as a web, where a term only means something if there are other terms for it to hang on to, and much of the conversation follows that idea. Topics range from what the matcha boom has changed on the ground in Wazuka, to why single origin means something different in matcha than it does in wine or coffee, to pairing "ceremonial grade" with harvest season and shading duration rather than simply debunking it, and how those same details explain price.

https://teawithmaren.com/

https://beingtea.com/teacher-training/

https://savouringbath.com/

https://matchathing.co.uk/

https://www.jefffuchs.com/

In this episode, cohosts Ryan and Zongjun (Sam) are joined by Jeff Fuchs, author of The Ancient Tea Horse Road and the first documented westerner to trek both main trunks of the route, fresh off filming with tea producers in Kyoto Prefecture. Topics range from the precision of herring meal fertilization, to whether shaded teas are terroir driven at all, the hijacking of the word ceremonial, old trees and zairai in Japan versus gushu in Yunnan, and what happened when Jeff served a punchy gushu sheng puerh to a master matcha producer.

https://open.spotify.com/episode/4uIvpxzwyVbQRTeRrnrlvW?si=KqUfE4DJQFmM0Tw6Cue9Lg

Ryan and Zongjun (Sam) discuss the lack of unique perspective in contemporary matcha branding. Topics range from the emerging specialty matcha playbook, to chanoyu as a source of inspiration and a trap, the equipment and access barriers that limit experimentation, and why taking a risk in this industry is so expensive.

In this episode hosts Ryan and Zongjun (Sam) discuss the narrative differences between Chinese and Japanese made matcha. Sam has recently come back from Hubei and Henan, where he and a friend discovered Yabukita and Okumidori seedlings for sale. They learned a lot of interesting insights about how they got there and a 1990s Chinese-Japanese partnership to produce Japanese-style teas in rural China to aide in poverty alleviation.

Ryan was at the Paris Tea Festival, where he attended a talk from Katrin Rougeventre, author of L'Empire du thé: Le guide des thés de Chine (The Tea Empire: a guide to Chinese teas), on Chinese matcha. She presented a fresh framing about quality improvements in contemporary Chinese matcha, and that it's low-quality reputation is a very outdated characterization.

Opens with a tangent on the disappearance of Uji's old trees. More about "What happened to Uji's old trees?" soon on substack.

Recorded: Early May 2026

In this episode, Ryan and Zongjun (Sam) record live from Canton Fair in Guangzhou to map the Chinese matcha scene in 2026. They cover what changed in two years: "average quality" material that now rivals "average quality" Japanese tencha at 50 to 150 US dollars a kilo, the 8+ provinces producing tencha, Chinese cultivars like Longjing 43, Echa 10, and Fuding Da Bai, GuiCha confirming 4,000 tons of annual output nearly equal to all of Japan, and Ito En quietly sourcing Chinese tencha. Plus ball milling versus imported ishi usu, pesticide residue and EU export compliance, and why seven competing grading systems prove ceremonial grade means nothing.

In this episode, Ryan and Zongjun (Sam) close out the Uji matcha series with a debate: can Uji matcha actually be defined? The episode maps the full spectrum of definitions, from the least conservative, where Uji is a processing and blending culture and the leaf can come from neighboring Yamashiro towns or entirely different prefectures, to the most conservative, where true Uji matcha means tencha grown in Uji itself. They test the legal, cultural, historical, and genetic definitions against each other, from the ochashi blending houses and tencha auctions to the thought experiment of foreign producers acquiring abandoned Uji plots. Along the way: why yabukita grown in Uji is arguably less "Uji" than Uji native zairai cultivars like Asahi, Samidori, Uji Hikari, and Okunoyama, what was lost when seed-propagated zairai gave way to clonal cultivars 50 years ago, why Asahi is struggling in a changing climate, and what Chinese matcha marketed as "Uji grade" reveals about the name. Wherever you land between those two extremes, believing in Uji matcha means holding a contradiction in your mind.

Companion to the Uji-no-Matcha Substack series, with "What Happened to All of Uji's Old Tea Trees?" coming soon!

https://sankomatcha.substack.com/p/uji-no-matcha-the-inconvenient-truth?r=3mxquk

Ryan and Sam (Zongjun) discuss the recent GI status granted to Japanese tea, its implications for the industry, and the problems associated with the definition.

https://www.maff.go.jp/j/shokusan/gi_act/register/0179/index.html

https://news.yahoo.co.jp/expert/articles/84493979276a5984cb6ec8c0e6b987dc1a33edd6

In this editorial conversation, Ryan and Zongjun (Sam) interrogate the term "Uji matcha" and its tangled provenance: what it once meant, and how it has quietly changed over the years. Was Uji ever really a single origin? What did the Edo-period ochashi monopoly actually control, and what broke when the shogunate fell? How does one trademark end up stretched across four prefectures? And how much Uji Matcha actually actually remains "single origin" when Uji produces only 37 tons of tencha a year?

Uji-no-Matcha Series:

Part 1: https://sankomatcha.substack.com/p/uji-no-matcha-the-inconvenient-truth

Part 2: https://sankomatcha.substack.com/p/uji-no-matcha-the-inconvenient-truth-2a5

Part 3: https://sankomatcha.substack.com/p/uji-no-matcha-the-inconvenient-truth-108

Part 4: https://sankomatcha.substack.com/p/uji-no-matcha-the-inconvenient-truth-ca7

Part 5: https://sankomatcha.substack.com/p/uji-no-matcha-the-inconvenient-truth-2b3

https://open.substack.com/pub/sankomatcha/p/uji-no-matcha-the-inconvenient-truth?r=3mxquk&utm_campaign=post&utm_medium=web

It started with the disturbing realization that almost all Uji Matcha sold is not grown or processed in Uji at all. We kept hearing different definitions from different people: is it a city? Region? Blending style? Four-prefecture trademark?
When we crunched the math from official Japanese sources, the percentage of tencha that’s actually grown in Uji that can be sold as “Uji Matcha” or an “Uji Matcha Blend” is probably less than 1-2% of Uji Matcha sold.
This series details:
-Hard numbers / Production statistics
-Was “Uji Matcha” ever single origin?
-The context and creation of the “Uji Matcha” trademark
-Does terroir actually matter for matcha?
-Who the current system helps and hurts

Cohosts Ryan and Zongjun (Sam) discuss their experience in Nishio, Aichi including learning about pest control techniques, unique tana-shelf shading structures of Aichi, differences between a Mikawa and Horii Style tencha oven, high efficiency "simple" or "net-type" tencha driers, and their experience milling tencha on Sanko Usu One.

Cohosts Ryan and Zongjun (Sam) discuss their learning journey hand picking tea for 3 days in Toyota, Aichi. They discuss tencha processing (including a unique withering step this producer uses which produces an almost baozhong-like fragrance), ishi usu stone milling, and fertilizing practices.

Ryan and Zongjun discuss the legal, cultural, and economic implications of geographic indications in the tea industry.

https://open.substack.com/pub/sankomatcha/p/japan-filed-for-japanese-tea-gi-status?r=3mxquk&utm_campaign=post&utm_medium=web&showWelcomeOnShare=true

We are very proud to upload our 100th podcast and the end of season 4.

https://sankomatcha.com/

https://sankomatcha.substack.com/p/load-bearing-myths

Accompanying Substack Article: Load-Bearing Myths

https://open.substack.com/pub/sankomatcha/p/load-bearing-myths?utm_campaign=post-expanded-share&utm_medium=web

Hosts Ryan and Zongjun (Sam) explore the mythologizing in matcha and tea, breaking down how demand, marketing, and cultural narratives shape perceptions of quality and origin. This episode uncovers the myths behind famous regions like Uji and the impact on consumers and producers.

Ryan and Zongjun (Sam) explore the evolving landscape of matcha, drawing parallels with the coffee industry, discussing innovation opportunities, and envisioning a future ecosystem that empowers farmers, enhances product quality, and expands market access.