Specialty Matcha Podcast

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