This weekend’s plans to visit a cider festival down in Gig Harbor fell through, so instead we spent Sunday at the Northwest Tea Festival, which was possibly even better.

Cider and beer festivals are great, but there’s one small drawback to them: because you only get a limited amount of tickets, and because you don’t want to give yourself alcohol poisoning, you have to narrow the vast options down to a handful of things that you actually get to try. So many lost opportunities!

At the Northwest Tea Festival, you get to drink all the tea your body can handle. I have no idea how many tiny sample cups of tea I consumed, but it was a large number. Honestly, it’s a miracle I even fell asleep at all last night.

When you purchase your ticket for the tea festival, you get a cute little ceramic sample cup, and a reusable shopping bag to carry your purchases.

True story, I took this photo after a restroom break. I’d left Chris sitting at a table taking a quick phone call, and when I came back, someone had filled our tea cups! Not only are there booths full of teas to sample, and a tea bar where you can sample tea, and workshops where you drink tea, but there were magical roaming tea faeries prepared to pour you more tea in the middle of the aisles. It turns out, heaven is a place on earth, at least for a tea drinker like me.

Tea Workshops and Lectures

In addition to dozens of tea vendors, the Northwest Tea Festival features a robust selection of workshops and lectures. About half of them were free to attend, and half had an extra fee associated with them. All were ticketed events, due to having limited seats.

With an eye to saving our money to buy tea, Chris and I decided to attend two of the free twenty-minute presentations.

The first was “Tea from a Wine Professional’s Perspective” by Gabriel Lukeris. This talk examined the parallels between the wine and tea world. It included pours of three of Lukeris’s favorite teas that he felt exhibited similar qualities to wines. During this lecture I discovered one of my new favorite teas, a Dansang Oolong. I had to hunt some down to purchase, it had such an incredible aroma and flavor.

Lukeris’s talk really stoked my already-growing desire to learn more about tea. I’d like to move beyond saying things like “I like tea, and oolongs and pu’erhs are some of my favorites” to really being able to discuss teas from different countries and regions, and to learn to tell the subtle differences between them. I wish this presentation had been longer, as he had a stack of books with him that he only touched briefly on, and I really wanted to pick his brain.

The second presentation we attended was “Tea-Infused Italian Sodas” by Ward and Barbara Everson. Whereas many of the workshops and lectures were being presented by vendors and tea-industry professionals, the Eversons are two tea enthusiasts who like experimenting in the kitchen and sharing their ideas at the festival. They presented four tea-infused simple syrups they had made, let us sample each one, then crafted everyone a small soda with each person’s favorite syrup. Then they gave us pointers for making our own syrups and answered a couple of questions.

This was just really fun, and of course it inspired us, as I like making shrubs and Chris has started dabbling with home made simple syrups. We’ve already picked out one tea that we brought home from the festival to make into a syrup.

The Show Floor

The vast majority of the show floor was tea vendors, with a few tea ware sellers and a couple crafty booths. Vendors ranged from local businesses like Miro Tea to larger companies like David’s Tea, to sellers all the way from Japan. Although I’m sure there was some opportunity for businesses to connect and discuss wholesale arrangements, every booth seemed to be retail-friendly, so that tea enthusiasts could purchase whatever they tasted and wanted to bring home with them.

The offerings were weighted heavily to quality, single-origin teas, but there was something for everyone. There were plenty of flavored blends, and despite the autumn season, a few booths even had carafes of iced tea to try as well. Although there were a couple of booths with lattes, I don’t think I saw a sweetener anywhere!

While every booth had pots of tea ready to pour samples, a few took it a step further and had seats and guided tastings, such as this lovely set up from local pu’erh importer Crimson Lotus Tea.

You could also pull up a seat at the “tea bar” where a tea expert would pour a couple of brews from a specific supplier or vendor and tell you about their characteristics.

Our Haul

Our tea cupboard is already fit to burst, but we picked up just a few teas to bring home…

And that’s not even all of it, we have a few more of those Bitaco Colombian teas, because they were 7 for $10 and then he threw in an extra one for free.

It’s a good thing that we drink a pot of tea every morning, and that as the evenings get colder, desser tisanes will become a regular treat as well.

We also came home with a whole bunch of free printed material…

Recipes! Magazines! A look book! A cute illustrated story book to pass on to a friend’s three-year-old. And of course a show program, so I can look back through and find any favorite vendors who I may have failed to get a card from.

Room For Improvement

If there’s one glaring drawback to this event, it was that there was almost no food. There was one vendor with some allergen-free cookies, and a few vendors who had sweets alongside their tea. We were really excited to find a vendor with really tasty protein cookies.

The thing is, if you’re drinking that much caffeine, you might need a little food too! A cookie is nice, but something more substantial would be better. Honestly, I think it would be perfect if they had a vendor who specialized in tea snacks — I’m imagining at least two options: an “English Tea” plate with a couple tiny sandwiches, a scone, maybe some fruit and sweets; and a “Chinese Tea” plate with some rice crackers, a tea egg, a dumpling or bun, and a red bean cake or other sweet.

Sure, because it’s at Seattle Center you could just walk down to The Armory for food, but that takes valuable time away from being at the tea festival!

I also feel like 20 minutes isn’t long enough for anyone to talk about anything. I’d prefer if the lectures we’d attended were at least half an hour long.

Finally, there’s room for myself to improve as well. I had this idea that I’d get started on some holiday shopping and get some gifts for the tea lovers in my life, but instead we only bought tea for ourselves! For shame! I blame the fact that I was tea-drunk.

Will I Return?

I’m already planning to attend both days next year, as the $15 admission covers the whole weekend. I’d love to be able to attend a few more of the presentations, taste even more teas, and feel a little less rushed. I’d have enjoyed being able to talk more with the vendors, especially the local ones who I’m likely to visit outside the event and hopefully build a good relationship with.

I’m really glad we were able to attend this year, and I’m excited and the new additions to our tea cupboard!