I seem to say this every year for the Northwest Tea Festival – it is an action-packed tea event that is a must visit. Like last year, it felt even busier than the previous year. I heard, unofficially, there were 25% more people on the first day than last year, but don’t quote me on that. To me, the floor traffic felt busier than that. I was able to walk in early because I have a presenter badge, and used that opportunity to do most of the photos before the crowd was unleashed and I got too tea drunk. I am glad I did my photos early as the festival got crammed later on. There was plenty of room between booths, but there was a lot of people packed into that space getting their tea shopping on.
The Northwest Tea Festival was held at the Seattle Exhibition Center, which is near the Space Needle and other downtown Seattle attractions. The festival was on for 2 days, September 29th and 30th.
There were 54 vendors this year, the majority from the Pacific Northwest. There was also around 50 presenters for 5 Workshop spaces, 2 stages, and the Tea Bar. However, there were a number of nonlocal vendors and faces. Since the Northwest Tea Festival won the award for Best Grassroots Tea Education Campaign at the World Tea Awards, it caught attention from other vendors and tea educators from outside our rainy bubble. From the amount I’ve seen this tea festival grow, and visiting other festivals in the West Coast, including Tea Industry only ones, the Northwest Tea Festival is massive and getting to the World Tea Expo experience, but scaled down for consumers. You can easily spend 2 days at the festival, especially if you sign up for classes. They had ample seating to relax, drink tea, and hang out too.
I spent 2 days at the Northwest Tea Festival. I was leading 2 workshops on drinking Aged White tea, as well as participating in the Tea Bloggers Round Table panel. Besides my class, there were other really awesome classes like professional cupping, tea & wine pairings, growing tea, processing tea, water comparisons, tasting regions like Hawaiian/ Taiwanese/ Korean and tea types like yellow teas, puer, and gyokuro.
The sad news, just like the Portland Tea Festival, was the official free tasting cups were stuck in customs. Northwest Tea Festival pulled through with some big chunky cafeteria style cups. Shipments being delayed is a recent running trend not just for vendors and tea events, but also us US-based consumers. Many of us currently have tea purchases from China or sitting in US customs taking longer than usual waits.
2018 Northwest Tea Festival Vendors
Denong Tea was the first vendor that one would see once you walked in the door. They had a huge space, serving up their Cherishing Destiny Raw and Ripe puer, along with a couple other awesome teas like their Mountain Oasis puer.
Floating Leaves Tea had a bigger space this year. They also had Yana’s amazing baked goods that I went total ham on.
They had the usual 6 teas made for sampling, but also a space in the back with a schedule to compare teas with gaiwans. The most interesting comparison was drinking the Red Peony cake vs loose leaf Red Peony. I have the cake and have been waiting for it to be released before I write more on it. A tea that also surprised impressed me was their Old School Baozhong, I will be buying that one next time I’m at the shop.
Chariteas also had an awesome big space. I saw them at previous tea festivals, and I like their range of unusual teas from Indonesia and Vietnam, but also blends and a funky blue tea.
Crimson Lotus Tea is always a crowd favorite with tastings going on all day. This year they had a schedule tasting a sheng and shou, changing throughout the day.
Both Saturday and Sunday Crimson Lotus Tea started with the tasting of 2018 Stone Lion, a sweet tree Lao Man E that kicks. Sitting through a session of that on Sunday was how I was able to wake up that day.
Phoenix Tea, another local shop, had an awesome set up too. Every sweep by they had interesting teas. My favorites were their impressive quality Full Moon (yue guang bai/ moonlight white) and they had a Fu brick!
Japanese Green Tea In was present doing their first consumer show. I could only visit their booth before the festival was open as every other time I walked by they were swamped with people. They carried interesting Japanese snacks, matcha, and their award-winning green teas.
B. Fuller’s Mortar & Pestle is just a goldmine for taking photos of their Steampunk vibe. I love these wax stamped tea packages.
Mauna Kea Tea is a tea seller from Hawaii that sells green tea. It interestingly leaned more South Korean tea style in taste, but still flavorful and delicate. I was able to try a comparison between two of their unflavored green teas, the first flush and the premium, one having more delicate and higher notes.
To my surprise, Tillerman Tea was at the festival also selling some great Taiwanese oolongs. I’ve reviewed them in the past and my picks are the Muzha Tieguanyin and their Oriental Beauty as they have always been great quality.
Miro Tea had an incredible setup. This year they had two long tables with a long line of gaiwans steeping up samples all day. I counted 16 gaiwans being used at once! They also have beautiful teaware.
Market Spice is a tea and spice shop you will come across as a tourist to Seattle’s Pike Place. Their Orange Spice black is a favorite of many. I quite enjoyed their Spiced Cider Mix, which I didn’t see on Sunday when I went to buy it.
Friday Afternoon Tea‘s physical shop is still on my visit list, and I’m not sure why I’ve been procrastinated to make the drive. I was attracted to their Hogwarts House blends, especially since I was wearing an Owl Harry Potter dress on Sunday.
Shipwreck Honey is a local bee farmer that had honey and other buzzy products. I very much enjoyed their honey and I’m not one of those people who buy fancy honey. I’ve tasted other kinds of honey and shrug, but this Shipwreck Honey just had a complex flavor. The owner hinted he’s got some aged honey, which sounded fun.
Trudy Anne’s Chai has one of the most flavorful spicy chais I’ve had in a long time. It was packed with spice but without any heat. As I go through writing this, I am now kicking myself for not purchasing some for my dad who is a chai fan.
This is the weirdest tea I tried at the Northwest Tea Festival – Choice Organic Teas’ Shiitake Oolong.
The Northwest Tea Festival must visit is their famous Tea Bar run by the Dawsons.
I had an awesome tasting of Sun Moon Lake, as well as tasting some aged puer vs giant 2008 tea log.
Other interesting vendors in the house:
Chado Tea Room, from Los Angeles.
Justea – all the purple tea!
Saku Tea, whos latte blends I enjoy.
Friends of Fire, which I walked through many times and regret not buying a green cup.
My Zen Tea, who had puer (cake and bags), and honey.
Owl’s 2018 Northwest Tea Festival Haul
I didn’t buy much this year at the Northwest Tea Festival. I felt very busy running around doing my thang, plus doing my tasting class and a tea blogger panel. 2018 has also been an expensive year for me so I was planned to not go crazy with purchases.
Here is the tote bag, cup, and TeaTime magazine that everyone gets for attending the festival.
I bought 2-3 each of everything of Yana’s Baking. They did not last the weekend. I originally passed on the Russian Tea Cakes as I generally find them sad dusty hockey pucks, but these were deliciously buttery and nutty. I bought extra as a gift for the tea hating husband. Unfortunately, the chocolate topped matcha cookies broke in my bag but were still just as tasty.
This is a matcha mochi red bean cake. SO GOOD!
I purchased this tote bag because it is cute! It is quite good quality with thick material and rope handles. This was sold with the other Northwest Tea Festival merch.
This was my prized purchase of the Northwest Tea Festival – a print of Crimson Lotus Tea’s Daydream by Stasia Burrington.
My last three items I got are honey and one tea. Shipwreck honey. Not pictured is the other jars of honey I bought as Christmas gifts. I got Saku Tea‘s Vanilla Maple Jade because I was craving making it again. Finally, my weird find of the festival – from My Zen Tea, this is literally diced up sheng mixed with honey.
WILL IT GONGFU?
I have more content on my Instagram, especially in the Northwest Tea Festival story section. I found it easy to take a bunch of video clips to post on the fly. The longer the day went, the worse I get at taking non-wobbly photos.
Many thanks to Northwest Tea Festival for letting me steep old funky white tea for people. Hoothoot to everyone who attended my Aged White Tea tasting workshop and sorry to those who couldn’t get in. The Sunday slot sold out in 10 minutes! If the tea festival lets me do it again, I’ll be back next year. Thumbs up to Virginia at Phoenix Tea for hosting the Teabloggers Roundtable panel. Shoutout to tea friends, James at TeaDB, Linda Louie at Bana Tea Company, and Floating Leaves tea for a killer afterparty tea session. Finally, much love to the readers that said hi and took selfies with Big Red Tea Owl.
