The 2019 Tea Fest PDX was in Portland Oregon on July 20th at the World Forestry Center.
Compared to last year, the tea festival had 8 more vendors (48 total) and a couple of bigger vendors rented larger spaces. Portland also has the most amount of vendors that also have a table that you can sit down and have tea with. Like the previous two years, Tea Fest PDX sports a large range of vendors from Japanese teas, British tea time style, expensive puer, and kombucha.
2019 Tea Fest PDX Vendor Booths
Minto Island Tea Company grows tea in Western Oregon. They are the first booth everyone sees when you enter the festival. Last year I was impressed with their black tea and plants, so I made a return visit. Their entire line up was on sample – May and June picked black tea, oolong, wok-fried green, and steamed green. I was impressed with both black teas and the wok-fried green was good too.
Friends of Fire always has the impressive woodfired teaware I drool over. I attended their class (more on this later) and got deeper respect for their work after seeing how meticulous Jonathan Steele was at making teapots.
Denong Tea had a large booth showcasing their new 2019 teas. I tried all their teas – the new Jade Leaves sheng and Golden Branches shou, as well as their white and black tea. If you are a fan of their previous year’s black tea, it is even better this year!
Floating Leaves Tea is always a favorite of mine and I sampled some good competition Baozhong. I hope some of you were able to snag their online Baozhong blind tasting sampler! They had a table in the back doing thorough tea tastings.
This year Crimson Lotus Tea had a booth, but still camping under a tree and jet-lagged. They brought brand new recently pressed teas that were not for sale yet on their website!
The new Space Girls was the shocker, as I found this tea even better than the first year of it. It had an astringent bite, but the blend was floral and delicious. I tried Troublemaker, their smokey fangcha brick that proved to be a high quality, smokey done right tea. My favorite tea was their Dangerzone, a hekai from a tea garden with a crazy story involving 15-foot cobras. This tea was ultra THICCCCCCCCC!
Rabbits Moon Tea Arts / Enthea Tea House – Like previous years, there were two caravans set up for tea tastings with goodies outside for sale, including an Instagram potter I follow, Your Pencil’s work. I had made a beeline there early for the teaware in case I needed to buy something asap. As always, a gorgeous setup.
Young Mountain Tea had one of the best teas (from a large list) I tasted that day was Young Mountain tea’s Darjeeling Ruby Oolong, and I say this as a non Darjeeling drinker.
Zuo Wang Tea – After finally being able to meet these guys at World Tea Expo and catching them at a free moment. Everything I tasting at their booth was excellent. I was unexpectedly blown away by a Taiwanese green tea they had.
Tillerman Tea – Oh how I love this Laoshi Dong Ding, let me count the ways… review is coming!
Smith Tea Maker – I regret the last two trips to Portland I haven’t been able to make it to a Smith Tea Maker shop. At the festival, they had a reserve series Snowfield Oolong – a Chinese high elevation grown oolong but with a Taiwanese cultivar. It was fruity and creamy.
Japanese Green Tea is one of my favorite Japanese tea vendors, Kei does great work with his teas. He had one new tea that was a black tea with sakura blossom and it was incredible tasting. I got some, so a review coming eventually.
Mizuba Matcha – I was already jittering from tea when I arrived at Mizuba, so matcha was not in the cards for me. They had a new product that was single serve matcha with compostable packaging! FINALLY! I love this compostable packaging idea as it is so wasteful with single-serve teas.
US League of Tea Growers/ The Great Mississippi Tea Company – I caught a couple of their classes but also got to try some of their teas. Delta oolong was a hoot. It was them taking a Mississippi grown tea and mimicking a Taiwanese high mountain oolong profile. There were shenanigans to get that profile and they got an oolong that was floral and crazy. I will be getting my hands on some soon.
The Tao of Tea had the jumpy entertainment of the day. When you hear teaware break at a tea festival or shop, everyone stops and looks, filled with dread. They had teaware smashing all day, on purpose!
In India, chai is served in these handmade cups that are smashed and reused. No plastic waste! I know of one vendor who tried to get these cups, but they are incredibly fragile and didn’t ship well. I was gifted some by my husband’s coworkers, which is awesome.
The Donation Area of the tea festival is very Portland. This corner had donated teaware to help out the tea festival. There were lots of goodies in here, especially if you are looking for cups and English teapots.
Other Sights of the Tea Fest PDX
This is a teapot flower arrangement for sale – it has real fresh tealeaves!
Various Tea Booths.
Pretty teaware.
Classes at 2019 Tea Fest PDX
My feedback for this year was the online class ticket system was just as awkward to work with like last year. Also, classes filled up extremely fast. Portland seems hungry to learn more about tea. However, they are limited by the venue space and only having a one-day event.
I attended two classes on growing tea – Oregon specifically by Oregon Tea Traders, and a more general class by the presenter Jason McDonald, The Great Missippi Tea Company, but has a wide breadth of knowledge. To my surprise, there were quite a few tea farmers present as growing tea in the US, particularly Oregon, is catching on. This idea is getting more and more popular in the threat of tariffs and climate issues, along with the desire to source everything locally. I was in the hobbyist enthusiast hoping to not murder a couple of plants. These talks helped me a lot – I know what I did wrong with my last plant, not counting it falling over and breaking.
I also attended a class by Jonathan Steele on making a clay teapot. Due to time, the body and lid were already turned, so the focus was on demonstrating how meticulous the process is, the tools, and teapot physics. This class was a surprise chunk of knowledge as I now know why some of my pots do the things they do because of their spout design.
Now for the important part of Tea Fest PDX…
Oolong Owl’s 2019 Tea Fest PDX Haul
Since I preordered my ticket, I got a guaranteed tote bag and cup. I love their cups, it is a perfect size and cute!
Teaware
Cups are from Friends of Fire and Zuo Wang Tea. I got a new Pot Head mug from Jasmine Pearl as I managed to break mine. A Bingslayer from Crimson Lotus Tea. I’m gonna need it for some of the teas I bought.
Teas
Zuo Wang Tea I went hard on as I didn’t have the room for fragile loose leaf when I saw them at World Tea Expo. I got their compressed White tea cake and loose material for comparison. The white cake is tightly compressed, so it might be a challenge. Their Taitung Green I could not pass up!
Crimson Lotus Tea’s new 2019 Dangerzone Hekai sheng puer!
Denong Tea’s 2019 White tea. I am incredibly excited they now have a Yunnan white tea. I went to their booth with a mission to buy it.
I snagged Minto Island Tea Company’s Oolong Tea, picked in May.
The craziest of my haul is these tea cakes from Astoria Tea Company. It is what it says it is, Russian tea compressed.
I wish you all could feel this tea as it is the worst of all tea cake compressions – it is dusty fanning like material iron pressed into a solid lump. The tea cake makes a loud sound if you hit them against the side of a table. I am expecting an incredibly strong and dark tea. They did miss the perfect marketing opportunity to have a tracksuit wrapper.
I got some goodies from Japanese Green Tea – their Mikan Green Tea (review), their black sakura tea, and their matcha cashew nuts.
I bought a couple of gooey chai mixes from Prana Tea. I’ve tasted their product at World Tea Expo one year. I really enjoyed their mint and turmeric flavor.
Other tea stuff
I bought another tote bag (Make Tea Not War) from Mountain Rose Herbs, which came in handy as I ran out of room with the included tote bag. Essance Skincare had a fun selection of matcha tea (and other nontea things) in various skincare items and I needed their Matcha body butter.
Finally, I bought more tea plants from Minto Island!
In all, Tea Fest PDX is a wild tea festival. Portland has an interesting crowd that seems more advanced and experimental in their tea drinking than the general population. I met many tea enthusiasts, tea farmers, and ladies in gorgeous lolita dresses and regency gowns. Portland is also heavily community-based, so many want to hang out and have tea with others and the vendors are equipped for it. This is a heavily social festival and even I had some new tea discoveries.
If you are in for a tea adventure, I highly recommend checking out the next Tea Fest PDX!
