2019 World Tea Expo Highlights | 2019 World Tea Expo Haul
What was Trending at the 2019 World Tea Expo
I go into more detail about some of these teas I mention below in my World Tea Expo Highlights.
2019 is a Rough Year
A repeated topic during the World Tea Expo was the 2019 teas weather. Most regions are late or poor yield due to bad weather. A lot of stuff is now crazy expensive as there isn’t much tea out there. The overall message is the tea hits are dazzling, whereas the misses are dreadful. I heard the same thing repeatedly before the World Tea Expo and it had reinforced my thoughts of this Spring season to stick to your most reliable vendors rather than gambling with a new one.
2019’s teas is likely a culprit to why the 2019 World Tea Expo was smaller than usual.
New Tisanes are Popular
Avocado Tea booth was incredibly busy. The Korean booths that had exotic floral herbals were swamped. Overall, more vendors brought out their tea alternatives than tea. One was a puer seller chose to showcase their ground Camellia flower instead. Some fear that tea might get priced out or becomes more scarce, so we need alternatives. Others just want some new herbal teas as traditional herbals (chamomile, mint) haven’t rocked the boat in ages.
Border Tea is Still In and is Getting Better
Like last year, the teas from untraditional tea regions were popular. The Indonesian tea sellers Bankitwangi and Harendong, as well as Bitaco Colombian tea that had amazing teas that tasted better than last year.
New areas are getting better at making tea. Some I’d even pick over a lot of the traditional Chinese teas.
CBD Tea
CBD is in and they are shoving it into literally everything they can.
Ready To Drink Tea is Trying to Get In
There has always been ready to drink teas at the World Tea Expo but this year seemed stronger and better. Ready To Drink Tea is incredibly popular in Asia. While vendors in North American mess with making tea easier, gimmicky, and technology ridden, other countries just push the bottled tea.
I had some awesome ready to drink teas, including two different types of bottled cold brew with leaf inside. It is exciting to see good drinkable ready to drink teas as so much of the ones readily available are just sugary fruit juice. I hope to see more of these great teas on the shelves, but I can see breaking into the market will be tough against the monsters buying all the shelf space at the grocery store.
Tea Bloggers are Awesome (and busy)
We had our Tea Bloggers Roundtable panel during the World Tea Expo. Our panel was Tea in Spoons, Tea Happiness, Tea Cachai, Oolong Owl (hoot!), I Heart Teas, and Scandalous Tea with our moderator Steep Stories of the Lazy Literatus.
Our topic was “Inspiration, Aspiration, and Perspiration – Discussing how bloggers keep with it, what got them started, what keeps them going. Or: “How to keep the fire lit without burning out.”
Burnout is an important topic for us as it happens a lot, with a bunch of us burnt out or overwhelmed before arriving at the Expo as it is our busy season. We all write while juggling day jobs or children. As usual, we had a good mix of opinions and strategies as we are all different types of tea writers. In agreement, our highlight was going to the World Tea Expo to get together and talk tea.
Next year the World Tea Expo will be in Denver Colorado!
I am excited to attend as I’ve never been to Denver other than the airport.
2019 World Tea Expo Highlights | 2019 World Tea Expo Haul
