I was lucky enough to visit the 3rd annual 2013 Los Angeles International Tea Festival on Saturday, September 28th! Well, I bought tickets off Living Social for a 2 for 1 deal, so I brought my tea hating husband along.. to carry my spoils and steal extra samples!
First off, my Owl tea manicure for the event!
The 2013 Los Angeles International Tea Festival was held at the Japanese American National Museum.
The festival had booths outside as well as inside the museum, with about 20 booths along with seminars and workshops going on.
I’ve been to other festivals and trade shows and I was happy to see everything was directly tea related.
Tea print tea towels!
Tea books!
Lots of travel tea mugs. I quite liked this blingly tea travel mug.
I had A LOT of tea here. Each person got a tote bag (which I’ll show later on) filled with samples, cards and a tea cup. You use the tea cup they gave you to fill up with samples as you visited the booths and seminars. The sample tea cup was a great idea as it saved on waste!
All the sellers had piles and stacks of tea! LOOKIT ALL THE TEA!
I had about 15 minutes to look before a class. There were cooking and tea classes, information on teas per region (japan, china, india), health, meditation, and tea ceremony. The classes I wanted to go to, but wasn’t offered the day I bought tickets for, were ones on Oolong and pu’er. Next time!!!
All the Tea in China class was interesting. It was by Devan Shah out of Chado Tea Room (I believe). It was more of an information session outlining all the types of tea from China.. with a bunch of sample tastings! I got 2 of each sample as I drank my husband’s, muhahahahhaaaa! I love the name of this class.. I’d love to drink ALL the tea in China, but that’s probably not humanly possible.
Let’s check out some of the tea sellers!
Hello Den’s Tea!
Harney & Sons! Yum Paris tea!
Aiya Matcha! Very crowded booth, it was hard for me to swipe a sample!
Glenburn Tea – Direct booth had some really nice samples. I tried the Glenburn Darjeeling Monsoon, a flavorful monsoon harvested tea. I also had a green that was amazingly floral fragrant, but I cannot remember what it was called! They had some cool items and bath stuff.
Chado Tea Room had a huge spread!
They also had a nice display and tasting of some blooming teas.
Tea Gallerie, based out in San Diego, had some really interesting teas and tea ware. Their Kids Tea line was SOOOO CUTE! OMG OWL CHAI! The whole line is caffeine free!
They also had a monster of a tea travel tumbler!
Tea Gallerie also had some nice blends. I quite liked their Scottish Caramel Pu’er blend! I think I might have to order some tea off them sometime.
Oolong Owl’s favorite booth: Bana Tea Company and 1001 Plateaus.
They had really cute yixing pots, cheap gaiwans and lots of pu’er tea. I tried a sheng pu’er there and thought about it during the whole festival. I had to go back and buy it, along with some tea cups. I also had some great conversation with the people at that booth, they told some chinese tea tales over cups of oolong and pu’er. I tried a really tasty Red Robe Oolong there too. Good times!
That giant clay bowl was later filled with lots of rinsed tea!
Of course, there has to be a booth of some hand made tea wares – Lisa’s Berry Bowls! Very lovely matcha bowls, tea pots and mugs!
She also had some tea pots with very fat spouts. Fire hose tea pots!
I fell in love twice with two yixing pots from.. I can’t recall what seller, maybe ABC Tea, but either way I couldn’t find these pots off other sellers on the exhibition lists website (sorry!) But wow, so cute! Cute Blue yixing pot! Handmade! Though it was tiny, probably a 100ml or less.
Of course, I was pointed out they have an even smaller yixing pot.. TEEEENY! Both were $50, pretty good for handmade, with $20 for machine made pots.
The goodies I got! WHOOOO! A Los Angeles International Tea Festival tote bag, Sencha Naturals Green tea mints, Art of Tea, Aiya Matcha, Harney & Sons, and Bana Tea Company samples!
My Chado Tea Room tasting tea cup!
My purchases! Ooooooh Bana Tea Company Moonlight pu’er!
More obnoxiously small tea cups! 30ml size!
The other shoppers I talked seemed newer into teas. I met a few that never drank anything outside black bagged blends. There was also quite a few health-focused shoppers looking for “the healthiest teas” to buy throughout the festival. I think I was in the nutty category, swooning over yixing pots, pu’er bricks and weird blends. It seemed matcha, green, white and tea blends were very popular, with sellers hoping to push interesting pu’er blends as the next big thing.
Overall, 2013 Los Angeles International Tea Festival was fun to attend for someone who wants to start getting into teas, though there was goodies there for more seasoned loose leaf tea lovers. Despite the small size, there was quite a great variety of teas – lots of blends, but also some great unflavored teas. The volunteers and sellers were very nice and happy to keep the samples pouring. I always had tea in my sample cup – I drank so much tea that I visited the bathroom a couple times!
I hope to go next year!
