It seems like a good start-up for this blog to have a report from the NW Tea Festival as its first post.
The event seemed to be busier than last year, or maybe it's because I was working in crowd control and actually saw that line of people, at first, outside, and then inside by the ticket booth.
On Saturday people were coming as early as 9am and standing there waiting for us to open doors in order to get tickets for tastings and events happening at the Festival.
Sunday morning was not as busy as Saturday - people started to form a line around 9:30-9:45am but it was nearly as instantaneously crowded as on Saturday.
This year we had only around 34 tea plants because of the die-off of most of the plants grown at the Rockridge Orchard for the Festival.
The amount of people interested in buying tea plants was not as large as last year's, but those who wanted to buy them were thinking about it seriously. We even had couple people from out of WA who wanted to either send plant as a parcel or place it on their palette they gonna ship to themselves.The overall crowd of the Festival amazed me - I never realized that people come to this event as far as NY City or central U.S. California, Oregon - yes, they are relatively close, but the East Coast - that was amazing.
On the picture below you can see Mike, one of the volunteers, trying to sell tea plants to theunaware victims guests of the NW Tea festival. Look into those eyes - he is doing his job with true Asian persuasion and swiftness!
All the tea plants were sold by 4pm of Saturday. Hope, next year, we'll get some more to fulfuill the needs of local micro-tea producers and gardening enthusiasts.
The Festival this year significantly expanded in what it was offering to its guests. Outside of the Fisher Pavilion we had a spot where potter Richard Brandt and his assistant (sorry, I didn't ask your full name even though I was constantly asking you about this and that during firing) made a demonstration of the Raku ware firing. Considering how paint-in-the-(certain place) owners of the facilities and building are about any sort of live fire, it is truly amazing that the Festival was able to bring this artist to demonstrate the whole process of making a hand build matcha bowls and firing them in Raku technique.
Another vendor who truly added more luxury and taste (literally) to this year's NW Tea Festival was Gena Renaud from the Yume Confections (Portland based confection artist). Her unique Manju and Sea Glass (agar-agar candies with different flavors) attracted lots of attention during the Festival and people constantly gather at her booth even though it was tiny in comparison to the rest of the Jasmine Pearl's booth she was sharing space with.
Hope Gena will be able to make it to the next NW Tea Festival and maybe even make a short presentation on stage about how she is making her confections (not the recipes or technology, just the basic background behind them - most of traditional confections I saw in Gena's booklet I never saw before even though I was researching Japanese and Korean confections for one of my culinary classes).
It seems that the Northwest Tea Festival brought together tea people from all over the U.S. to Seattle to drink tea, talk about it, experiment with it, and enjoy the fruits of skill and experience of other people who share their passion. The passion for tea.
The event seemed to be busier than last year, or maybe it's because I was working in crowd control and actually saw that line of people, at first, outside, and then inside by the ticket booth.
On Saturday people were coming as early as 9am and standing there waiting for us to open doors in order to get tickets for tastings and events happening at the Festival.
Sunday morning was not as busy as Saturday - people started to form a line around 9:30-9:45am but it was nearly as instantaneously crowded as on Saturday.
This year we had only around 34 tea plants because of the die-off of most of the plants grown at the Rockridge Orchard for the Festival.
The amount of people interested in buying tea plants was not as large as last year's, but those who wanted to buy them were thinking about it seriously. We even had couple people from out of WA who wanted to either send plant as a parcel or place it on their palette they gonna ship to themselves.The overall crowd of the Festival amazed me - I never realized that people come to this event as far as NY City or central U.S. California, Oregon - yes, they are relatively close, but the East Coast - that was amazing.
On the picture below you can see Mike, one of the volunteers, trying to sell tea plants to the
All the tea plants were sold by 4pm of Saturday. Hope, next year, we'll get some more to fulfuill the needs of local micro-tea producers and gardening enthusiasts.
The Festival this year significantly expanded in what it was offering to its guests. Outside of the Fisher Pavilion we had a spot where potter Richard Brandt and his assistant (sorry, I didn't ask your full name even though I was constantly asking you about this and that during firing) made a demonstration of the Raku ware firing. Considering how paint-in-the-(certain place) owners of the facilities and building are about any sort of live fire, it is truly amazing that the Festival was able to bring this artist to demonstrate the whole process of making a hand build matcha bowls and firing them in Raku technique.
Another vendor who truly added more luxury and taste (literally) to this year's NW Tea Festival was Gena Renaud from the Yume Confections (Portland based confection artist). Her unique Manju and Sea Glass (agar-agar candies with different flavors) attracted lots of attention during the Festival and people constantly gather at her booth even though it was tiny in comparison to the rest of the Jasmine Pearl's booth she was sharing space with.
Hope Gena will be able to make it to the next NW Tea Festival and maybe even make a short presentation on stage about how she is making her confections (not the recipes or technology, just the basic background behind them - most of traditional confections I saw in Gena's booklet I never saw before even though I was researching Japanese and Korean confections for one of my culinary classes).
It seems that the Northwest Tea Festival brought together tea people from all over the U.S. to Seattle to drink tea, talk about it, experiment with it, and enjoy the fruits of skill and experience of other people who share their passion. The passion for tea.
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