My expectations for the first Northwest Tea Festival had been high ever since I first saw a flyer for it at this year’s SIFF festival. Sometimes too much anticipation can be a bad thing since whatever it is you’re waiting for can often turn out to be not nearly so exciting as you’d imagined it to be, but in this case my hopes and the reality were on par. The NW Tea Festival was a great event and I hope that you were one of the many people who attended.

If you weren’t, you missed the chance to taste some very good teas, to listen to lectures on tea in general, specific types of tea, and specific uses for tea besides simply drinking it. The festival at the Seattle Center’s Northwest Rooms featured booths from a variety of tea vendors, numerous tea talks, a Japanese tea ceremony and more. For a $5 suggestion donation, visitors received a bag filled with tea samples and flyers and also a tea cup, for the tastings. The ability to sample teas served by people knowledgeable about the teas and tisanes (an herbal tea made from anything other than tea leaves, like Barnes & Watson‘s tasty Star Spangled Banner, made with hibiscus, chamomile, berries and mint) was in itself a fine reason to attend, but all of the presentations were excellent.

Additional off-site festival programs included two films and talks at SIFF Cinema and a tea dinner at Wild Ginger.

Vendors on hand and offering tea included Teahouse Kuan Yin, who had an excellent Pu Erh, Village Yarn & Tea Shop with tea and an excellent collection of books, Floating Leaves Tea, who have Seattle’s first authentic Taiwanese-style teahouse, the previously-mentioned Barnes & Watson, and others. There are quite a few tea houses in the Seattle area now, and this event made me want to visit all of them. This year’s tea festival was fantastic and I’m already looking forward to next year’s, hoping it’s even bigger and better.