What's been the highlight of World Tea Expo for you so far?
The Tealet Tea Pairing Dinner at Nie Gu last night was fabulous: a seafood salad paired with Meijeiwu Long Jing, Short Ribs paired with two Ali Shan oolongs, and a macha Tres Leche cake paired with freshly ground Matcha. I had the honor of sitting at a table with Hattori-san, who produces the matchas we sampled using traditional methods on his Shizuoka farm. Pictures on my FB page…
I wish the general public could attend the convention but as I understand it, it is industry only although they let bloggers in. As I don’t sell tea and am not a blogger I can’t attend.
What’s my favorite part about something exclusive? Shoot, I’ve wanted to golf at this one club for awhile but since I cannot I have no remarks.
You can’t use Liquid Proust Teas to say that you’re part of “the biz”? Geez, if there’s no hope for you getting in, there’s certainly no hope for us lowly sippers. I’d love going to something like this.
Yeah, I know, it’s a luxury (in some ways…) to be able to go and be part of the “biz”. But hopefully there is some trickle down of the good teas and the cool stuff becoming available…I would think you could find a way to spin your Liquid Proust business to go as well. But as an “business” event, it’s also fairly pricy.
Other highlights included:
- tasting the last of the TOTUS award winning black tea from Great Mississippi Tea Company
- Nicole’s (teaformeplease) talk on social media
- Nigel Melican’s sobering talk “Will There be Tea in 2050”
- The Tea & Cheese pairing workshop with Chef Robert Wemischner
- Scoring some new purple tea from Kenya for my Tea Chest
- Hanging with Tea Folks for three days straight!
Yes, there are a few pu-erh suppliers. Pu-erh seems to be one of the teas you can get in the most trouble with at WTE. Long Run, Old Village, Six Mountains, and some others I don’t remember…
This year there was more puer than previous years. I swear 2014 had almost none. 2015 had 2 sellers. This year had more and I bought 5 cakes. There was more puer sellers I didn’t interact with due to big language barrier. A few booths I wanted to talk puer, but they would just wordlessly hand you a green tea sample and a card. This isn’t counting the crap wholeseller pu you always see.
I was told back in 2014 that the Chinese group sends regional batches, so I think this year was the year.
Yes, they do sell pu-erh there. It’s actually seems to be the tea that is sold the most there. Long Run, Old Village, and some others I can’t remember. Six Mountains is usually there but I don’t remember seeing them…
It was interesting and very good to do some networking as a business, but as a tea drinker, I have found more things to buy at open to the public tea festivals. Most booths were selling wholesale only and it seemed like the only day most were allowed to sell anything directly to the attendees (unless you were buying wholesale orders) was the last 2 hours of Friday. The stuff I bought was stuff that the exhibitors didn’t want to pack up to take back with them. They didn’t really come with supplies to sell to thousands of people. But I see from their posts that a lot of the bloggers got some loot. :)
The seminars were good, but again, business-centric. The workshops were great but you can find similar at public festivals at a much lower cost. Not saying that it isn’t beneficial and interesting to attend, but unless you have a business or an interest in the business, you’ll get more bang for your buck going to things like the Northwest Tea Festival or any of the others. Just my thoughts.
The ESpro P5 French Press…clean new product and works amazingly! The Sharp Tea-Cere to make Matcha from any leaves. Some great new sweeteners…Loved the Native American teas and the Inca Tea. Great show!
I blogged about each day
http://oolongowl.com/world-tea-expo-2016-day-1/
http://oolongowl.com/oolong-owl-hoots-world-tea-expo-2016-day-2/
http://oolongowl.com/oolong-owl-hoots-world-tea-expo-2016-day-3/
http://oolongowl.com/oolong-owls-world-tea-expo-2016-hooty-haul/ the popular haul
This is the my 3rd WTE, this year just felt crazy busy to me. I liked being able to go to the awards ceremony this year (before press could go but you wouldn’t get fed booooo!). I just like drinking a lot of tea, seeing new trends, and gossiping with tea sellers. Since it’s my 3rd year, I knew more people so I got to socialize more than before.
My highlight was NOT going. ;-)
https://www.instagram.com/p/BGr6BiJsBHo/?taken-by=yunnan_sourcing
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