World Tea Expo

we met at southwest tea fest! Im going with the las vegas tea club as a volunteer, hope to see you there.

I’m sure we will run into each other. Possibly at a Tealet event. :)

I followed you, Ricardo. Follow back and shoot me an email address if you are interested in an event involving tea bloggers :)

I got a few interesting samples and was volunteering and working the World tea tasting tour.. very interesting teas, lots of fun brewing and serving them.

I didnt think it was possible to be tea drunk for 2 days straight….

welp… that was an experience.

It is. You can maybe get in if you have a tea blog, but I don’t know what their requirements are.

Being completely honest, if you want to taste a bunch of tea, buy a bunch of tea, meet other tea heads and be social about tea, go to focused tastings and educational presentations, what you want to do is go to a public tea festival. You can taste a lot of tea at WTE and from companies that don’t sell to the public directly and aren’t really accessible to us except through middlemen. But they don’t really set up for retail sales at the show. You can generally buy some of their stuff at the end of the week so they don’t have to pack it up and take it back with them, but not everyone sells and they don’t have stock to support a lot of sales.

As far as public festivals, Northwest in Seattle is phenom, I haven’t been to LA yet but am going this year I think, I have heard varying things about San Francisco and I don’t mean to toot my own horn here, but Midwest in Kansas City is getting big and pretty dang good (depending on what you are looking for – I don’t have hardly any pu’er vendors). There is a new one in Mechanicsburg, PA at the end of September this year, Tea Fest PA. There are the ones run by the same professional event company in Philly and NY but I’ve not been to either of those either.

There are people very interested in starting up more public festivals across the country. They will need help. If you want a festival close to you, the best thing you can do is offer to help put one together! I would be happy to put you in touch with anyone I know who is trying to get something together in your area if there is anyone. It is an insane amount of work and effort to put one together and devoted tea heads are about the only people who can pull it off because it takes a really obsessive interest in tea to stay dedicated to the goal. :)

Thank you for your reply and for a run down on the different festivals! I live in Houston and they had a tea festival a year or two ago but not this year due to certain circumstances. I’ve been really wanting to go to one just so I can geek out :) Maybe I can help put one together when I have more time.

I’ve actually been to a few of the public tea festivals (never to WTE but I’d love to go). I’m from Florida so I pretty much have to travel anywhere I want to go.

I’ve been to the NY and Philly coffee and tea expo (which is much more tea than it is coffee). I recommend the philly one over NYC as it is much less crowded and more open. I’ve also been to a small one in Colorado that is nice.

I would loooove to go to the NW Tea Fest as I’ve heard good things. Seriously considering it, but it looks like classes and such could add up in a hurry. Plus the cost of buying tea. There’s also a PDX tea festival that just happened. There’s also a Southwest Tea Festival in Vegas that was last year and pretty sure they are gonna do that this year. It’s still growing but I heard good things about that. Vegas is a fun place in general, and February is a good time to go if you don’t like heat or crowds.

I do wanna say there is some tea festival being planned for Dallas, but don’t quote me on that. There really SHOULD be a tea festival in Austin given the culture, but none that I know of.

The dirty secret of tea festivals is that there is LOTS of tea to sample, but it’s very easy to get “tea overloaded”. Not to say that they aren’t fun – they are – just after a while all the tea blends together… at least for me.