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Portland Teacation #3: Tea Fest PDX

The Saturday of the Portland half of our trip was spent at Tea Fest PDX, and we were there all day, from 9 am to 6 pm. I had only been to one tea festival prior to this one, which was the San Francisco International Tea Festival 2018. Compared to that one, I liked this venue much better (the SF one was super crowded and didn’t allow in/out priveledges, which I had major issue with); this took place at the Forestry Center in Washington Park and there were two different vendor areas, and a building/gazebo for the events. They also had some food options available and there was some seating around. My feet still got thrashed, but there were way more rest areas than SF had. (I have heard that the SF Tea Festival for 2019 moved venues and took care of the issues I had from attending in 2018, so I’m glad for that!) On the downside, unlike the SF Tea Fetival the freebie bag only had a sampler cup in it, but not a bunch of free tea samples. Of course, I have plenty of tea at home and getting to sample from 51 different vendor booths, I wasn’t all that bothered by this (and I actually made it home with my Tea Fest PDX sampler cup… someone stole mine at the SF Tea Festival!)

My memory isn’t as great now, but I will try to recall some of the booths/events that left an impression on me.

Events:

A Discussion of Pu’erh – A free event that Todd and I attended. I recall enjoying it at the time (pu-erh is one of the teas I don’t drink very often and was happy to learn more about) but don’t recall much about it now…

Tea Blending and Tasting Demo – This was a paid event Todd and I attended. The owner of T Project gave a talk about how she does her custom blend small batch teas, and we got to sample three different teas during the event. She also provided a free take-home sample.

Tea, Tourism, and Social Change – A free event that Todd and I attended, and the one of the three events we went to during the Tea Fest that left the biggest impression on me. The owner of Nepal Tea gave a really good talk about how his family started growing tea in Nepal and turning it into a business, how he uses his tea business to help make social improvements in his country, and how he “winged” a tea tour of his farms for tourists where they get hands-on experience working alongside his staff to harvest the tea plants and see all the steps in a very personal way, and how the model worked so well he’s continued to do it as a way of educating about tea and also bridging cultures. Free samples of Nepalese teas were provided during the talk. It was excellent, and I ended up naming my cat “Chiya” when I learned the Nepalese word for tea from this presentation and thought it sounded like a cute name!

Vendors:

Jasmine Pearl Tea – I really enjoyed the Black Wolf flavored pu-erh sample at this booth, which is why it ended up on my shopping list when I visited their flagship shop the next day! It had lovely cocoa and tangy berry notes, reminding me of a fruity dark chocolate from South America.

Minto Island Tea/Oregon Tea Traders/US League of Tea Growers – These were booths of US grown tea (Minto Island is grown outside of Salem, Oregon!) I not only enjoyed what I sampled (Minto Island had a nice iced green, and the Oregon Tea Traders/US League of Tea Growers had a black and oolong on sample from a farm in Mississippi, as I recall), but all the great information these booths provided to me, as this is a topic I’ve been considering covering in a library panel at some point.

Prana Chai – Really amazing sticky chai (there are both honey and agave versions!) from an Australian company. I really enjoyed the mint one, which included peppermint leaf in the sticky chai mix.

Tao of Tea – Probably the most interesting booth visually, as they created a “carnival” look with little minigames you could play (moving different objects with chopsticks, spinning a lottery wheel to “win” free teabag samplers, etc.) They had clay cups to sample their chai from and after drinking you smashed the cup while “making a wish” which was oddly satisfying. I drank up all the freebie teabags they had (a hibiscus herbal blend and a green tea blend) last summer making iced tea before my house move!

PDX Tea – The booth on the vendor floor run by the organizers of the event, where I got to sample a steeping of pu-erh that — if my memory recalls — may have come out in the 1990s. It was a fun experience (despite how crowded this booth was!)

Esteemed Tea Collective – I remember visiting them at the SF Tea Festival, but what struck me is that they remembered me and how big my tea collection was, hahaha! I ended up buying an ounce of Honey Black Oolong after sampling it at their booth, it had such a sweet and smooth taste!

Yaupon Brothers American Tea Co. – I was excited to see a yaupon vendor because I had yet to ever try it! I recall Todd really loved their Florida Chai, but I really loved the Lavender Coconut blend.

Qi Fine Teas – This booth had one of my favorite green teas that I sampled at the festival; they prepared it iced and it was so smooth and refreshing! Looking at their website, I believe the tea was “Cold Beauty Cold Brewed Green Tea from 90-100 Year Old Wild Tea Trees.”

Japanese Green Tea Co. – This tea just barely edged out the Chinese green I sampled at Qi Fine Teas as my favorite of the festival (and definitely my favorite sampled sencha!) It was called Issaku and had a more natural sweetness to it because they grow the tea with sugar beets. I’m pretty sure both Todd and I ended up going home with a canister of it.

Ringtons Tea – I have actually never seen this British bagged tea company before; I really loved the Berry & Elderflower herbal.

Modern Steep – This booth had a tea very similar to a past Bird & Blend tea that I really loved (the B&B one had rooibos, cocoa shells, lavender, and coconut). Since B&B pulls their blends and you never know when (or if) they will reappear, I quickly grabbed their Coconut Lavender Rooibos. The main difference to the B&B blend is it is a rooibos/honeybush blend and instead of cocoa shells it has cinnamon, but I’m hoping it’ll quench that thirst.

SAKU Tea – This company makes powdered latte blends and they were all amazing! I remember enjoying all the flavors I tried at their booth, but particularly liked the Golden Chai (a golden milk mix) and the Ruby Cocoa, a beetroot/cocoa with spices.

Astoria Tea Co. – This booth had the most unique herbal offerings, as they had a lot of Russian herbs I had never heard of or tasted before. I believe I had Russian Chaga and Russian Ivan Chai (made of a fermented willow plant) and the Ivan Chai had such an interesting flavor. I enjoyed it, but fail to try to describe it… I wish I’d picked some up now!

Kinglet Tea – This company made their own bottles of chai concentrates, made to be mixed with one part milk and had iced, and they were very good!

Aesthete Tea – I sampled their Love Potion black tea at their booth, a blend of Assam black tea, rose, caraway, and fennel. I loved the flavor combination but went home with a bag of the herbal version, La Vie en Rose, which replaced the black tea with tulsi.

There were tons of vendors (51 different vendor booths!) so I only noted a few of the ones that left a notable impression/stuck out in my mind. It was a great tea festival and I would love to attend again!

Portland Teacation #2: Portland

The second half of the vacation Todd and I relocated from the coast to Portland; the Tea Fest PDX was in town that weekend, which I’ll write-up separately. Here are some of the teas I recall trying in Portland, on the days we had available around the Tea Fest.

Steven Smith Teamakers: I have always wanted to visit their shop, as I’ve tried (most) of their teas and always enjoy them. In shop I got their “specialty” tea which was limited, Snowfield Oolong, which was served gong fu style. It was a nice high mountain Taiwanese oolong, with a strong florality (especially for lilac notes), butter, and vegetal notes like spinach and asparagus which came out more pronounced in later steeps. It was silky and gave me a lot of energy late in the afternoon when I was starting to feel very run-down. I also picked up a bag of Rose City Genmaicha and Big Hibiscus, two of my favorite SST blends. I was, however, disappointed that even at their flagship store, you couldn’t purchase loose tea “by the ounce” and still had a buy a pre-packaged 4 oz. bag like on their website (I hate having that much of one tea, which is why I stuck to things I like making iced, which uses a lot more leaf…)

Tea Chai Te: I love Tea Chai Te and pretty much have to visit them when I’m in Portland. Sadly, my stomach was feeling a little upset after my Japanese dinner followed by quite a bit of Salt and Straw ice cream (which is just next door to Tea Chai Te) so I wasn’t feeling up to really drinking through a pot of tea. Todd got a pot of Lavender Sunset (a tea I’ve had before, you can find my past review for it here: https://steepster.com/mastressalita/posts/374606 ) and I shared the pot with him, it is one of my favorite lavender teas and was very relaxing. I also purchased a few loose leaf bags while in the shop: Market Spice black and Market Spice rooibos (I have a horrible nasal spray migraine medication and the strong cinnamon “Red Hots” spice note of those teas helps combat the absolutely awful taste the medicine leaves in the back of my throat), and Tangerine Dream (reviewed here: https://steepster.com/mastressalita/posts/371883 ).

Southeast Grind: A little spot we stopped for breakfast before Tea Fest PDX to have bagel sandwiches and tea. They carried Tea Chai Te tea, so with my stomach feeling much better, I was able to sample one I haven’t tried before, their Northwest Breakfast blend. It was a very good breakfast black tea, with a cinnamon brown color and aroma of malt and citrus, with flavor notes of malt, citrus (I picked up both lemon and orange), and cinnamon spice. It was very clean with a light astringency.

Jasmine Pearl Tea: I was a little sad that this tea shop, which I had always wanted to visit, didn’t have a cafe portion to order tea and had no seating, and by this point in the trip (a day after Tea Fest PDX) my plantar fasciitus was so flared up I was dying to just sit down. They would make something behind the counter for you to sample (a tall counter, which you have to stand at…) I tried the Benifuuki Japanese black since I had never had one before, and though I enjoyed it, I opted not to purchase it since it was a bit more expensive. Todd had a houjicha instant powder mixed in oat milk, which was also quite tasty (he ended up buying a bag, since the houjicha powder is dairy-free there; I have some but mine came from a Japanese grocer and has dairy in the powder). I did buy several bags of tea here that I have yet to try (though one I picked up I sampled at the Tea Fest, so I know I enjoyed that one!) I got their French Breakfast, Black Wolf, Dancing Dragon, and Kashmiri Chai.

Tao of Tea: This was their cafe location in Portland (on a previous trip I sampled them inside the Chinese Gardens). This was the one staggering hot day of our trip and by that point in the afternoon I just wanted iced tea… I can’t remember which black tea they used from their line-up to make it, but I know they added fresh mint leaf and some kind of coconut sweetener and it was very good and refreshing, especially with the matcha ice cream I ordered. I was all about cooling down at that point!

Here are some random write-ups of tea I experienced during a vacation last July to the Oregon Coast/Portland. At the time I was in the middle of buying a house/moving (yes, a terrible time for a vacation, but it had been planned before the house move!) and just didn’t have time to talk about my experiences. I’m finally pulling out my notes from the trip and my Tea Fest PDX program book to try to recall (to the best of my shit memory) some of the teas I sampled during the trip.

Portland Teacation #1: Oregon Coast

At the beginning of the trip my friend Todd and I stayed at a beach house (provided kindly for free by my Dad’s BFF, my “Uncle” Rob… who could turn that down!?) in Manzanita. We did a bit of traveling to nearby locations while we were there and had some lovely tea.

La Tea Da: Located in Tillamook, we got a flat tire on our rental car driving there from Manzanita (about a 45 minute trip when you aren’t on a spare donut!) so there was no way we were going to make our reservation in time… The shop was awesome when we finally got into cell range and could call and said we could come any time that day and they’d honor our reservation, so we could get the tire fixed as soon as we got into town. Needless to say, we had quite an appetite after that! I got the Queen’s Tea which had a lovely assortment of tea sandwiches and I was really impressed with some of the flavor pairings (I can’t remember the exact menu now, but I still remember how surprised I was that green apple with cinnamon spread and cheddar cheese was so good together!) There were also two HUGE scones and I remember they had some delicious flavorings, one was savory and one was sweet, I remember a blueberry sage scone as the sweet and some sort of cheese scone with spices as the savory one; they were so big I had to take them home! There was also an assortment of lovely petit fours desserts. That was the one day we got rained on heavily at the coast, so the tea I got with my lunch was Clementine Clove, since I wanted something with a warming spice note. It was a black tea, medium body, slightly astringent, and smelled of winter potporri spice; it tasted strongly of clove and cinnamon and had a tart tangerine note. I can’t remember what tea Todd ordered now, but I know he got a second pot that was Licorice flavored and tasted spot on for black licorice candy (something we both enjoy, even though the majority of people I know hate it!)

Mighty Thai: I had the most amazing shellfish bowl in buttered garlic at this place! Since it was a Thai restaurant (in Manzanita), I got my typical iced Thai tea. What was notable to both me and Todd is most Thai restaurants have their iced tea “pre-mixed” with the milk/creamer and Todd is Vegan; this place didn’t pre-mix their Thai tea so they could prepare it with coconut milk for Todd. It was good, but other than having a choice of dairy or dairy alternative, there wasn’t anything special about it. It was Thai iced tea!

Cannon Beach Chocolate Cafe: This chocolaterie in Cannon Beach had a small selection of Octavia teas available. I had three delicious chocolate truffles (I remember trying a chai spice and a lavender one… I think the third was likely some sort of sea salt caramel?) while sipping on a cup of French Breakfast tea, which I have reviewed here: https://steepster.com/mastressalita/posts/396706 . We came back later in the day to get some of their pre-brewed iced tea as well; Todd got the Wild Blueberry (a white tea), and I got the Peach Nectar (an oolong). They were both excellent, though I think I liked the Wild Blueberry I sampled from Todd’s cup a bit better than the peach oolong, just because it felt a little more thirst-quenching and we’d been in the sun a lot by that point.

Sweet Basil’s Cafe: A Cajun restaurant where we had dinner in Cannon Beach… I’m a spice wuss so I got the (not spicy at all) crab cakes, and they served sweet iced tea. I had to drink a lot of Pure Leaf bottled ice tea on the go during the trip, and having a fresh-brewed sweet iced tea was wonderful.

I picked up 1 oz. of this tea last summer during my Oregon Coast/Portland vacation, from a lovely chocolate shop called Cannon Beach Chocolate Cafe. I thought I should finally get around to writing up my tea drinking from that trip/the PDX Tea Fes… part of me was thinking, “It happened last July, who cares now?” but if eastkyteaguy can catch up on backlogged reviews, why can’t I? Since I had the dry leaf of this one I decided to make up a cup to enjoy while working on my write-ups.

I’ll admit, when I saw this chocolate shop had a (small) selection of Octavia teas (and you could purchase by the ounce!) I had to have a cuppa. I was most interested in this one since tea-sipper loves it so much.

The tea has a strong vanilla aroma, and I pick up hints of caramel/molasses in the aroma as well. The tea is medium bodied, so not as strong as most breakfast teas, and the base tea (a blend of Dian Hong and Ancient Yunnan Broken Pekoe) has notes of malt, honey, and orange rind, with a subtle smokiness. The vanilla flavor is smooth and brings out a somewhat caramel note from the sweetness with the base tea for me. When I tried this initially at the shop, I didn’t pick up any florality from the cup, but today I am tasting a very subtle rose sweetness near the end of the sip. It is not a strong, defined rose flavor, more of a whisper. The tea is quite smooth, with a very light astringency toward the back of my tongue/mouth after the sip.

It is a very satisfying tea and I’m glad I picked up a small amount so I could revisit it!

I got this in a cupboard sale from Ost over a year ago, but looking at the packaging date on the package, the tea is from 2015… so this is moving up as my herbal sipdown target. I was craving something with sarsparilla tonight and found it going through my spreadsheet, since I can sort by ingredients.

The tea has a peppermint base, and the minty notes are definitely there, but the sip is quite sweet — I’m getting cinnamon most strongly, with sarsparilla and licorice root notes. The sarsparilla isn’t coming through quite as strongly as I was craving tonight, but since I find peppermint very soothing on my tummy/GI, I am enjoying the added flavor and sweetness. I can imagine the sweetness might be too much for many; I like the taste of licorice root but I know that is a rather universally hated ingredient, and I’m tasting it quite fully toward the finish of the sip. Really savoring on it, I can somewhat get the taste of a typical peppermint candy from the sweetness/minty notes of the cup, though the strong cinnamon breaks that illusion a bit.

It’s a good evening tea for a sweet tooth, and I appreciate it isn’t a rooibos smothered in flavoring which tend to dominate the “dessert herbals.” I really like the flavor, though do wish the sarsparilla was a little stronger/popping a little more. But that is likely entirely being influenced by my mood.

I got this as a single teabag sample from a cupboard sale from Ost in August 2018, so thank you, Ost! I figured this would go well with my dinner of instant potstickers, so I brewed up the teabag in 205F water.

The tea is a lovely marigold color and smells like the Forever Spring oolong from Thunder Mountain Teas that I sipped down not all that long ago… a sort of floral purfumey aroma, but not overwhelming. It smells a bit like orchid, lilac, honeysuckle, and sweet cream. It tastes sweet and floral, smooth and a bit creamy, with a strong and lasting floral aftertaste. I like floral teas so I find it quite pleasant. It really does taste a lot like the Forever Spring oolong (was that also a Tung Ting?) but I do think that one was just a touch fuller in flavor.

I don’t drink a lot of white tea, and when I do, it’s usually flavored blends that I enjoy cold-brewing as iced tea. This is a warm cuppa steeped western-style with a teaspoon of pearls at lunchtime while my stomach doesn’t really feel like taking food yet. It steeped a deep yellow and is very smooth with a strong nutty/popcorn note to it, but also has notes of hay, sweet grass, honeysuckle, and a vegetal bean taste. It’s very nice, and reminding me a lot of some Chinese greens I’ve had in the past.

Todd has now returned to California after doing a bang up job putting up blinds and curtains in my condo all weekend (he is a saint!) On Sunday afternoon I prepared afternoon tea for us and I asked him what kind of tea he wanted, and he said he wanted a chai. I hadn’t even opened this package yet (I know, big surprise with me!) so I decided to make this one. He’s vegan but fine with honey. I like to make chai by simmering it on the stove, so I did two cups vanilla almond milk mixed with two cups water and four heaping teaspoons of the Sticky Chai mix (it really was quite goopy/sticky!) simmered on the stove for about 10-15 minutes, then strained into my teapot.

It was good, just right if you don’t like your chai in the “overly spicy” range. I probably could’ve done with maybe 1-2 more teaspoons for the 4 cups liquid to get to my personal perfect zone, but it was still very nice, a smooth blend, warm and satisfying, and I found a lot of the spices really popped the further down we worked in the pot, particularly the clove and cardamom flavors. I enjoyed dipping shortbread cookies (Todd had vegan-friendly Biscoff) into the tea and snacking and just having a breather. It was the first time I’ve had a friend for tea at my new house.

I still need to experiment with the ratios since I am not used to not being able to really measure the same way with tea that is stuck together in globs of honey (I am a precise “dump it on a tea scale and get a milligram weight” kind of gal!) but sometime the moment outweighs all else.

Backlogged review from Friday. I’ve been so busy this weekend I just now had time to finish writing it up from my notes (herein lies the reason why I don’t do gong fu much!)

It’s the first day of a mini 5-day staycation I’m having, and my friend Todd from the Bay Area is flying in today to see my condo and my rescue kitty! His flight doesn’t come in until later and I have to get the house ready, but this morning I decided to start the day with a gong fu session, since I didn’t have to just throw something in a travel mug and head out the door to work. This is a sample I got from the Discovery Traveling Teabox, so thank you to Skysamurai for organizing and to all those involved in that box for sharing their teas! I had a 1.5g sample and prepared it in my baby sized gaiwan.

1.47g / 40ml (gaiwan) / 205F / 15s|20s|25s|30s|35s|40s|45s|50s

On the initial steep the tea was a pale amber color and had an aroma of autumn leaves, rose petals, sap, and honey. The leaf in the cup was dark, twisty, and smelled of malt, wet leaf pile, molasses, and a bit like a burnt piece of toast smothered in floral honey. The flavor of the initial infusion was quite weak, with some slight notes of autumn leaf and floral dew; the color was much darker on the second infusion, with a citrus flavor of mandarin and pithy orange peel and a strong rose florality coming forward. The tea became a bit bitter on the tongue, with a bite on the back of the tongue and some astringency left after the sip. The bitterness thankfully smoothed out during the third and fourth infusions and was gone in later infusions; a strong rose aroma and taste remained throughout most of the session. Citrus notes were also quite strong, though the third infusion the citrus presented more as a lemony note and less as pithy orange. Malt notes started coming out in the third and fourth infusions with a light toast flavor, with the fifth infusion presenting the maltiest flavor of the session. The tea had lost most of its flavor and gone quite weak by the eighth infusion, which is when I decided to wrap things up.

Since I really enjoy rose/floral notes, I enjoyed this one a lot, as I found that a very forward flavor note. It held up rather well for being a (assumingly) older tea from a teabox and I appreciate the chance to try it!

This was my “Amazon Spice Guayusa” sampler from Fusion Teas.

Decided to do something a little different today, as I do want to focus on some of my older samplers, but I’m still trying to keep to the “spice” profile associated with chais. This is a guayusa mixed with lemongrass and cinnamon; I’ve had relatively few guayusa blends (which is a shame, because I tend to enjoy the flavor of guayusa more than yerba mate in general, but finding blends with it is far more difficult than the latter!) and having something different than another black tea chai but that still offered a caffeine punch sounded nice this morning.

The steeped tea smelled strongly of cinnamon gum, but I found the flavor wasn’t as strong as I was expecting. I get notes of dry hay, a muted citrus that lacks the notable tang that accompanies lemon, a touch of mint, and an aftertaste of cinnamon that adds a bit of flavor to the cup but doesn’t leave a warming sensation on the tongue like other cinnamon spice teas I’ve tried. The cumulative flavor is very grassy or herby with a slight cinnamon touch right at the finish.

Honestly, the more I drank this, the more I enjoyed it. It wasn’t what I expected when I first sipped it, as the smell and the taste created a big disconnect in my mind. But once I settled into the earthy flavor and was warmed from within from the cinnamon, I started to really get into the blend. It’s a simple but effective tea.