What's your favorite tea conference?
Out of all the tea conferences in all those different cities…which impressed you most? Where did you find your most favorite teas? Where did you go crazy and end up with so much tea that you had to build another cupboard? (tee hee!)
I have only been to 2 so far – Seattle and Austin. It isn’t really fair to judge Austin since I went their first year. It was really nice for a first attempt but there were a lot of similar merchants there and not much in the way of teas that appealed to me. Hardly any tea ware, if I recall.
Seattle – that’s another story. I loved Northwest Tea Festival. Of course, they have had years to polish their event so it should be great. :) But yeah, I went home with a whole lot more tea and tea ware than I had intended to go home with after that festival.
I’m going to try to get to San Francisco or LA this year. I’d love to try Toronto & Vancouver. New York is something I’d like to see, but NY in March isn’t something I need to see. :)
I think I was out of town for the Austin festival and I don’t see any indication that they are doing it again. :(
Yes, I think Ellen, the head organizer, said it was way too stressful on her despite the success of it, which I totally understand. There is one in Houston though. February 20-21
Vancouver’s is still quite new, as the one in November (was it November?) was the second ever. I think they still have to work on it and grow a bit (especially with updating their website with vendor information and making sure there’s a mobile accessible website that doesn’t require typing in a different web address), but it was pretty good! And we had a gloriously sunny day instead of the rather more typical rain, which was nice.
Agreed, it still needs time to mature but compared to the first year this year was much much better imo
I think many of us have only been to 1 or 2, there’s not that many and they are all spread out. As consumers and tea fans, we have to go out of our way to visit them.
I’ve just been to the LA International and World Tea Expo, the latter is the best but it’s not not open to the public so probably doesn’t count.
LA tea festival is fun but really small. It doesn’t seem to vary much in seminars over the last 3 years, but it has been getting better. However, it’s not something I’d come from out of town to see since it’s so small.
I’m a huge fan of the Coffee & Tea Festival in NYC. It’s a lot of fun and a great audience: http://www.coffeeandteafestival.com/nyc/
Went there last year. Still drinking the tea I bought. It was great. It’s nice for me that they moved out of Manhattan into Brooklyn. Now I can drive to it.
Ive been to NYC festival twice. its huge, many vendors, pretty good organization. Not sure if i go this year. i dont drink flavored teas and they are majority. Maybe i will go if some interesting seminars will be offered
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