Gongfu!
This weekend was the 10th Annual Toronto Tea Festival, and though I was only able to go on the Saturday I still had an AMAZING time. I bought a frankly ridiculous amount of tea, got to go to a few really good talks, and (perhaps best of all) was able to connect with so many tea friends – I think I saw over ten different tea bloggers I know from IG, some that I had met before like Yogateapoetry and some where it was our first time connecting in person, like with teaformeplease.
I actually flew in for the festival, and in order to be there in time for the 10AM open I had to catch a flight that departed at 7AM which meant I was up at 5AM. So, I was pretty tired at the start of the day – all the caffeine from the teas I sampled certainly helped push me through it, though! I did try to keep track of samples tasted at first, but it quickly became impossible so I think I’ll really only be doing tasting notes for the two teas I drank after the festival – like this one.
Since I was only doing one day, I also had a return flight on Saturday that left at 9:30PM. The festival ended at 5PM, but I wanted to give myself a few hours afterwards to hang out with the bloggers and drink some tea. A smaller groups of us (steap’d tea, teainspoons, and Chai Affairs) went out for supper and then afterwards Marco (steap’d tea) and Connie (teainspoons) and I met up with yogateapoety, teainfusiast, and chaimusafirblogs for some hotel room gongfu!
At this point I only had just under a half hour before I had to leave for the airport, but even still we managed to get in a few rounds of two teas! This was one, and it was really fun to be drinking something from UNYtea because Jeff was also one of the people I’d run into earlier in the day. I was also intrigued because I’ve never had a yellow tea from Taiwan before!!
Based on the two steeps I tried, I thought this was pleasant but a little too delicate and green-leaning for my own tastes. I really like when yellow teas have a strong nutty note, and the notes I got from these very light bodied and faint infusions were more like straw and dandelion greens. Nothing wrong with them at all, but just… not quite my jam.
Side note, I ended up leaving at the PERFECT time because I got to my gate about halfway through boarding. Closest I’ve ever been to missing a flight, which was kind of stressful. If I’d stayed for even one more round of infusions I would have missed that flight.
