At the NW Tea Festival which, if you did not attend you missed, I bought several kinds of teas from several different vendors. That is the point, is it not?

This year I tried the Yellow Mudan and the Haiku Peach, from the Jasmine Pearl Tea Company. They venture up from Portland, Oregon, if you need a cup of tea in Portland.  I had experience with yellow tea at the Phoenix Tea Shop, here in Burien, just south of Seattle. On Saturday mornings, the Phoenix does tea tastings, and one Saturday, we tasted some yellow tea. I really liked it, so when I came across it at the NW Tea Festival, I scarfed some to take home. 

Yellow tea is subtle, somewhere between a white tea and a green. It’s almost buttery on the tongue, and is a good sipping tea for all day. Unlike several green teas, it doesn’t taste like grass, an acquired taste. Do I look like a cow, looking for a nice, green, grassy snack? Still, I know, some people love that taste. I prefer the acquired taste of Scotch. 

It’s hard to go wrong with white peach tea, and the Haiku Peach is no exception. It might be my new favorite all-day sipping tea.

While in Portland recently, I visited the Jasmine Pearl Tea Merchants. Situated near the Rose Quarter, the parking was easy, the store was bright and easy to navigate, the tea people were helpful, and the tea was fabulous. It was an enjoyable and relaxing afternoon.

A train trip to Portland and an afternoon of tea tasting is rest for the brain.

What the heck, we were already here for a class. So after class, we trotted over to the Steven Smith Tea Shop, in the northwest part of Portland, Oregon. Small and intimate, it was a welcoming stop after spending two hours and three million dollars at Powell’s Bookstore, the greatest bookstore in the world for book lovers.  This, of course, is only my opinion, but it is my blog…

We sat at the tea bar, and smelled several teas before deciding on the four that we sampled in a tasting session called “A Flight of Teas”. The four that we chose were  White Petal, Jasmine Pearl, Yunnan, and Big Hibiscus: white, green, black, and an herbal tea. From the subtle and delicate white tea to the big flavor of herbal hibiscus, it was quite the treat. White Petal was soft, whispery, and sweet while the Jasmine Pearl (green) was drier, with a little more astringency. I can drink either all day. The Yunnan (black) seemed uninteresting to me, and the Big Hibiscus was overflowing with flavor. Anything with hibiscus and ginger has my vote. We tasted one more: Bungalow, a first and second flush organic Darjeeling black tea. It was smooth and almost buttery with a nice aftertaste. It’s not your grandmother’s tea.

I appreciated the idea of tasting four teas at once, and the price was right: $8. It was enough tea for the both of us. Steven Smith has a brilliant idea in four-tea tasting, and this is a great way to sample various teas without having to commit to buying quantities of tea you may not like once you get them home. Sometimes tea smells wonderful, and the taste doesn’t match. It’s somehow less; too astringent, cloyingly sweet, overly smoky. 

Other tea establishments might consider a small sampling to educate the public about tea, and encourage novelty in tea tasting. Do you really need to buy the same tea time after time, day in and day out? It’s monotonous, just so you know.

If you are passing through Portland, or have some reason to be there, stop by Steven Smith Tea Shop. It isn’t far from the Pearl District, and there’s parking. I love that. 

Steven Smith Tea, 1626 NW Thurman St, Portland, Oregon, 1-800-624-9531.

It you are in Seattle, you can find Steven Smith Teas at the Perennial Tea Room, 1910 Post Alley, Seattle, Wa, 1-206-448-4054.

Be adventuresome. Life is too short to be boring!

It’s the annual NW Tea Festival. 

Saturday (tomorrow), 10am-6pm……………..Sunday, 10am-4pm

Fischer Pavillon in Seattle Center.

Bring the kids. Introduce them to the wonders of tea.

See you there.

If you look closely at these photos (you might need a magnifying glass), you will see that it isn’t English written on the packaging. It’s Russian. Yes, yes, as in, from Russia. Hello.

Some friends went to St Petersburg (yes, Russia) and Moscow. There’s no “cow” in the pronunciation of Moscow, and I know that you wanted to know that. As a treat for me, they brought some tea from Russia, and we had a tea party. One of the teas was a green tea with tropical and floral overtones, and the other was a black tea. Both were quite nice, although the black tea had a nice tart tang to it that seems to be lacking in other black teas that I have recently tried. Whatever it was, I liked it. 

The Russians are tea drinkers. They brew wonderful teas. The same cannot be said for their coffee. So their history of producing tea goes back a long way, just as the history of tea goes back to ancient times. 

You would know information like this if you attended the NW Tea Festival, Oct 5 & 6, at the Fischer Pavilion at Seattle Center. 

It’s an opportunity to learn about, and taste, teas with which you may not be familiar. I am not guaranteeing that there will be Russian tea there, but there will be familiar and not-so-familiar tea to taste, vendors to meet, information to learn, and a good time to be had by all.

Maybe you will meet some Russians.

The NW Tea Festival, Oct 5&6, Fischer Pavilion at the Seattle Center.