It’s the frangipani hootenanny for the northwest tea folks. 

The NW Tea Festival rolls into Fischer Pavilion at the Seattle Center in seven weeks. There are vendors galore, tea products and wares to buy, tasting sessions to imbibe, and herds of tea people with which to mingle. It’s an opportunity to make new friends and taste new teas. For a modest entry fee of $10, you receive a take home tea cup with which to taste to your heart’s content. Most of the vendors have tastings of several of their teas. Try them all; Fischer Pavilion has bathrooms!

This is learning about tea without having to buy huge quantities of some obscure tea and finding out that it was awful and you wouldn’t even serve it to your visiting Aunt Em, who can’t go home soon enough. Amen!

Last year, I tasted nearly everything, and brought home 6 new teas, 5 of which I am still drinking a year later. One was an impulse buy. Beware of eye catching labels.

Avoiding the $10 entry fee is easy: volunteer. These things don’t run by themselves. Volunteering introduces you to other enthusiasts, tea vendors before the rush of people, and a whole host of swell people (the festival organizers) who will be eternally grateful for your community support. Volunteering is done your way: a few hours, half day, full day, two days. You decide.

Not everywhere has a tea festival. Montana, for instance. We are lucky that a group of people are willing to take on this thankless task. And your support in the way of volunteering is awesome. 

Come to the NW Tea Festival Oct 5 & 6th. 

Or………….stay home and wash your hair and paint your fingernails.

Although I am not much for herbal (medicinal) teas, I will try anything once, maybe three times. So when one of my friends brought me herbal tea from Iceland, I smelled it (twigs), said thank you, plopped it on the shelf, pushed it to the side, and ignored it for a month. 

You have to let these things age, don’t you? 

 The tea stared back at me, begging to be tasted. I could stand it no more. With a certain amount of“hail-ho”spirit, I made a small pot. 

Let me tell you what’s in it: Iceland moss, birch, angelica. No tea leaves, this is an herbal (medicinal) tisane. Healthy. Helpful for respiration, digestion, circulation. Guards against gout, rheumatism, and water retention. Promotes liver function. 

Yipee!

 All good reasons to drink herbal (medicinal) teas except………I drink tea for it’s taste. I don’t need a doctor to drink tea. It’s all well and good that tea helps the body function better, but first and foremost, it has to taste good. This tastes like twigs and moss, which is what it is.

I am taste testing it against pu’erh tea, my least favorite type of real tea, to see if it improves my feelings for pu-erh. Guess what? The Zen Dog (www.TeaHouseGallery.com) Moonlight Pu-erh isn’t so bad after all. It’s a white pu-erh, and it doesn’t smell, and taste, like most pu-erh’s, which is to say, dirt.

If the choice is moss tea or pu-erh tea, I think it’s clear which one wins. Moss tea is not happening in this house unless I have respiration, digestion, or circulation issues. If and when I do, I know where to look: up on the shelf, pushed to the side.  

Meanwhile, should I visit Iceland, I’m taking my own tea.

We were already on our way to the donut palace, assuming we would drink coffee with our treats. By happenstance, we decided to try a tea/donut pairing. We’re very cosmopolitan, you know. 

I had some teas that were quite suitable, and after perusing our choices, we decided on a couple that just might work. Here was our criteria: the tea needed to be lighter rather than heavier, so no puer. Nor did we want  strong black tea or an oolong, like Golden Moon Coconut Pouchong,  purchased at the Tea Lady, in Olympia. What we wanted was a green tea or a white. Silk Road Teas sells Jasmine Silver Needle (purchased at Perennial Tea Room, Seattle), but I wasn’t sure that jasmine wouldn’t compete with the donuts. We considered Sugimoto’s Sen Cha (purchased at Uwajimaya in Seattle), but that might be a little more flavor than we wanted. 

That left three choices: Silk Road Teas White Peony, Phoenix Tea Huo Shan Huang Ya (purchased at Phoenix Tea, Burien), and Chado Tea White Champagne Raspberry (chadotea.com).  

The Silk Road Teas White Peony was quite nice. The flavor was subtle, with a slight floral flavor, indeed complementing the donuts: glazed and sugared. We quite enjoyed it. We then brewed a pot of Chado White Champagne Raspberry. Although the tea is wonderful by itself, it needs no competing food. It was too floral, too sweet. Donuts need contrast, not competition. Finally, we decided to try one more: Phoenix Tea’s  Huo Shan Huang Ya, a yellow tea. It was the right amount of astringency to offset the sugar of the donuts. We were quite pleased with our experiment, and learned new things about tea. 

Which is how it should be.

This whole of idea of pairing tea with food is an old idea. You are just objecting because you don’t think of donuts as food. Tea makes no distinctions. 

Buy different teas, try different teas. It’s how you learn.   

Think of The World of Tea Series as a season of programing, sponsored by the NW Tea Festival folks. The season ender was A Flight of Rare Teas, held at Phoenix Tea, in Burien. Burien? Isn’t that near the Mexican border? Well no, it isn’t. It takes less time to arrive in Burien (think airport) from downtown Seattle than to Capital Hill, now that we seem to have major construction projects happening all over Seattle. It’s a more pleasant drive as well.

The event was held at night, and hosted by the elegant Phoenix Tea owners Brett Boynton and “Cinnebar” Virginia Wright, dressed in evening wear. 

Eleven people and Baxter the dog attended. We tasted six rare teas, chosen by the owners from their extensive collection of loose-leaf pure teas from four distinct tea growing regions. 

First tasting was Compressed Junshan Yellow, a 2012 tea from Hunan, China. It was delicate and subtle like a white pu’er, smelling of peach and apricot. What was interesting was that water temperature was 165 degrees, which almost seems too cool. In fact, it was exactly right, as anything hotter created a bitter, flat tasting tea. 

Next tasting was Mei Gui Dan Cong, exhibiting a rose aroma during the  earlier infusions, then changing to smokiness during the later infusions. Boiling water is the norm for this oolong.

Then came Jiri Mountain Hwangcha, a rare and yellow tea from Korea. Brewed at 170-180 degrees like the Junshan Yellow, it was delicate with a fragrance of apricot in the first infusion. Later on, the fragrance was pomegranate, which lingered in the cup.

We moved on to Hand-Crafted Purple, from the southern slopes of Mount Kenya, which is (you guessed it) in Kenya. This fragrance was of blueberries or lychee. Because boiling water was used, it was more astringent than what we had been drinking, and was a nice change from the sweeter teas. 

Roasted Oolong Stem was the next offering. It was exactly what you are thinking; tea from twigs, brewed with boiling water. You might think that it would smell and taste earthy, but you would be wrong. It had a buttery caramel taste and great mouthfeel, with a toasty aftertaste. Based on this, do not pick twigs from your backyard and make tea. You will be so disappointed.

Rounding out the six teas was Kang Zhuan, a 28 year old tea from Sichuan, China.  I thought that it might remind me of a pu’er, and happily, I was wrong. It had a high spicy note in tasting, similar to ginger, and the fragrance was of ginseng. It reminded me of the wet, humid South: Florida, Georgia. As we tasted more infusions, the tea changed and mellowed, and the ginseng fragrance

toned down.

None of these teas were available for purchase, but I did not go home tea-less. I purchased some Huo Shan Huang Ya, which Brett suggested when I expressed interest in the Junshan Yellow. 

Phoenix Tea works hard to find teas to your taste. Both owners know their teas and are patient with us mortals who are not so knowledgable. Visiting Phoenix Tea is always an education and an adventure, and guess what. It’s closer than you think. A couple of turns off the freeway, and you’re there. 

Phoenix Tea, 902 SW 152nd St, Burien, Wa 98166, 206-495-7330

www.phoenix-teashop.com