This was my first tea festival, so I didn’t know what to expect, but it exceeded all my expectations! With your regular day ticket (19,5 EUR), you receive a small tea cup, and then you can try any tea presented by the exhibitors (so tea heaven it is).My ticket (45 EUR) included goody bag (posted a separate picture with the contents), but I’m not sure if all the bags were the same. If you visited the festival, you can compare.The last picture shows my entire haul altogether.There were more than 50 exhibitors: mainly tea vendors, but also some handmade ceramic makers, there were both free and paid presentations and workshops. Unfortunately, by the time I was buying tickets, all the spots for the free workshops were already booked. I attended two presentations, but they weren’t…
This was my first tea festival, so I didn’t know what to expect, but it exceeded all my expectations! With your regular day ticket (19,5 EUR), you receive a small tea cup, and then you can try any tea presented by the exhibitors (so tea heaven it is).My ticket (45 EUR) included goody bag (posted a separate picture with the contents), but I’m not sure if all the bags were the same. If you visited the festival, you can compare.The last picture shows my entire haul altogether.There were more than 50 exhibitors: mainly tea vendors, but also some handmade ceramic makers, there were both free and paid presentations and workshops. Unfortunately, by the time I was buying tickets, all the spots for the free workshops were already booked. I attended two presentations, but they weren’t very informative. I drank around 1,5 liters of tea and definitely over-caffeinated myself, only slept about 5 hours that night. But I regret nothing!
Most of the teas were Chinese and Taiwanese, with some Japanese and Korean options. There were very few Indian, British, African, Western or Central Asian teas. It seemed that oolongs and pu-erhs were the most popular among vendors and visitors, though all kinds of teas and herbal types were represented .
Those are my discoveries:
I had never paid them much attention to Korean green teas , but they do not deserve to be overlooked. Such lovely teas of their own kind: light, sweet and floral, especially that one early-harvest green tea (After Rain) I fell in love with but didn’t buy because it was too expensive.
Yellow teas another lovely category: sweet and fresh, and they deserve more love. High-grade matchas are really on another level and worth the money.
Herbal Greek mountain tea is amazing when cold-brewed, always avoided it because of a dry grass smell.
The honeybush cold drink is like kombucha, but much sweeter and tastier. I’d never liked either rooibos or honeybush, but this drink was so good.
There was such an insanely tasty, high-quality oolong that I just lost track of it. I don’t have that much money to buy all of them and it was mentally overwhelming to choose just one or two, so I let it go and simply enjoyed.
In conclusion, this event really calibrated and re-calibrated my taste-palate and that is the most valuable conclution after all.
TL;DR: It was AMAIZING!