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Day #3 of my teacation was spent mostly at the San Francisco Tea Festival!

Hobee’s: Since my knowledge of the Bay Area is not ideal, I can’t recall if we ate at the Cupertino or the Palo Alto one on our way to San Francisco that morning, but I’m pretty sure it was one of those two. I love this place for breakfast and pretty much always want to go there at least once when I visit my friend, and I normally love their house tea on ice (it’s an orange cinnamon CTC black tea) and I even have some in my stash at home, but they had made it super strong this particular morning and the spice was killing me. I was dealing with some acid reflux and that was definitely not helping. I definitely don’t make it that strong when I brew it myself at home! I should’ve asked for a glass of water to try to cut it back a bit but didn’t think of it at the time. I don’t recall it ever being that spicy in the past. If I were to make it like this at home I’d have to add liquid sugar to even out the spice, but when I make this same tea iced at home, I don’t even need any sweeteners because it’s just right. They must use a massive amount of leaf… I wonder if that is how the average person prefers it, burning their mouth off?

San Francisco Tea Festival: My first tea festival! First, I will get out of the way what I felt were some weak aspects of the festival. I was a bit shocked at the lack of space dedicated to the vendors versus the amount of people; I go to a lot of sci-fi/fantasy/anime/fandom type conventions, and there is always waaaaaaaay more space dedicated than there was here, even just within the dealer’s room and artist’s alleys and not counting panels/events/etc. So this felt really conjested. I also was really displeased they didn’t allow re-entry, which I think would’ve helped spread the conjestion a bit; because of my migraines my body really needs to “eat proper meals” on a schedule, and since I had to skip lunch at my normal lunchtime and go all the way to dinner, I developed a migraine that night, which reeeeeeally sucked. I think the organizers of the Tea Festival should be a bit more flexible to allowing people to pop out for a meal and come back to the convention floor if they have their paid ticket, especially because there were tons of restaurants just downstairs, as well as seating (my feet were killing me being on them all day, as I also have plantar fasciitis!) and they had also offered next to no seating for attendees within the festival space, too. So while the vendor selection was great and the vendors were very friendly, the actual organization of the festival/crowd control/their no re-entry policy really bothered me. Also, someone pilfered my souvenir tasting cup while I was being rung up at a pu-erh vendor. I’m still sour about that. * sad face *

Now, onto the more awesome stuff!

I started off with a panel on Japanese teaware. I did know about the types of teaware, but enjoyed getting some history/areas of Japan famous for its production and other additional facts thrown in, as I love anything/everything I can absorb about Japanese culture. My friend is really into that sort of thing, too. I really love looking at pictures of pretty Japanese teaware, too. If I had more space in my tiny apartment, I’m sure I’d have more than I do (currently just a simple clay shiboridashi and a lovely ceramic dobin, both of which get a lot of use, and a fairly cheap matcha starter set which I’ve yet to attempt to use).

Then my friend Todd and I met up with Steepster-user Derk to explore the vendor floor! Thank you for meeting with us Derk, it was super fun! (And thank you so much for the sample of Whispering Pines Alice!)

So, let’s see if I can remember some of the teas and vendors that really stood out to me. I’ve been down with a migraine today, so my memory may be more shoddy than normal, but I’ll do my best!

Nepal Tea – I really liked the tea at this booth. I remember I quite enjoyed a cold-brewed oolong, and there was a white tea that tasted remarkably like a green that I enjoyed. I bought a sampler set that had eleven tea sachets in it, featuring a wide variety of blacks, greens, whites, and a few blends, and it came in this gorgeous zipper pouch which I think I’ll use to pack my teas in when I go on vacation. I don’t have very many Nepalese teas in my collection so I’m interested in sampling these.

Tillerman Tea – Every single oolong I tried at this booth was amazing. I didn’t buy anything here but will defintiely be adding them to my bookmarks to be trying out their stuff later!

Waterfall Tea Company – While I don’t normally do instant teas, I’m not opposed to it, and I actually really like DeDe’s instant Thai tea… and the instant chais these guys make are really good! The masala was fine, but the ginger was great because it wasn’t just “GINGER BURNING!” and the lemongrass was amazing, it smelled like Frootloops and even had a slight Frootloops milk taste to it! I may have to pick up a bag of that sometime, especially with snowy cocoa weather approaching.

Jade Chocolates – OH MY GOD, these chocolates were so good! I bought a Genmaicha chocolate bar, and Derk bought me a Coconut Paradise Green Tea chocolate truffle. (Tea infused chocolate! GENIUS!) It was delicious!

TeaCrush – Oh man, I got a tea crush on TeaCrush hard, and now I have a tea broken heart, because they are only in the Bay Area. No shipping anywhere. I spent a small fortune shipping three glass bottles of this iced tea home to myself (that I picked up in a local grocery before my flight home), and once they are gone… I don’t want to think about it. There are three flavors, Matcha Pineapple Coconut, Turmeric Ginger Pear, and Ginger Lemon Cayenne. They are all good, my favorite is Turmeric Ginger Pear with Matcha Pineapple Coconut a very close second. I absolutely adore this stuff! Anyone in the Bay want to start a side business selling this stuff on Amazon? I’m serious.

Tsuru no Maru – Had the best darn sencha I’ve ever tried. A nice vegetal flavor but wasn’t overpowered with seaweedy flavors, some hints of butteriness… just so good. Except they apparently aren’t selling it yet, they were using the festival to see how it would go over on the American market. The blend isn’t even named yet! And the website is still being worked on for sales. Boo! I have one sampler bag of the stuff. I would easily purchase this sencha! Hopefully they’ll get the website open for commerce and make this available, it’s amazing!

Denong – Probably the second thing that will revoke my tea license… I’ve never really like pu-erhs. I continue to try to warm up to them (and I will continue to do so) but somehow they just always end up “tasting like dirt” to me. But I really liked the ones at this booth. Even the really earthy shou was quite good. And the sheng here was probably the first sheng I’ve ever had that I liked (I’ve had some bad sheng experiences… they always end up tasting like swamp marshes or really smoky to me). I bought a 2018 sheng here called Cherishing Destiny and 30g of a black tea that was so good (oh man was it good), 2016 Denong Black Tea (it’s in such a pretty sakura floral canister, too).

Harney & Sons – Shoutout to H&S for being the one vendor with paper cups so I could keep tasting teas after someone stole my tasting cup when I was being rung up at Denong! Also, their Victorian Earl Grey was so good! I’ll have to pick up some sometime! Love the vanilla/lavender notes, but then, vanilla/lavender EGs is sort of my thing.

Esteemed Tea Collective – I really liked the tea at this booth, too! I got to sample the Four Seasons Oolong and the Honey Black Oolong and really liked both! Will have to keep them in mind (or at least those tea types in mind!)

Soba SF – I have had Soba mixed with green tea and really like it, it’s like a sweeter genmaicha to me, this is my first time trying plain soba tea, and it tasted like peanuts! Pretty nice. I’m a little sad they don’t sell a bancha/soba mix on their website since they did have that available for sampling at the Tea Fes, and ordering that within the US would be cheaper than me restocking it from Yunomi. Suppose I could always get the soba from them and blend it myself with a green tea, though… but it was surprisingly nice plain, too!

Wize Monkey – Another tea I’ve wanted to try for a while, coffee leaf tea! It was also quite nutty, it didn’t have the strong coffee notes of say, roasted barley (mugicha), but had some slight roasty coffee-ish notes, and I found it a bit like hazelnuts. I really liked it!

Young Mountain Tea – They had a black tea, Nepali Golden Black, that was really great! My friend actually bought this one, and he doesn’t horde tea like we all do, so you know it’s good! I’m definitely adding that one to my list for when my collection isn’t so crazy, because I wouldn’t mind having some myself… honestly if I hadn’t just bought the Denong Black Tea, I probably would’ve.

And as we’ve established I love Japanese things, there was a beautiful book there, The Bilingual Book of Japanese Tea by Per Oscar Brekell, which I purchased and got signed by the author. I like collecting tea books, but my library of them is still quite small and growing. This is a really nice book because it goes into all the cultivars of the leaves, something I’ve been trying to find more information about! (And will prove incredibly useful when shopping on Yunomi, no doubt). I really love it~ It is super informative on all types of Japanese tea, not just the “typical” ones, and it gets into some of the science of how Japanese teas get their particular flavors and some other geeky stuff like that. Lots on growing/production regions, teaware, if you like Japanese tea it’s great!

Also got a goodie bag with lots of samplers in it, which I will certainly get to in due time.

Gott’s Roadside: Had dinner here with Todd and Derk after the Tea Festival, and just wanted to mention I got an Arnold Palmer that didn’t taste like crap, as they typically always do when I order them in a restaurant, all syrupy and weak like the Iced Tea Lipton and generic lemonade that come off a soda fountain. It tasted like proper lemonade and the iced tea wasn’t super watery like I’ve run into before, and the proportions were good. Nice and sweet too.

My Tea Festival haul was admittedly rather restrained (a book, some pu-erh, and a Nepalese tea sampler bag), with most of the tea I got this trip being some small bags of herbs/teas from the co-op where I could control the sizing, an ounce from DAVIDsTEA, and probably the least restraint shown at Lupicia where I picked up five bags. All things considered, I’ve done much worse on other vacations, hopefully it won’t kill the cupboards too horribly!