Toronto Tea Festival 2019 Recap and Thoughts

I’ve returned to my cozy home with a tote bag (or two!) filled with new tea goodies and I’m finally ready to chat about how the Toronto Tea Festival 2019 weekend went! It was a three day festival, however, I was only able to catch it for two days (Saturday + Sunday). Arriving Saturday morning I spent the first bit of the festival walking through the vendor area with my tote bag in one hand and my glass tasting cup in the other. That cup was almost always full. No shortage of tea, ever and I have all the amazing vendors to thank for that! Here’s a recap of the tea filled (essentially tea drunk) weekend.

The festival was held at the same location it has been held the last few years, the Toronto Reference Library. It’s so fun that it takes place in book heaven, because tea and reading go hand in hand. The venue is a gorgeous setting and also quite accessible.

Toronto Tea Festival 2019 Vendors

With 52 different vendors this year, there was a lot of teas to sample, people to connect with and purchases to be made. I tried my best to make it around to all the vendors. Other years it was difficult to do so because I filled my time with presentations and the venue was packed, making it a challenge to get through. However, with the additional space this year, it was easy to pop through from one vendor to another immediately.
I really love that the Toronto Tea Festival has been attracting vendors from around the world lately! This year we had vendors from Vancouver, California and even India, in addition to more local ones, of course.

I decided that I’m going to do a separate vendor post that highlights some of my favourites from the weekend, similar to what I did last year. So, stay tuned for The Unofficial 2019 Toronto Tea Festival Awards.

Presentations

I didn’t focus too much on presentations this year. In the past, I always found myself scrambling to try to make it to the speaker room for presentations because there were just so many I wanted to try to see. I decided to tackle this time around a bit differently because I wanted to focus more on the vendors and interactive workshops. Also, for more space, the speaker room was moved to a different floor than the vendors, so I didn’t want to leave the main area often.

What I’m really trying to say is that I actually only attended one presentation this year! I made a point to catch Zhen Tea’s full presentation on The Unknown of a Well-Known Tea: Pu’er and Its Ageing.

Zhen is the owner of Zhen Tea, a fabulous tea company that focuses on Chinese teas and tea education. They are based in Ottawa, but their tea shop is online if you want to check it out.

Her presentation focused on, yes, you guessed it, puer teas. She opened up her talk with a news article about a $600,000 tea cake from 1910. Spoiler alert: she did not advise anyone to go out and buy it. This was a great opening to the topic of counterfeit puer, which she discussed more of later on. She then briefly went over the differences between shou and sheng and went over the forms of puer:

• Bing (cake)
• Zhuan (brick)
• Tuo (puck/ball)

She also went over descriptions of puer, and how leaf size only describe the size of the leaf, nothing else about the puer like the age.

• Da Ye / Big Leaf  –> Leaf Size
• Da Shu / Big Tree –> Plant Size
• Lao Shu / Old Tree –> Plant Age, 100 years-ish
• Gu Shu / Ancient Tree –> Plant Age, 200 years and older

As mentioned, she touched based on counterfeit puer. This was great to hear about because I had missed the presentation by Tillerman Tea the day before that was all on this topic. I appreciate that she included some examples of puer for sale online and shared the listing and prices to make the audience more aware of what is out there. Her advice was to avoid anything that is year 1980 and before.

The one thing Zhen reiterated throughout her presentation was to drink what you can afford. It’s your money and all that matters is that you enjoy the tea you purchase. Puer can be more expensive but that doesn’t mean you have to purchase something out there that is listed for thousands of dollars to get good tea.

Zhen’s presentations are always a blast to listen to, and this time around she provided vlogs from herself and Phil’s tea travels to learn from both of their perspectives. She’s really great at sharing information in ways that is easy to understand.

Tea Ceremonies

Two different ceremonies were presented multiple times throughout the festival weekend:

– The Japanese Tea Ceremony by Austin Wong
– The Chinese Tea Ceremony by Sabrina Chen

The Japanese Tea Ceremony was similar to previous years where it began with an overview on the history of the ceremony, the tools and tea (matcha) being used, and how to accept and drink the bowl of matcha. Austin did a great job performing the ceremony, and even had an audience member come up to enjoy the matcha he prepared.

The Chinese Tea Ceremony was presented a bit differently this time around.
Sabrina was joined by two others who also performed their own ceremony at the same time. One performed with a gaiwan set still, but steeped a puerh from her family, and another performed a grandpa style tea ceremony, using just tall clear glasses which were perfect for the green tea she steeped.

Each tea ceremony was done so gracefully, and it was neat to see different styles all at once. It was a perfect representation of the fact that there is more than one way to enjoy tea, and you don’t need a lot of fancy tea ware to do so!

Workshop + Competition

The Toronto Tea Festival committee seems to always look for new ways that they can get the attendees involved. This year they held a Chinese Tea Ceremony Workshop. This workshop was on a first come, first serve basis. There were spots for about 20 participants but it was also open to everyone as the workshop began with an introduction on the history, rituals and how-to of an authentic Chinese Tea Ceremony. Afterwards, the participants were paired up and each got a gaiwan set, tea and kettle to practice gongfu with the help from MING tea, the hosts of the workshop.

My best friend from college happened to be my partner and it was her first time using a gaiwan. After a few spills, and fumbles she got the hang of properly holding the gaiwan to prepare, serve and appreciate tea.

Also, instead of the Tea IQ competition from previous years, they hosted a Steep Off Competition which was kind of similar to the Tea Masters Cup. Five contestants registered in advanced to compete. In front of a celebrity tea judge (in my case it was Kevin Gascoyne of Camellia Sinensis) and an audience of tea lovers, the contestants had to perform a gongfu tea ceremony.

We were given a mystery tea, gaiwan, pitcher and water to prepare 4 steeps that would be served to the judge and audience. They had to vote for their favourite based on taste. The contestants were responsible for putting the appropriate amount of tea leaves in the gaiwan. I often prepare tea for myself, and occasionally others, but there is definitely something different about preparing tea for an audience that is watching to judge! It was a really great experience and I look forward to seeing how this new competition will evolve next year.

My Hopes for Toronto Tea Festival 2020

Rearranging the vendor area so there would be more space for attendees was a wise idea. I enjoy the Toronto Reference Library location and wouldn’t want it to move from there so I’m happy to see they made it work this year. Hosting the festival for three days instead of two also helped with the crowds, so I anticipate it may be like that again in 2020.

I hope to see more a lot more workshops in the future! The one that was held throughout the weekend always had a great turn out. As much as I love presentations, interactive workshops are a better way to learn about tea.

Some ideas are a tea blending workshop and a matcha making workshop (or a matcha whisk off competition!).

In regards to competitions, the Steep Off one is more than welcome to return! However, it would be neat to have the celebrity tea judges vote for their favourite steep, and then have an audience favourite, instead of lumping the two different votes together for one winner.

Shout out to Connie of Tea in Spoons for putting up with me the entire weekend, and occasionally, getting in the way of my photos with her own camera, haha. Be sure to visit her blog and be on the look for her own recap of the weekend. I look forward to seeing her and everyone else next year 🙂

Did you attend the Toronto Tea Festival 2019? I would love to hear your thoughts in the comments below.