Here’s the final installment of this three part recap to the activities and friends from this year’s expo!

Part 1 | Part 2 | Part 3

Day 3

Ouch! So much ground to cover in a single day! Seven rows and we’ve only finished four! I gues it helps I didn’t attend any educational sessions this year. This would have been a five page set instead! Maybe next year.

First stop when the doors opened? Special Teas! This group has some rather fine offerings. Then, on to Florapharm. A bright logo, good quality product and an interesting name. This German company is housed in the US near my old stomping grounds in Owings Mills, MD. They even had a real live samovar (see last photo)!

Special Teas

Special Teas

Special Teas

Special Teas

Florapharm USA

Florapharm USA's samovar

Next I hit Eco Vita who do supplements and vitamins. Not really my scene. Then was Eastrise Trading Corp. who had the banner for Foojoy, a great chinese company who I had a good rapport with last year. No, on to Rooibos, Ltd. This company obviously specializes in Rooibos related teas.

Further down the isle I hit AOI Tea which specializes in Matcha. I had a little formal ceremony sit down with a great little Japanese woman who whisked the tea up in a little bowl for me to drink. It was extremely good!

Next was Harney & Sons. Last year I was lucky enough to meet both Michael and John Harney at their booth. This year, the booth was considerably smaller and the Harney’s themselves weren’t present. I was a little disappointed.

AOI Matcha

Moving on I had the pleasure of hitting Sugimoto America again. They won an award this year for their greeting cards with a pretty sealed teabag in it based on the occasion. That was kinda neat.

Tavalon Tea was next. Their packaging is some of the more unique I think. Clear plastic that’s UV coated so you can see the tea is nice. What’s great is that unlike other UV plastic tins, these don’t just have a window in the tin to see the tea. The container is the window to see the tea.

Continuing, Stash Tea was the following stop. Most of us know Stash Tea from their tea bags sold in grocery stores and such. However, they have some great loose teas, and the new Chanakara line Cindy Harling showed me is really great, and available loose!

Oh My Gosh! PeLi Teas! The wonderful 2009 Pu’erh they had was equally pleasant in a tea bag as it was loose. Just incredible! Maeda-En was great as usual. With their Green Tea Mochi and their Iced Green Tea. Delicious!

What the heck is up with Sam Ritchey and his hair over at TeaGschwendner! That guys knows how to liven it up something real! A stop off at MarketSpice located in Pike Place in Seattle and a taste of Hojicha Gelee (which I’ll review down the road) at The Green Teaist and we close out the fifth row!

What a hectic run! But we’re only about a third of the way through our day! Will I be able to make it through the seventh row in time for closing? Follow along and we’ll see!

PeLi Teas

PeLi Teas

Maeda En

The Green Teaist

The Green Teaist

There’s a LOT going on here in the sixth row! Plenty to see. Let’s get started!

First stop? The Taiwan Tea Manufacturer’s Association. This is a conglomerated booth area made up of seven or eight Taiwanese tea companies all in one place. They’re almost independent of the expo! Too much to describe here. There’s lots of good stuff!

What’s this!?! Hawiian grown tea! I’ve known about the Hawaii projects for a while now, but it failed to register that anyone was close enough to production. Well, Liam Ball over at Na Liko Tea certainly is! The Hawaiian Oolong was spectacular. This is on top of being a first year production from plants just five years old! They really nailed it!

Tisano was next. They make cacao stuff. In this case their product is made from the outer shells of the cacao beans. This Equadoran product is pretty good actually and tastes like a hot chocolate but not as rich. The company actually helps in the picking and shipping processes for their product and gives some proceeds back to the community and growers from each sale.

Na Liko Tea from Hawaii

Na Liko Tea from Hawaii

Tisano Cacao Tea

Just across the split from Tisano… was Zealong, the New Zealand Oolong people. If you haven’t tried this stuff, seriously give it a go. I did. I’ll have a formal review up soemtime soon. Zealong has some of the best marketing this year I think, and their packaging is simply beautiful! Tulsi Organics across the walkway was another herbal beverages company. There seem to be plenty of these this year.

Time to take a peek at one of my favorite accessory makers… FORLIFE! Great looking stuff as always! Vibrant colors, unique styles. Good stuff.

On to Naivetea. I really like this brand’s identity. Clean and refined but with a slightly fancy augmentation. Always friendly, the couple who run this company are somehow calming to me. It could be the tea too, but there’s something about this fun pair from California!

Zealong New Zealand Oolong

Tulsi Organics

Naivetea

Next up? Hankook Tea who have some simple but nice packaging, and they’re representing Korean teas which are seriously under-represented in the industry. You go guys! On to Takeya USA! These guys make some really swell tea brewer jugs! Some of these are for chilled teas, and others are for hot teas. Some for large quantities and others for just a cup or two. You should check them out!

Keeping up the pace we have Shang Ri La Tea and Hancha Tea another company I remember from last year who has nice clean package design. A trip to Teas Etc. rounds out the 6th row. I mean what would the expo be without Beth and Newman Johnston!

Time for the final row already!?! The Expo can’t be over yet!?! I mean c’mon!

Takeya

Teas Etc

Teas Etc

Row seven is shorter and has less going on. I did run into Jason O. Walker from Walker Tea Review whom I met last year. If I’d been swifter maybe I’d have caught him before he was closing up. Maybe I could have even been in one of his review videos! That would have been killer!

A stop by the World Tea News booth was empty. All that was left was Torn Ranch.

I did make my way back to the International Tea Importers booth to grab a copy of the New Tea Dictionary and a photo-op with the author Mr. James Norwood Pratt.

Disappointed row 7 didn’t have more going on? Oh, fine! There was this row of new product displays. Maybe you’d like to see those, yeah? Here you go, I’ll leave you with these. I hope you enjoyed my coverage of the expo as much as I did getting to go again.

Me sniffing some Himalayan Tips

QTrade Teas & Herbs

Village Tea Mini Canisters

Tea friends Make a Toast

Tea Friends at Lotus of Siam for Dinner

ITO EN Bench Made of Recycled Tea

More Delicious Tea

David Smith Tea Blender

Friday is Black Tea, Floral Tea, Fruit Tea, Chai and Pu’erh Review Day!

Even though this tea is a Rooibos… I really consider it more of a fruit tea. Stash provided me bagged samples of their new Chanakara brand teas designed to target each of your seven primary chakras.

This tea was bagged, so it’s harder to jusge the colors, sizes of leaves and ingredients you can see, not to mention the vivaciousness of the aroma is more subdued before brewing. However, from what I could tell the bag was a little less than 1/3 filled and deffinitely with dust or fanning grade particles not as condusive to brewing a flavorful beverage.

This tea brews to a rather pretty honeyed amber-red. It really looks very good in a mug.

The aroma hints of hibiscus and raspberry but is extremely subtle. I really had to nose in to get the flavors from the smell.

Speaking of flavors… this tea tastes of dried strawberries, hibiscus blossoms, light raspberry and citrus flavors are also present.

This tea has a very light but protracted tail, creating a longing for more… like a soft sensual touch.

I wouldrecommend this tea to anyone who is a fan of fruity teas. You may want to brew it longer than recommended for more flavorful results.

Advertisement: Adagio Teas

In today’s first note, I wanted to share a fantastic post I found on Buddhism and Tea over at Hong Tea Dao! It’s amazingly insightful with lots of tasty delicious knowledge!

Stash Teas’ annual Guide To Bead And Breakfast Inns is around again this year. Inns participating in the program provide one night’s stay free when you book at least one night.

Botanical Bakery is offering some wonderful looking Fennel Pollen tea cookies inspired by the unfortunate passing of the owner’s father.

My friends over at The Village Tea Company are opening their first brick and mortar location! You should totally head out and support them if you’re in Dallas area!

If you buy gas for your favorite costly sipper or guzzler… and I’m sure most of us do… then drop by your local BP station and support their new private label bottled Ready to Drink (RTD) tea line! World Tea News has the scoop!

Help a good cause: CharityWater.org

What exactly spurred me to sign up for the World Tea Expo is something I can’t reveal much about at the moment, asside from the fact that it does indeed relate to The Project.

I learned something while out in Las Vegas… though it wasn’t related to gambling, adult inhibitions or travelling. Indelibly I learned that my greatest strength and passion is, and likely has always been, with people. What makes us tick individually. It turns out that this year’s World Tea Expo, for me, ended up being all about the people.

While Saturday certainly marked a wonderful close to a beautiful and full day of tea related adventues… it was the people I met that day which truly energized me. The wonderfully high quality teas and the colorful array of accessories were really only icing on the cake.

I ate breakfast Sunday at the Roundtable All-Day Buffet at the Excalibur. The buffet was just $25 to come and go for as many trips as you’d like within a 24 hour period. My dietician would have been aghast at the prospect if she knew… but what happens in Vegas, stays in Vegas… right? I actually ended up eating rpetty well there. Fruit, eggs and grapefruit juice were what appealed to me and I chose rather appropriate portion sizes. In case you’re wondering… I did go back for lunch and dinner… but I had a middle meal during a Tweetup I’ll mention later.

Sunday and Monday were where it was all at. Two more sessions: “Selling Your Tea Online Successfully” and “Creating A Menu With Cost & Creativity in Mind” bisected my morning and afternoon. Both presentations were steller! I couldn’t have been more pleased with the investment I made in paying for these two sessions.

Michael Cramer of Adagio Teas covered a wealth of great information related to community building… engaging and keeping your customers on your website and helping with conversion of simple visitors into customers who buy your products.

Melinda Decker, owner of LaTeaDa Tea Room in Clinton, IL provided an interesting presentation as well. While her ideas mostly focussed on her more traditional Victorian style tea house… she provided a number of robust and reusable ideas for making the most out of the materials you buy, simply by using the same ingredients to make multiple products… such as a cake, cobbler or pie being turned into a dessert in a glass.

I spent the rest of Saturday, literally networking with people. Hitting booths, talking people up over tea, getting my business cards handed out and really just getting to know people.

I ran into Jack Cheng of Steepster.com, Lindsey Goodwin of VeeTea, The fine guys over at Village Tea, Ty Beddingfield of Gamila… the inventors of the Tea Stick and a plethor of other completely wonderful folks on Sunday. Several of these folks, plus Ilya from Adagio Teas showed up for an evening Tweetup after the expo floor closed and we had some grub and drinks. In particular, Ty and I really talked for a while about ideas and things. A wonderful day.

After dinner Sunday night, I hit up Cherry, a dance club over in the Red Rock Hotel. This club was one hell of an experience! I thoroughly enjoyed the hours spent there dancing and admiring the crowd. I really get energized when a club is as alive as Cherry was that night. Rare I think, for a Sunday night.

Now it’s Monday morning. The sun is up… but I’ve been awake for hours already. To protect myself some from JetLag I have always tried to awaken as close to Eastern time as possible. I worked out in the rather meager (by my standards) health club in the Excalibur… an amazingly expensive $20 a day on top of the room bill.

After breakfast at the buffet again, I made my way over to the expo for some tea and my morning session: “Reaching Beyond Your Front Door For Additional Income” and then on to my afternoon session: “Price it Right & Sell it Smart.”

Ronald Eng of Kopius Teas put on a wonderful presentation. Very well spoken with great diction and clarity. His ideas were understandably expressed and he was very energetic about answering questions. A serial entrepreneur, Ronald had some great ideas and concepts to share.

Robert Hedrick of Holton & Heath also had some great insights on proper pricing, commodity vs exclusive and the power of branding potential. This was a also a very good presentation.

The rest of my “day” on Monday was spent scurrying around making my final connections with brands and companies, procurring more business cards in exchange for mine as an attempt to build more outlets and opportunities for me to grow with the tea industry over the next couple decades.

I did end up linking with Ronald Eng and Emilie Yanagi of Kopius Teas, the people at Zojirushi North America, a couple great folks over at TeasEtc, Maria Warman from Art of Tea and I cannot forget Nora of Golden Star Tea who has an amazing sparkling bottled tea beverage presented in a chapagne bottle!

At the end of the day I ran into May King of the new UK tea brand, MayKing Tea as well as a few other friends including Norman who is starting a tea garden in Hawaii! I ended up going out dancing with these two and we had a wonderful time out at Margaritaville down the strip after throwing back a few drinks at Liquidity, a bar in the Luxor Hotel & Casino.

I don’t want to leave anyone out… but I’m HORRIBLE with names… I ended up meeting several hundred people at the expo and coming away with some great friendships made over the three day event.

I have to recommend this event to anyone starting a new tea business, or anyone already in the industry!

I’ve already made the decision to head back to Las Vegas next year for another round of tea education. Maybe by then I’ll already have a small presence in the tea industry and be ready for some thoughts on expanding to becoming a tea brand. Here’s to the future!

Help a good cause: CharityWater.org

Monday is Teahouse/Tea Room, Accessory and Brand Review Day!

It’s been a week since the end of the World Tea Expo in Las Vegas and I’m still a little heady from the experience. Here’s a recap of my time at the Expo and my takeaway from the event.

Like most people, I don’t work in the tea industry. I make my living doing something else. For me it’s in technology in one form or another (I get around). For others it might be banking or retail work. Regardless of our backgrounds we all have limits on the time we can spend away from the office. You can imagine the general level trepidation I had in spending half my yearly vacation allotment (not to mention the monetary costs) to attend this industry only event almost an entire continent away!

Let me start by stating that Las Vegas has never been my kind of town. No offense to those who enjoy it. I’m not one for gambling, unless I’m starting a business… which is a gamble all its own. And while I can certainly get into pretty lights… all the sex advertising is overkill for me. So Vegas is clearly a bit absurd for me. But I follow the tea… and there the tea went.

Although the expo started on Saturday, I spent Thursday travelling to Vegas. This would give me time to rest up before the expo and explore the town a bit more than I’d had on my only previous visit to Vegas. I spent Friday walking up and down the strip photographing the architecture and window shopping in the stores. There’s plenty to see, even if you’re not out for the gambling or the gratuitous nudity everywhere.

Friday night I picked up my badge and packet for the expo to avoid the morning lines. I missed the opening ceremonies Saturday morning… something I’ve never really enjoyed much at other gatherings. I hear there was a very good breakfast there, and that would have been appreciated versus the $9.70 I ended up paying for a bowl of fruit and some yogurt at the Red White & Blue restaurant in the Mandalay Bay hotel where the expo was held.

Right off the bat I had a session Saturday morning. The first was held by James Norwood Pratt on the Myths & Legends of Tea. Of the six sessions I had at this year’s expo this was probably my favorite. Mr. Norwood clearly and entertainingly discussed the real world drawbacks of concentrating too heavily on the oft complicated and confusing (not to mention long and growing) list of health benefits of tea. Also covering modern societies’ general loss of the ability to tell and listen to stories, Mr. Pratt was captivating and educating all at once. If you have the opportunity to read one of his myriad of books, I highly recommend it.

Also on Saturday I had a panel called “Educating Your Customer,” hosted by Michael Harney of Harney & Sons. If you frequent this site you’ll note a number of Harney & Sons reviews here for both hot and iced teas. After Mr. Pratt’s amazing presentation I had very high standards for this followup. However, as much as I admire Mr. Harney and what he and his family’s company have done for the industry over the years, he needs some improvement in the presentation skills arena. Looking past lots of “umms” and “ahhs” flowing through the presentation, Michael Harney gave a good presentation discussing the intricacies of staff training and engaging customers in their education process.

I hit the show floor after this and spent a whole lot of time (6+ hours) networking and meeting people. I’m a bit of a talker, so I got stuck at several booths discussing their teas, company histories and other things along the way. You would think so much time would have allowed me to meet lots of people, but I don’t think I even finished a full row of booths on Saturday out of the seven or eight total rows.

I ended up visiting with ITI (International Tea Importers) right through the door, then moving on to the Harney & Sons booth and speaking with both Michael and John Harney. Both gentlement are uniquely and fantastically knowledgeable about tea and I had been very much looking forward to interacting with them. I also ran into Tea Escapade, another blogger, while at this booth.

I also met with Rona Tison of ITO EN and learned they have been recycling their used plastic bottles and used tea leaves to make other goods. While I found making their business cards of these materials to be a natural extension of things… they also fashion pens, park benches and vending machines out of the plastics and tea leaves! Completely fascinating!

Saturday evening brought the World Tea Championships out. Far and away Rishi Tea took the most awards… walking away with NINE (9) first place wins and numerous runner up positions across multiple categories. I was most excited to see a relative newcommer with Puripan taking away a win. I’ve long been upset at the seemingly clear bias against Korean teas in the industry. I’m very excited to these teas to receive recognition!

Saturday brought many new relationships into my life… but Sunday and Monday were yet to come. Visit back next Monday for a recap of the final two days of my time at the World Tea Expo (WTE).

Help a good cause: CharityWater.org