During the past weekend of 24th and 25th of October, Nomad Tea Festival Europe was celebrated online.
At the festival, participants could virtually visit different tea vendors, chat with them, see their teas or listening to their presentations. Among the exhibitors, 3 of them specialise exclusively on Japanese teas: Yunomi, Sono Organic and The Japanese Tea Hub.
There were also many interesting workshop to follow, with different topics of the wide tea world; surprisingly, 5 of those were on tea in Japan!
Our talk was about tea in Japan and Europe: Simona talked about the history of Japanese tea in Europe, the countries which most import Japanese teas nowadays, the shops and cafes specialised on Japanese teas but also about the issues encountered and the difficulties of the sector right now.
The other workshops focused on Japanese Tea were:
- “Japan, more than green tea”, by Priscila Vázquez Ruilova from Casita de Té, who talked about black, oolong and fermented Japanese teas;
- a Japanese tea ceremony (Omotesenke school), by Alba Ameller, who not only did a beautiful ceremony demonstration but also a talk about the utensils used in tea ceremony;
- “Introduction to sencha”, by Ricardo Caicedo, who has been writing for years an extensive blog on Japanese tea;
- “The most boring tea business talk ever”, by Ian Chun of Yunomi, who exposed in very detail the steps, tips and things to consider for a tea business, from his direct experience
Last but not least to mention: quite a few of our members participated in this festival: it was very nice to see the tea community gathering despite all the physical distance!
Our congratulations to Soo and Xenia for organising this great event!