Just over a week ago, I was lucky enough to visit the new Prague tea festival. Organiser Agha (@fluffies.and.tea on instagram) did such a phenomenal job to organise the festival in the beautiful location: tea vendors and tea ware artists from all over Europe lining the walls with their tables of what I imagine to be spacious dance halls with their ornate high ceilings.
With such a rich tea culture in Prague, it makes sense that there is space for a second annual tea festival. Apparently the late February date for an indoor tea festival makes perfect sense as I have not previously seen so many tea lovers from all over Europe come together for a tea festival.
There was a rush on the Saturday February 25th opening morning to all the teaware ceramicists stalls to check out their freshly baked tea pots, cups, plates, pitchers.. which contrasted to a very relaxed Sunday which lent itself more to just enjoy drinking tea at the different vendors’ tables.
Areek Sanders from Rishe Tea was the main representative for Japanese teas, brewing many different teas. Just sitting at his table we tasted a coldbrew kukicha, gyokuro, wakoucha & a Japanese oolong.
Apart from the stands in the 4 different halls/rooms, there was a seperate podium for talks & presentations. Possibly the most popular presentation was held by Flora Grimaldi, who spoke about chanoyu, and demonstrated preparing a bowl of usucha.
The Prague tea fest was a fantastic success, and organiser Agha has already booked the same location for the last weekend of February next year. I absolutely recommend to visit it next year!
*Text and images by our Tea Fellow member Marjolein Raijmakers. You can follow Marjolein on her instagram account.