Seattle - A Tea Town Part 2

After teaching classes for The Specialty Tea Institute, I attended the Northwest Tea Festival.  It is a two day event that is open to the public.  There are booths where you can buy new teawares and tea.  There are also two days filled with classes to learn about all things tea.  

I taught a Tea and Chocolate Pairing class using fine teas and pairing them with Guittard Chocolate bars with different percentages of cacao in each.  One of the pairings even included a single origin tea with a single origin chocolate-very special!  After my class, I had a book signing at the Perennial Tea Room booth.

In between teaching and book signings, I found time to look around.  It was fun to sit at the Shizuoka Tea booth with Pearl Dexter leading a tea tasting event. We had to taste two teas separately and then tell if they were the same or different.  It was challenging and fortunately, as the pressure was on, I answered correctly!

After a morning back at the tea festival, Sunday afternoon was devoted to a day of tasting wine. I went on a wine tour of boutique wineries. Yes, this tea gal likes wine too!  Tea and wine are more similar than you may think.  I use a lot of references to wine when I am teaching about tea so it was very apropos to have a day of tasting wine after so much tea tasting!

Our first stop was Covington Cellars for a lovely lunch and wine pairing. We walked into the room and all the candle light danced off the glass stemware for the tasting.  The wine barrel room looked magical just lit by candlelight and small strands of little white lights!

The lunch was delicious and I highly recommend if you are in the area going to one of their events. The Gorgonzola Chocolate Truffles with Savory Candied Almonds were amazing to say the least.  They say they will be packaging them for sale soon!

Our last stop on the tour was a small tasting room for Darby Wines.  I just loved the lighting they had along one side of the tasting room.  This would be a easy project for someone to do.  Just cut out holes in some stained wood and build a box deep enough to hold bottles.  The lighting behind it was just a fluorescent tube. 

It was a fun tour and tasting.  I did find some unique wines to purchase.  Stayed tuned next week as I take you to some tea rooms, Pike's Market, and Puget Sound.  Have I made you want to go visit Seattle yet?

Happy Sipping Tea and Wine, Lisa

Tea and Chocolate - A Perfect Pairing

Tea and chocolate are two of my favorites things and combining them together for a pairing is so delicious.  I had the privilege a few weeks ago to present a mini Tea and Chocolate Pairing Workshop at America's Mart International Gift Show in their new Gourmet Kitchen with Beth Johnston from Teas Etc! 

 There were many celebrity chefs there and in fact, Alton Brown from the Food Network was our opening act as my husband likes to jokingly tell people.  It is true that Alton Brown was there just before us signing his books, but I am sure he didn't schedule himself to be our opening act. 

If you own a business, you might have attended the America's Mart in Atlanta before for their gift show either in January or July.  If don't own a business and not familiar it, it is three high-rise buildings packed full with everything a store owner needs to sell such as rugs, apparel, gifts, gourmet food, and books to name a few.  I am told that is is the largest gift mart in the country and is the place to purchase products for your store.  Every time I go, I am overwhelmed with the amount of things available and wonder how in the world businesses narrow down their list to buy products. 

I have used Teas Etc teas for several of my events and the quality is always top-notch.  This was the first time that Beth and I have presented something together and it was quite fun to have her professional input on each tea I chose for the pairing and her personal insight into each growing region. 

We paired three different types of chocolate with 2 teas each and asked the audience which pairing they preferred.  It was also fun to see some familiar faces in the audience of tea business owners that I knew!  For the dark chocolate pairing, I made up a batch of my Easy Chocolate Truffle Recipe from my first book, Tea with a Twist, and it was a hit. 

Following the event, Beth Johnston offered further tea and chocolate pairings at her showroom just a few steps away from the gourmet kitchen.  Beth was also gracious to invite me to her booth after our presentation for a book signing.

If you are a tea business and are interested in attending one of my Tea and Chocolate Pairing Seminars, I will presenting an extended workshop at the World Tea Expo in June.  It will be an extensive workshop on learning how to taste and pair and I will be using Teas Etc teas again for the event.   If you are interested in having me come speak at an event please contact me.  If you are interested in coming to one of my events, please be sure to check out my schedule as I am adding events all the time. 

Happy Sipping and Tasting!