Northwest Tea Festival Nears

Tea festivals are enjoying a resurgence, basking in the renewed enthusiasm of health-conscious consumers and the joy of imbibing quality tea. The 14th Annual Northwest Tea Festival draws tea enthusiasts to Seattle for two educational and fun days at the Seattle Center on September 28th and 29th. The Northwest Tea Festival has a rich history in tea, evolving from a small local event to become the foremost social gathering for tea lovers in a region known for its beverages.

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Founders Doug Livingston and Julee Rosanoff chat with Tea Biz Podcast Host Dan Bolton
Founders Doug Livingston and Julee Rosanoff chat with Tea Biz Podcast Host Dan Bolton

How it Came About

Julie Rosanoff is a pioneer in specialty tea dating to 1990 when she co-founded the Perennial Tea Room near the Seattle waterfront. In 2004, Julee hosted tea-themed dinners there, with author Norwood Pratt narrating the story of teas as courses were served. Tastings and special events led to the founding of the Puget Sound Tea Education Association and the region’s first tea party featuring Barnes & Watson, Teahouse Kuan Yin, Tea Geek (Michael Coffey), Sa Tea, Village Yarn & Tea, and Choice Organic Tea. Inspired by the mass tastings hosted by Bay Area tea firms for the 50,000 foodies attending the first Slow Food Nation in September 2008, the Northwest Tea Festival, a not-for-profit venture, launched to wide acclaim later that month.

Dan: The Northwest Tea Festival is a genuine specialty tea experience, a social gathering of respected speakers and vendors with a delightfully appreciative audience. Julee, tell us what inspired you to get involved in hosting the event.

Julee: Author and tea expert Norwood Pratt inspired me to start the festival. He attended a meeting of several key vendors in Seattle then, and he said that no one was celebrating the 400th anniversary of the House of Orange importing tea to Amsterdam, which is the origin of orange pekoe. So we said, We’ll do it, and we spent a year sorting it out, and the following year, we had our first tea festival, and we’ve had them every year since then, except for COVID, where we were down for three years. Now we’re back.
I didn’t know what would happen the first year we did it. The most exciting thing for me was having 500 people standing in line waiting to get in that first day, all having a wonderful time. I think we only had about seven booths, and it was a wonderful thing. Everybody had a good time. And they all said, We want to come back, please do it again.

On the morning of the first day, there is a line out the door, down the street, and around the block, and it is just fabulous to see all these people waiting to have tea.

That’s how it started.

Founders Doug Livingston and Julee Rosanoff with Author Norwood Pratt
Founders Julee Rosanoff and Doug Livingston with Author Norwood Pratt
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Northwest Tea Festival

Northwest Tea Festival | Seattle Center: Exhibition Hall
301 Mercer Street, Seattle, WA 98109
Saturday, September 28 – 10 am – 4 pm
Sunday, September 29 – 10 am – 4 pm

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Dan Bolton
Editor | Publisher | Podcaster | Consultant | Journalist Dan is the founder of Tea Journey Magazine, the Tea Biz Podcast and Blog, and a contributing editor at STiR coffee and tea. He is the former editor and publisher of Tea Magazine, former editor and publisher of World Tea News, and former editor-in-chief at Specialty Coffee Retailer, then headquartered in San Francisco. Dan has traveled the tea lands, speaking on retail beverage trends in Canada and the United States and at conferences in Europe, China, India, Australia, the Middle East, South America, and Africa.
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