For those of us who live in Boulder, having one of our tea houses host the Rocky Mountain Tea Festival seems pretty normal and self evident. For those of you who don’t, I’ll explain why we wouldn’t be surprised about having this event in our hometown. Boulder is known for its outdoorsy, health conscious, green style living. The stigma of Boulder is that we ride around on bikes, holding our reusable to-go cup of coffee (or tea), carrying a backpack filled with hiking boots and granola. This image might be a little bit extreme, but it is true that here in Boulder, everything health conscious is a lot more easily accessible, including loose leaf tea.
Actually, my first loose leaf tea experience was right here in Boulder at The Book End Cafe (featured here on the left). I walked into the coffee shop in the fall two years ago, taking some down time to go and read a book, but before I ordered I realized I just didn’t want a cup of coffee. I asked about their tea selections and they handed me a huge sheet filled with with so many varieties of tea, many that I had never even heard of, that I couldn’t decide. I told them what I typically drank and what I didn’t and they suggested that I try their rooibos tea. I was not sure of what that was, but I decided to give it a try, and I loved it!
The tea tasted amazing, rich, not bitter (like so many of my tea experiences in the past) and from that day on I would drink loose leaf tea if I wasn’t in the mood for coffee and even make cambricks (aka tea lattes) as a substitute for my latte craving. I’m not sure even if I tried that I could find tea bags being served in Boulder!
All of that back story is really to lay out the scene that loose leaf, high quality tea is prevalent in Boulder and therefore makes sense that the Rocky Mountain Tea Festival would be hosted by the Dushanbe Tea House here in Boulder. The Dushanbe Tea House has a wonderful history all of its own (that will be an entirely separate blog for another time) and while they carry a expansive tea catalog of their own, they are happy to host the Tea Festival and represent many other tea businesses and professionals in the area.
During the tea festival which runs from the morning of August 1st to the evening of August 2nd, there will be vendors, such as ourselves, demoing our teas and selling our products, but there will also be many tea tastings and classes for the public to take part in. I have never attended this event (being that I was hired in October of last year) so it will be very interesting for me to see the atmosphere and the public who love loose leaf tea as much as we do!
If you would like to attend and want to find out more about the classes and the schedule, check out this link https://www.boulderteahouse.com/ for more information. And if you would like to find out more about the teas and products that we will be featuring at the show, come visit us on the website at www.theteaspot.com or email me at sales@theteaspot.com!