One month back I wanted to share a short guide to some of the public resources available for learning about coffee in the Northwest. In finding a cornucopia of said resources, I also found equally passionate tea professionals eager to share the same sort of knowledge. In a continuation on the theme of getting a full-range Northwest caffeine education, the following are a few fantastic ways to learn about tea.
Summer of Tea Fun at Silk Road, Vancouver – Besides providing the Northwest’s first tea tasting bar – an educational experience unto itself with workshops, comparative specialty tea flights, and a made-to-order Chinese tea ceremony – Vancouver’s Silk Road is putting on a Summer of Tea Fun series of free weekly classes there. Friday night is Summer Tea Transformations, featuring warm weather recipes for tea sangrias, popsicles, slushies, sodas and more. On Saturday evenings you’ll walk into Tea and Chocolate Pairing classes, and every “Sunday Funday” morning until Labor Day you’ll get more recipes, from tea lemonades to lattes to a handy tea hangover remedy.
Bi-Monthly Classes at B. Fuller’s Mortar & Pestile, Seattle – This hipster-hip Modern Herbal Apothecary was begun to help people form “deeper relationships with the plant kingdom.” Offering educative tea and tisane samplers for purchase, B. Fuller’s also invites the community into the shop for bi-weekly tea classes and workshops plus frequent “Tea Par-Teas.” The owners, with strong background in specialty coffee, have set out to make tea fun, teaching on topics like “Bringing Third Wave Coffee Innovation and Excitement to Tea” and taking events like “Tea Dueling” to relevant places like gaming shops.
Beverage Seminars at O5 Rare Tea Bar, Vancouver – B. Fuller’s isn’t the only team optimistic about the possibilities for “Third Wave Tea”: O5 Rare Tea Bar treats wholesale inquiries as an opportunity to provide consultancy on just that theme. They also offer interdisciplinary public classes that go beyond classic tea to include kombucha, wine, vinegars, cacao and even sake.
School of Sacred Tea Arts at Heaven’s Tea, Portland – Run from his private home in Southeast Portland, proprietor and tea appassionato Paul Rosenberg brings a complex background in Eastern meditation, art curation and gourmet cookery to his teachings of Cha Dao (The Way of Tea). He offers several paid workshops per month: July’s include Tea Hikes in Oregon’s old growth forestland, tea meditation sessions and a comparative seminar on a range of rare aged Puerh teas.
Tea Academy at JagaSilk, Victoria, B.C. – Equal parts tea bar, wholesaler and tea academy, an epicentral part of Victoria’s cutting-edge tea scene is JagaSilk, offering an entire academic calendar and credit system focusing especially on maccha preparation. Intro to Maccha, Basic Cupping, Baking with Maccha, Water & Tea, Maccha Latte Art, and “Macchartist: Certification 1 & 2” are only a sampling of the courses offered at $30 per credit. Paid educative field trips to places like the tea gardens of Japan are also on the docket.
