This year the World Tea Expo was held at the Long Beach Convention Center, the same place as last year.
I was invited as a member of the press, thanks to Aaron Kiel of the ak PR Group.
Since I visited many booths, I will write this series in different parts.
First of all, I must say that I didn’t get to visit all the booths at the expo. There were just too many!
I had a list of the ones that I definitely wanted to visit (which included all the Japanese tea companies), but in the end I didn’t have the time so a few went missing.
Day 1 of the World Tea Expo
The first people I met were fellow tea bloggers, among them Jo Johnson of Scandalous Tea and Chris Giddings of Teaity.
I’ll tell you more about the rest of the bloggers later on, because we all met at an event inside the expo.
The first booth that caught my attention was The World Green Tea Association.
This association was established by the prefecture of Shizuoka, (the largest tea producing region of Japan) and has the goal of promoting green tea worldwide.
I talked with Hiroshi Nishikawa (manager) and Wataru Fukuda (researcher from Stanford University).
It was a good chance to practice my Japanese. Wataru was kind enough to join me for lunch so that we could chat some more.
Shizuoka prefecture also organizes the World O-Cha (Tea) Festival, which I haven’t been to but is definitely in my wish list 🙂
The event happens twice a year: spring and autumn. Next year it will be from May 13-15 and Oct 27-30.
At the third part of this shared booth there was Mitsui & Co.
This is a very large company, and in their food and beverages division they have a tea department.
In the picture you can see Takeshi Nakahara and Kazuya Matsumoto.
After that, I had a conference to attend.
Lenore Arab, a professor at UCLA, talked about antioxidants in tea. More specifically, that the health benefits of tea aren’t explained by antioxidants. In fact, there is no human evidence of beneficial physiological effect related to dietary antioxidants.
It was a very interesting topic. I will keep an eye on related research for a future post.
Next I visited Sugimoto America, where I talked with my friends Kyohei Sugimoto and Noli Ergas.
By the way, the day before I went to a Japanese restaurant with Noli, just like we had done last year. We had a fun time.
One of the teas offered for tasting was an ice-brewed gyokuro, which was delicious.
I also received a special edition fukamushi sencha from Sugimoto America. It comes from Kakegawa, Shizuoka prefecture.
Another familiar booth was Harney & Sons.
I was lucky enough to be offered a taste of their Unjonomoto matcha.
It was wonderful. I hope I can make a proper review of it in the future.
Thanks for reading until now. Part 2 of this series will continue my experience at the World Tea Expo.
May 12, 2015
Thank you very much for sharing your experience! It is great to read how your trip went and which people you had a chance meeting with. Honest to say, I am quite envious and would love to make it down to the exhibition myself in one of the following editions.
Looking forward to reading more soon.
May 12, 2015
Hi Tyas
Thanks for reading.
I hope to see meet you one day in the future so that we can attend the World Tea Expo together.
May 12, 2015
So glad you had an opportunity to attend the expo this year and share your experiences with those of use who couldn’t make it. I’m looking forward to reading the rest of your highlights!
May 12, 2015
Thank you Lu Ann, I hope that you enjoy the rest of the highlights as well.
May 12, 2015
What a great review of the day. I am so glad you made it and that you had the opportunity to try so many delicious teas. As I have said before it was a pleasure meeting you in person. I hope I’ll see you again soon and if ever in the Chicago area just know you’ll have a friend nearby. In other words you simply must visit.
May 12, 2015
Hi Rachel
It was very nice meeting you too.
I also hope that we can meet again. I’ve never been to Chicago but would like to visit one day.
May 13, 2015
So enjoyed your post. Looking forward to more.
Thanks for the mention
May 13, 2015
Hi Jo
It was very nice meeting you, let’s keep in touch.
May 19, 2015
I’m so glad to meet you and enjoy nice chat. I wish you can familiarize Japanese green tea in your country.
May 19, 2015
Hello Wataru
Thank you, I’m glad I met you too.
I’ll try hard to make tea Japanese tea more popular in my country.