behomeforT: Sydney Tea Festival

You all know I love tea. I love tea so much! I have a whole tea cupboard at work with at least 20 different types of tea. Then I also have a whole tea cupboard at home. I love all kinds of tea! Black tea (flavoured especially), green, white, rooibos, jasmin. ALL kinds of tea!

It's such an addiction. I cannot stop buying tea! One of the main reasons why I drink a lot of tea is because I do not like water. Water is boring and plain and cold. Back home I drank a lot of tea because I was cold (all the time...) and tea warms you up. Here in Sydney it can get chilly in winter, but in spring, summer and autumn it's usually warm, hot, or boiling (I hate it!!). I still drink tea when it's hot (especially at the office where the air conditioning is fully switched on during summer).

So when I heard that Sydney was putting on its first tea festival I was super excited. Tea, tea and more tea. And some cakes. And cookies. And teapots. And teacups. I was in heaven!! It wasn't surprising that I came home with a big bag of all different kids of tea. I also purchased a 3 month tea membership from Mr Earl. I was able to take one sample home and now I am writing this I have received my first Tea delivery! This month's teas are McIver's Miners Tea, Immunit-T from Evergreen Tea and Impala & Peacock Turkish Delight tea. I am drinking the Turkish Delight now as I am writing this, but I made the mistake of using a massive teapot with just a little bit of tea, so the tea doesn't have a very strong flavour. Hardly any flavour at all actually. Next time I will make a cup of tea and see how that goes. In any event, I am looking forward to trying these teas. The delivery included tasting notes and some more information about the tea makers.

Mr Earl gave me a very special Genmaicha (popcorn tea). Read more about this tea here. I had no idea what to expect here. I mean... popcorn tea?! It's not what you think. This tea is a savoury, nutty and mild tea. It smells and tastes a bit like peanuts, and is quite creamy. It is difficult to describe so give it a go for yourself. No sugar, no milk. Just the tea. This one is definitely on my favourite tea list now.

From the Berry Tea Shop I bought a Madame Grey and a Rooibos Chai. The Madame Grey has pieces of orange in it and is very fruity. A bit too tart for me. I like my earl grey teas strong but not too fruity. Too bad. The rooibos chai is super nice. If you like to have a tea after dinner but you don't want to have caffeine, then a rooibos tea is what you need. The chai flavour made it a nice sweeter tea to drink. Almost a dessert!

From Heilala I bought some beautiful vanilla sugar. It was meant to go in my cakes and slices, but I am now using it in my tea. It makes tea nice and sweet and gives vanilla flavoured tea an extra vanilla kick! Once Sydney is heating up again I will be using this for my homemade iced coffees.

My favourite tea is tea drop tea. You may have seen this brand in a few cafe's in Australia. Their supreme earl grey tea is my favourite tea of all times. The tea is strong, has a lovely bergamot flavour and is not too sweet. The flavour has a beautiful depth to it. I got to take a few super cute samples, including a honeydew green which was amazing (I will be buying more of that - beautiful sweet melon flavour).

A brand that I had never seen before is Harney & Sons Fine Tea . By the time I arrived at their stand almost all of their teas had sold out. Such beautiful tea tins! I bought a pomegranate oolong tea (green) which turned out to be super refreshing and not too sour. I may use this to make some ice tea in the summer. I also bought some vanilla tea and some chocolate mint tea (after lunch/dinner treat)

I cannot wait for the next tea festival and I'm sure that I will finish these teas long before next year's tea festival.