Tea Tasting Event in Downtown Portland

Hi!

This is my first post in this newsgroup, so I should start by saying "Nice to meet you" and introducing myself a little. My name is Troy Howard. I recently moved to the Portland area. Before that, I lived in China for a year, working as an English teacher. While I was there, I met my wonderful fiance LinLin. One of the things we enjoyed doing was going to the large wholesale markets and perusing the goods, finding good deals and interesting items. One day we found the tea market, and spent the whoel day going from tea shop to tea shop looking at all the different varieties of tea and tea pots. Before this, I really had no real experience with tea. I had a vague notion that Jasmine tea was scented with flowers and that Green tea was "less processed" than black tea, but otherwise I was completely ignorant. We returned to the tea markets very frequently, to enjoy the good conversation and incredible hospitality of the tea merchants, who would let us sample any variety of tea, and talk at end about the difference between the types of tea and processing methods. We built some very good relationships with the tea marchants, learned a lot about tea, and built a great love for the beverage.

Well, a few months ago, due to my mother's unsteady medical situation, I decided to return to America (and start the VISA/Immigration process for my fiance). I only brought a small amount of tea back with me, figuring.. you know.. it's America... We have EVERYTHING. I can just buy some tea when I run out... Maybe at the Chinese grocery store, or a specialty tea shop or something.

Well, unfortunately that's not very true. I went to many places and finally landed at Tao of Tea. To be completely honest, I respect them very much for doing what they are doing, but I was quite shocked at the limited selection, mediocre quality, lack of freshness to the product, and very high prices at that shop. Even more surprising was the selection available at the Chinese grocers I went to. To put it simply, I have been unable to find any genuinely high quality Chinese teas here. Maybe I need to search more.. but I have an easier solution!

I asked my fiance to go down to the tea vendors we visited so often, buy some tea, and ship it to me.

This was mostly for my own use, but it became pretty obvious that people around me were really interested in having high quality tea too, and even more obvious that people just want to learn about it.

So.. I have decided to write a small book about tea, and do some small scale reselling. I'm not a business, just a private individual. I'm not going to deal with cases or other large quantities, just smallish amounts like.. a pound or less. And I'm not going to package them in fancy tins that add to the price, or mark them up 5-10 times the amount they cost me.

Well that was a lengthy introduction to what I really wanted to post about which is this:

I'm going to have a small private tea tasting event on Sunday, January 8th. It will be held at a small sushi restaurant in downtown Portland. There will be a sushi chef making some nice nibbles to accompany the tea. It will be free. I will have 33 varieties of high quality Chinese teas on hand, and we'll try to taste as many as we can.

I can't invite too many people. The sushi chef works at the restaurant and offered to host the event in exchange for some tea, but I don't want to stretch the limits of his hospitality. I want to have about 8-12 people there, plus myself and the sushi chef, who will be enjoy the tea with us. Right now there are 4 people on the list, so I'm hoping to find 4-8 more people to attend.

I know there are at least two regular posters here from the Portland area (stePH, crymad), and I hope some more.

Also, I want to make it very clear that this is NOT a commercial interest. I'm not a business. I'm not asking you to come so I can sell things to you. I mostly want people's opinions, and reactions to these teas to help me write the book I'm working on, and I just want to meet other people with similar interests to me, since I'm new to this city. If you DO want to have access to some of these teas on a regular basis, I can have my fiance send some over you. I can't ship very much at a time because after a certain point the governments of both China and America want me to pay taxes and tariffs and incorporate a business and all this other crap that I don't want to do.

So, if you're interested in sampling some tea, having some good sushi, I'd love for you to attend. Just email me to confirm, and I'll give you the details for the event.

Thanks, Troy Howard snipped-for-privacy@yahoo.com .

Reply to
Troy Howard
Loading thread data ...

By trying the Greeks got into Troy. Took them 10 years though.

JB

Reply to
danube

Troy peers down to look at his stomache, pokes it a few times, looks down his throat in the bathroom mirror and says, "Well, I don't see any Greeks in there!"

Well.. I won't be eating any horses anytime soon!

.
Reply to
Troy Howard

Hi, Troy. I emailed you about my interest in this. Contact me if there's still a seat available.

--crymad

Reply to
crymad

Troy Howard wrote in news:mzfsf.8$Pt6.713 @news.uswest.net:

Portland, Maine or Portland, Oregon?

Reply to
Larry Weil

Oh, sorry! I forgot about the other one. Portland, Oregon. .

Reply to
Troy Howard

DrinksForum website is not affiliated with any of the manufacturers or service providers discussed here. All logos and trade names are the property of their respective owners.