Thai Coffee and Tea Fest Expo

 

I recently attended a Thailand Coffee and Tea Fest Expo, in the Queen Sirikit Convention Center.  Typically those events aren't worth attending, related to specialty tea interest, but I had a good experience once meeting an owner of the Kokang Myanmar tea producer so it's easy to be more hopeful than expectations can support.  That was an event up at Impact, an hour north of city center, probably listed as the Thailand Coffee Fest here, not even mentioning tea in the event title.  That event summary article author was not aware of this event planning.

The short version is that it was a bust; there was no Chinese tea there, and no Thai specialty tea (no Indian tea either; I'll get to what was there).  There was mostly coffee, of course, and then in tea range also matcha, and very little in the way of other tea scope.  Only two booths, beyond matcha scope:  a Harney and Sons version, and another selling blends that were essentially in the same range.  I tried a couple of Harney and Sons teas; they were nice.  I might have considered buying a jasmine green tea version they were selling, that I had tried, except that they only sold it in a tea-bag version, and I'd prefer loose tea.  At least they were promoting tea.

I met an old friend, Pop / Danitha, who is an owner of Koto Tea Space, a cafe that also sells matcha, there promoting the matcha sales.  She guessed that there was no Chinese tea because it was mainly directed towards shop owners, not tea enthusiasts, so there would only be booths carrying what small shops or cafes would want to buy.  I didn't see anything related to bubble tea there, so that theory doesn't seem to completely hold up, but it could still be mostly right.  At any rate Chinese tea just wasn't happening, or even Thai tea.  I've seen Thai producers host booths at that sort of thing before, and vendors oriented towards Chinese teas, but it just didn't happen to be there.

Lots of matcha related shops were; maybe less than 10, but close enough to that.  That's still not so much compared to dozens of booths and larger vendors there relating to coffee.  It was nice seeing so many small roaster or importer outlets for coffee; apparently that interest is booming.  There were ample equipment sales for that, and larger and more elaborate vendor booths from larger mainstream vendors.  There were even coffee brewing events, which weren't running just then, but there were notices about them.

There were a few shops selling ceramics, hand made coffee and teaware cups; those were nice.  One let me try coffee in two different cups, claiming that this would change the sensory / aspect experience.  It didn't seem to, to me.  I have a badly deviated septum so my sense of smell isn't great.  The related aromatic flavor component sensation that occurs in your rear nasal passages seems more normal, that it doesn't cost me much in terms of sense of flavor, but I guess that I would never really know.

teaware from Aoon Pottery & As.is

the small black ones had the nicest feel, but I usually use white cups

Pop's main business is the Koto Tea Space, and it represented the closest thing to a specialty tea theme in the event (really a related supply company, Chajin Tea Supply).  They had exhibits about matcha, and offered samples of a few kinds.  I tried matcha with coconut.  It was ok, but the umami isn't all that familiar to me, so it also just tasted like seaweed.  I've drank matcha before, and have reviewed a number of sencha and gyokuro versions in this blog, but I'm far removed from that experience now since it has been awhile.  A good version of matcha bumps the umami experience to an unfamiliar level, and the coconut flavor input made it harder to relate to instead of easier, or at least it seemed that way.  

It was nice talking about Pop's business theme, how all that goes, but it doesn't seem relevant to a summary of expo experience here.  Her cafe would be interesting to check out, off to one side of Chinatown, more or less, and they hold different themed tastings, of course all related to Japanese teas.

her related tea supply business, what was represented there

That was really about it.  I tried a jasmine white tea from Harney and Sons, and that one at Pop's station.  There was one other stall selling Thai flavored teas that I didn't really explore, and beyond that there was only more matcha.

So I walked around a rice expo beside that coffee and tea version, and ended up buying red and black Thai rice.  I've had a black version of black sticky rice (glutinous rice, khao neow) but never black standard rice.  My wife is into brown and other colored rice versions, so red rice is familiar.  It's not usually as delicious as white rice, but I bought it for her, not out of my own interest.

two kgs of rice was 200 baht, about $6, a good price

It would've seemed more anticlimactic if that wasn't what I expected to occur.  I would've thought a main Thai oolong producer might have been there, or another commercial tea vendor, along the lines of Harney and Sons, but just something else.  A couple of places had matcha ice cream for sale; that was a nice extra offering, but I didn't buy any.

It's kind of a shame that there isn't more going on with tea in Thailand.  That expo didn't represent all of it, of course.  Oolong production is fairly mainstream, and the sheng "pu'er" versions I keep writing about are appreciated by some people.  I just wrote about a dozen of my favorite or most popular tea outlets in Bangkok, and nothing in that expo related at all to any of that, except that I mentioned Pop's business there.

The contrast with coffee tells the story.  There were about 40 or 50 small booths related to independent coffee companies, and then at least a dozen larger businesses represented in much more elaborate settings.  Some had a lot of espresso machines and such on display, and some simulated cafe or physical store environments in well-crafted structures.  It's like how beer companies manage displays in such event exhibits, just not quite that elaborate, without the music, activities, and enthusiastic staff.  Then for tea there was a mixed range of a dozen booths, with not a single one really focused on loose specialty tea.  Harney and Son's selling tins of tea bags was the closest to that; not much of what was there even seemed to be loose tea.  Of course I gave it a quick survey, not really a thorough review, since if loose English Breakfast Blend turned up I wouldn't want that anyway.

Specialty tea is not having a moment in Thailand or in Bangkok, per my experience, not just at that expo.  It does help to clarify that small shops selling brewed tea that source loose tea versions, probably typically mostly low grade Shui Xian, buy that from Chinatown shops, so there is no need for a new vendor to hype a new form of that offering.  The oolong that was missing was a real gap; usually one of the main producers will promote their versions in events like that.  I suppose that never related to enough extra business level sales to keep up with attending events.  Bubble tea is absolutely everywhere in Bangkok; it's odd there weren't a couple of supply companies selling versions of that, or maybe there were and I overlooked them.

city view from the convention center; a nice walking and running track surrounds that lake

the sunset later on