Daegu | Tea Expo

In the past couple of years we have made a concerted effort to switch from drinking a million cups of coffee a day to drinking tea. To be honest, it’s been a hard transition as we are/were completely addicted to coffee. More than the caffeine high, I loved the daily ritual of grabbing coffee with a coworker or with Sly before work or on the weekends. It somehow always made me feel ready to start the day.

At some point I think we both realized that we consumed way too much caffeine to the point where we suffered the dreaded coffee withdrawel headaches if we didn’t get our daily dose. First we switched to decaf coffee and then eventually to tea. When I received a free pass to attend Daegu’s annual tea expo a couple months ago we were both interested and curious to see what kinds of tea we could find.

It was as if the expo crammed in about 50 or so pop up tea cafes all into one expo hall. I expected rows of vendor booths, but I didn’t quite expect carefully brewed and prepared all-you-can-drink tea. We were slightly overwhelmed by all the options but eventually picked a booth operated by a friendly Buddhist monk, sat down, and drank a couple small bowls of tea. The entire process of making tea was in itself fascinating to watch and made me really question my (lack of) tea-making skills. Hot, temperature-controlled water was poured into a small teapot and allowed to sit while a small amount of tea leaves were added to a strainer that sat on top of a tiny pitcher. Next, the water in the teapot was poured very slowly over the tea leaves into the mini pitcher after which the tea, now at the perfect temperature, was transferred to our little tea cups.

Our tea sampling continued as we stopped at pretty much every vendor booth with two open seats. At the tea counter we were joined by mostly Korean women dressed to the nines in beautiful hanboks and other more rustic traditional Korean clothing. In a strange way it kind of reminded us of a Korean Renaissance Fair in the sense that people “dressed up” in traditional clothing to drink tea with similarly clad friends at one of the recreated “tea houses” built at the back of the event space.

We couldn’t quite decide on a tea set but we loved all the pottery for sale at the tea expo, especially the mini ceramic bud vases! One vendor that caught our eye sold milky white porcelain moon jars, a traditional style of Korean pottery favored by royalty during the Joseon Dynasty. At this shop, we both fell in love with a huge lidded jar adorned with a delicate painting of a cat chasing butterflies. Though I doubt it was originally intended to store cookies, we thought it would make an awesome cookie jar, something we have been wanting for a while.

In the end, we decided against purchasing the cat jar. In addition to the expensive price tag, our homemade cookies rarely ever last long enough to be stored in a jar, not to mention one that size.

Sly and I tend to purchase strong, black teas while Koreans prefer lighter, delicate, more subtly flavored teas. We sampled barley tea, pumpkin tea, mugwort tea, and wild chrysanthemum tea among so many others, all guaranteed to improve our health in some way. Our favorites included a wormwood tea and a very intense lemon tea. We ended up buying so much tea and tea snacks that vendors often threw in free gifts.

Our favorite tea these days is ceremonial grade matcha green tea, which is more popular and easier to find in Japan than it is in Korea. We had hoped to find a local organic tea farmer who we could by from directly but we didn’t have much luck. After walking around the expo a couple times we finally found a vendor that sold matcha. Using a traditional bamboo whisk, the tea lady mixed a spoonful of matcha powder with hot water until it became frothy and served it to us in a ceramic bowl.

Once we had our fill of tea we watched as green tea leaves were gently heated in large bowls. Bright tea leaves transformed from green to black as they swirled around in one heated bin before being transferred to another bowl where they were heated and mixed by hand.  This stopped the oxidation process while retaining the flavor of the tea leaves. We found it pretty fascinating to watch.

We also learned from one of the enthusiastic tea vendors that white, green, yellow (?), and black tea all originated from the same plant, the difference being the amount of time the leaves are oxidized and how the leaves are processed. All this time drinking tea and I had no clue. I just assumed that white, green, and black teas came from different plants. Obviously I have a lot to still learn about tea.

I don’t think we’ll ever be able to fully convert to drinking only tea – we still indulge in coffee on the weekends – but the more we learn about tea and the more teas we try, the more interested we become. The adorable Korean tea sets (need one of those) are the icing on the cake. These days, instead of running to the coffee shop first thing in the morning, my new morning ritual involves brewing a mug of hot tea and reading a book for at least 30 minutes before getting on with the rest of my day. Something about drinking tea makes me feel a lot calmer (probably because I’m not jacked up on caffeine) and a lot more meditative.