First European Tea Pavilion in Ireland
Food & Bev Live in Dublin was the venue for the first European Tea Pavilion organised by European Tea Society in conjunction with Eventhaus, where we took a great leap forward in terms of our visibility and engagement with the Irish tea community.
Our two main tools for delivering our passion for quality in speciality teas and botanicals in a growing community were a busy and creative brew bar and the first ever Irish heats of the Tea Masters Cup. As well as that we had a full team of volunteers from Ireland, Finland, Spain, Belgium, the Netherlands, Denmark, Russia and the UK talking tea to the local tea community.
Our first ever brew bar offered some excellent speciality teas and botanicals using water heated to just the right temperature by the Marco 3 temperature boilers and filtered for purity by Brita equipment provided by REL, brewed through Handybrew teapots and served in Wedgewood cups. It included tea flights where guests had a chance to taste a selection of teas guided by one of our team of tea experts, mixology skills using tea and cocktails, and an aroma competition using natural organic aromas provided by Lucta of Spain. It all provided for a busy two days!
The Tea Masters Cup, an international competition now held in over thirty countries was being held in Ireland for the first time, European Tea Society having been awarded the license to organise the competition there for the next three years. Ten competitors took part, and had to pair two lots of tea and food, one chosen by the judges, and one chosen by themselves.
The high level of entrants was due to help and support in recruiting both from the Chefs Competition, and also from Speciality Coffee Association Irish Chapter. In the end three baristas and two chefs entered and the winner was Arvind Khedun of Cloud Picker Café who only entered on the morning of the competition. His winning combinations were Dan Long Oolong brewed at 75 degrees, paired with soda bread, organic orange marmalade and almonds for the judges’ choice, and Sho Puer, rinsed twice and brewed at 85 degrees paired with Wensleydale cheese, cranberries and multigrain crispbread for his own choice. Winning ended a great day for him as earlier he had watched his wife Renata won the Latte Art Competition. Arvind and the second and third places, Michelle Hua and Daniel Horbat all received a Quinteassential gift box, a Handybrew and the book Tea, A Users Guide by Tony Gebely as prizes, and Arvind will go on to represent Ireland in the World Finals later in the year.
We made so many friends and colleagues during the week and we are certain that a vibrant tea community will be active in Ireland very soon. We look forward to returning next year to participate in CATEX 2021.