‘An Epic Pour Fest’

Madeline Au, executive director and founder of the Eugene Tea Festival, originally started the event in 2023 with around 20 vendors, where she could buy something from each booth. Now celebrating the festival’s third year, there are nearly three times as many distributors to choose from, and Au doesn’t think she’ll be able to buy from them all. She says, “The tea festival is basically an epic pour fest where you get a cup, you can either pay $10 for a porcelain tasting cup, or you can come for free and get a compostable cup, and you can take your cup around to the different vendors. Not all vendors are going to have tea samples, but a lot of them will.” Inspired in 2017 by the Northwest Tea Festival in Seattle, Au realized she wanted to cultivate a tea community in Eugene. The event features workshops for more information on herbs, tea tastings, tea circles, local art and a variety of vendors to check out. “I try to incorporate as many local vendors as possible,” Au says. “Some of the other tea festivals are exclusively tea, but for the Eugene Tea Festival, I feel like it’s important for it to really be a celebration of the local community, so I open it up to some of the other local ceramists and artists that are in Eugene, so you can kind of have a little bit of a market shopping experience.” If you still want a cup for the festival, but don’t have the funds to buy one, there are unused tea cups from the last festival hidden in parks and trails throughout the community. They serve as golden tickets with more information on the event. — Samantha Sobel

Eugene Tea Festival is 10 am to 4 pm Sunday, May 25, at Farmer’s Market Pavilion, 85 East 8th Avenue. The festival is free to enter or $10 for a porcelain mug upon entry.

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