From Yunnan's Mountains to Seattle: Two Days, 4,000 Cups at the 2026 Northwest Tea Festival

On September 26 and 27, 2026, we brought Chen Sheng Hao to Seattle for the 16th Northwest Tea Festival at the Seattle Center Exhibition Hall. It was our first time exhibiting there — and the first time many of the people who stopped by had ever tasted old-arbor pu'er.

A festival eighteen years in the making

The Northwest Tea Festival didn't start big. It began in 2008, when a small group of Seattle tea people decided their city needed an event that celebrated tea. The first gathering was modest — but the line of people waiting to get in caught the organizers off guard.

It has been growing ever since. The festival started in the Northwest Room at Seattle Center, outgrew that space, moved to Fisher Pavilion, and today fills the Seattle Center Exhibition Hall. It is run by the Puget Sound Tea Education Association (PSTea), a Seattle-based 501(c)(3) nonprofit, and is planned and staffed almost entirely by volunteers.

In 2018, that volunteer team was recognized at the World Tea Expo in Las Vegas with the Best Grassroots Education Campaign award.

The festival's stated mission is to "connect people and enrich lives through tea." Admission has always included a tasting cup — the organizers have used non-disposable cups since the very beginning. Over the weekend, visitors can attend stage presentations, workshops, and guided tastings covering everything from the cultural to the scientific sides of tea.

Last year, about 4,000 tea enthusiasts came through the doors. This year's exhibitor hall sold out. The 2026 edition brought together more than 50 tea and teaware vendors, from long-time Seattle tea rooms to growers and importers from Japan, Taiwan, India, and China.

One company, one tea

Chen Sheng Hao is based in Menghai, in Yunnan's Xishuangbanna prefecture — the heart of pu'er country. The company started out making old-arbor tea, and for nearly twenty years that has remained its focus: tea picked from mature, decades-old trees rather than young plantation bushes. Its name is closely tied to Lao Ban Zhang, one of Yunnan's most famous tea mountains.

The company makes one kind of tea: pu'er. Nothing else.

For readers new to it: pu'er comes only from Yunnan, made from the region's large-leaf tea varietal. It is the one tea that is meant to age and improve over time, like wine.

It comes in two kinds. Raw pu'er (sheng, 生) is minimally processed and left to age naturally — young raw pu'er tastes bright and brisk, sometimes a little bitter, and mellows over years or decades. Ripe pu'er (shou, 熟) was developed in the 1970s: the leaves go through a controlled fermentation called wo dui (渥堆), which gives the tea a dark, smooth, earthy character that is ready to drink right away.

Pu'er is traditionally pressed into round cakes and brewed gongfu style — a small amount of leaf, many short infusions. That is how we served it in Seattle.

Our two days at the entrance

Our booth sat right at the main entrance, so we got to greet visitors as they walked in. Over two days, we poured about 4,000 cups of tea.

We brewed two ways. Gongfu style — warming the cups, adding the leaves, pouring in rounds — so people could see how Chinese tea is traditionally prepared. And large-pot brewing, which let us serve more people in the time we had.

A lot of firsts happened at that table. Many visitors had never heard the term "old-arbor tea" (laoshu, 老树). They tasted Yunnan mountain pu'er for the first time and asked where it grows, how it's made, and how old it is. The words were different, but a clean, thick cup with a sweet finish needs no translation.

By the end of the second day, everything we had brought to Seattle was gone. We sold out.

Next stop: Vancouver. We'll be exhibiting at the World Tea Culture & Art Expo from October 31 to November 2. From Seattle to Vancouver, the journey continues — one cup of old-arbor tea at a time.