V International Tea Festival in Sortavala

On August 17 the fifth international tea festival “Serdobolsky Chai” was organized in Sortavala within the framework of the project “Kalitka - development of cross-border gastronomic tourism”. Tea delegations from various cities of Karelia, St. Petersburg, Arkhangelsk and Finland arrived at the festival, thus guests had a chance to try Ivan tea from different regions with the most unusual flavors.

The head of the Sortavala municipal district Sergey Krupin and the deputy head of the Sortavala district for social policy Nina Makarova opened the festival. Then a concert program began with the participation of the local choirs and musical ensembles.  For children there was a separate game program. All participants and guests of the festival could participate in contests, for instance, “The best saying about tea”, “The best healing tea”, “The best national costume” etc.

The central event of the festival was tea tasting. The participants of the festival provided 100 mg brewed Ivan-tea and 5 grams of dry tea for the competition. An expert jury evaluated color, smell, taste and aftertaste of the drink. All guests could taste tea as well try pastries, honey, jam and various national sweets.

The master classes from Tarmo Vasenius, RIVERIA’s lector and chef of “Karelian Gornitsa” restaurant, and Svetlana Nikitina, director of the Tchaikoff tea shop, expert of the Kalitka project, attracted great interest.

The recipe of the “Kalevala” cafe at the Ladoga Hotel, Ladoga-Tour (Sortavala) won the competition “The best healing Tea”. The Kruuga company (Petrozavodsk) took the second place and “Aunt Lappi’s Tea House"(Lyaskelya village) was awarded the third place.

The main aim of the festival is to promote the local products and producers as well as testing a gastronomic event for the development of food tourism on the project territory.

Photos provided by Ksenia Chumak (NGO "Art-shater")