A Little Turkish Tulip Tea
Food editor at large and, well, tea snob Marjan Ippel has them in her cupboard: hand-picked wild teas from inaccessible mountain regions, where harvesting is limited to just a few spring days a year and the processing is as delicate as the eventual flavour. And teas like that are worth every euro she shells out for them, and shells out, and shells out. But she also buys tea from the Turkish grocer. 500-gram packs of black çay for three euros.
Most people know that drinking tea is a national pastime in Turkey. Who doesn’t bring tulip-shaped tea glasses home from a city trip to Istanbul? But fewer people know that Turkey also produces tea. Even when you ask the Turkish grocer for genuine Turkish black tea, you’re quite often handed a packet from Sri Lanka.
Perhaps that’s because the world’s fifth-largest tea-producing country—after India, China, Kenya and Sri Lanka, in that order—is a very young tea nation. While China has had a tea culture for thousands of years, the first Turkish tea factory was only built in 1947, in Rize province in the eastern part of the Black Sea region. Earlier, more northerly attempts to grow tea had come to nothing.
In the mountainous region by the Black Sea, they were lucky. The same favourable climatic conditions prevailed there for growing camellia sinensis (the tea plant) as in Batumi, Georgia—which at the time was a leading tea-growing region. In what is now Turkey’s most important tea-growing area, a thick layer of snow still protects the plants from rot and mould in winter. And in summer, it rains there every three days. Unlike the tourist, the tea plant likes that.
Turkish black çay (tea) is brewed very strong in a semaver, a teapot placed on top of a water boiler with a tap. It is then diluted with boiling water according to each person’s taste. But in the teahouse, Turks drink it undiluted and strong. They empty the tulip-shaped glass in minuscule sips, in order to taste the aromatic tea at its best. A shame that around six sugar cubes are added first.
Plenty for little
Black tea from Rize is not only delicious, but also offers plenty for little money. For the pink (Filiz) and yellow (Rize turist) 500-gram packs of çay from the well-known organic brand Çaykur, you pay just around three euros! And that while the independent family businesses supplying the tea still receive a fair price for it. So says Çaykur.
When you open such a packet, no cloying scent of strawberries, mangoes or other artificially added fruits, herbs and sugars rises up, but the scent of tea. Tea that has developed an enormous aroma entirely under its own steam. What does it smell and taste like? Hmm, how shall I describe it…
Like tea. Nothing more and nothing less.
Also read:
- Going out for a drink? It’ll cost you dearly this summer
- Dutch people don’t want to pay for tap water on the terrace
- 9 sneaky tricks supermarkets use to make you pay more
Image: Çaykur
