Turkish Tea

Even though I am not the big fan of Turkish tea, it is an important part of our culture. For instance, wherever you go in Istanbul to meet up any friend's home or work, the first thing they ask you will be whether you wanna drink tea or coffee. As I told you many times, it is part of our tradition and life.

We love coffee and we are proud of it.

Moreover, we are now the number one consumers of tea in the world per capita, even more than England and China. Turkey consumes 245 million glass of tea! Yeah, I know...

Tea is found in China because of medical reasons in BC 2737. For Turkey, after some tea shops were opened in Ottomans, it got famous and spread all around the Ottoman Empire. Coffee was always first for Ottomans. However, after WW1, it became too expensive to transport coffee from Yemen because of that Ataturk found a solution by encouraging tea instead of coffee. Since producing tea is much easier compared to coffee, Black Sea/Karadeniz became so important for Turkey. In addition to that, we take seriously how to make tea. Once one of my friends, made tea from the very beginning just because he didn't like the taste. For example, I never understood why we like tea so much but I have never complained about that because I know I will lose at the end of the discussion. Sometimes we just need to respect. The tea glass has a special shape. Maybe many of you wonder why the tea is served in a small tulip shaped clear glass. It is just because, we like to drink tea when it is served and the shape helps us to drink even the tea is too hot. For some people having tea when it is too hot is so important. (Honestly, I have no idea why.) Moreover, this way of serving is to admire the hue of the tea. One more thing I wanna share with you is the way to ask for tea. For instance, you can simply say that "I would like to get a glass of tea". However, if you want to have a real Turk experience in tea place then I would suggest you say "Bi' Tavşan Kanı". The way they treat and serve you probably will be different but be ready to drink really strong tea.