Çay. The very word brings (Turkish) music to many Turkish ears. Of course, where there is çay there is Rize. And apart from Rize there is no other city. Period. Rize is the Turkish çay capital. And Istanbullus love Rize tea. Allow me a few minutes of your time to enlighten you on this slurpy subject.

Yesterday, while helping a friend, I took a brief time-out (mola for my readers who are bilingual [who am I kidding? readers?! Hope springs eternal.]) and visited one of my favorite borekçi (börek maker guy): Taner Börek. I spoke with the franchisee, and I asked him a few questions about his tea. I asked if he had ever drunk tea from India. He said he hadn’t. I asked him about other teas, and he added that Iran tea was awfully bitter. I asked him if he loved Rize tea. Yes [tears up]. Basically, for him, there was no better tea than Rize tea. A few gentlemen I spoke with today about Turkish tea claimed the climate as the raison d’être (which is French for “You have something in your teeth.” A tea leaf perhaps?). Rize has a subtropical climate and it rains, according to one local’s estimate, between 200 and 250 days out of the year. It is this which helps tea grow–according to the Wikipedia site I visited. Snow also helps. Liquid falling from the sky, in other words, is good and necessary. This last year it snowed the perfect amount in Rize, apparently, which is (get ready for this) the reason for this year’s tea being better than last year! Good, ’cause I was wondering about that one time back in March of ’11 when upon my third cup of the stuff at [restaurant deleted], I noticed and then declared in the hearing of all: these tea leaves did not receive their full amount rain. Stunned silence ensued.

If you want your tea a little lighter (more watery) simply say, with your best Turkish: açık olsun. If you want your tea to be a little on the darker (more tea-eey) side you might try this: çayım demli olsun. 

I’ve been told by my Turkish friends that the perfect cup of tea is like the color of rabbit’s blood (tavşan kanı gibi). Now, my friends, so far, have not been able to answer the next logical question that I ask: why are some of the Istanbul buses painted red? (You know, that might not be a bad idea for a post. But I digress.). For some, the very thought regarding the comparison with rabbit’s blood makes them feel a little woozy (#’s 10 & 13).

If you drink tea with Turks you’ll notice they drink it out of ince beli (thin waist) glass [see the picture above]. The reason for this, according to one explanation (#7), is that the lower portion–the bottom of the glass–is the hot tea depot, whereas the upper part of the glass is shaped in such a way that at the moment the beverage reaches your slurping [my word], widened [their word] mouth it is slightly cooler. I also wondered about this explanation, as I, too, have burned my mouth during the slurping part.

Finally, let me tell you that if you drink tea with Turks, you are entering the very heights of consumptive behavior. How is this? Turks consume, yearly, an average of 2.5 kg of tea. This is the highest in the world. But, I think I can name a few people who are in the 5-6 kg range. In fact, I’m fast approaching these levels. Today my tea count is at 8. Yesterday, I cleared only 2 or 3. But, that could have been due to the fact that I only ate börek one time yesterday. Plus, I knew I was going to write this piece on tea today while drinking tea.

Care to see what tea workers looked like one century ago? Check out this picture.