Talking Tea: Turkish Tea: An Introduction
May 24, 2022
Today on Talking Tea we’re exploring a tea origin and
tea culture we haven’t yet visited on the show. Turkish tea isn’t
widely known outside of Turkey, even though Turkey is a significant
tea producer and has one of the largest per capita tea consumption
rates in the world. To introduce us to this unique tea and tea
culture, we’re joined by Aimée Lévesque, owner and founder of Le
bruit de l’eau, an online and brick-and-mortar tea house located in
Rimouski, Quebec.
Aimée tells us about her own tea journey and the impetus
for her starting a tea house in her home town of Rimouski, located
on the St. Lawrence River about 500 km northeast of Montreal. And
then we delve into Turkish tea. We discuss the history of tea
production in Turkey, from early attempts at tea growing to the
establishing of tea agriculture in the Rize region of northeastern
Turkey, as well as the influence of Georgian tea and the use of
assamica and sinensis cultivars in tea production. We chat about
Turkish tea culture, which is ubiquitous in Turkey, the uses and
benefits of the uniquely shaped Turkish tea glasses, and methods of
brewing Turkish tea, especially in the traditional tea pot known as
a çaydanlık.
More information about Le bruit de l’eau, including
the location of the teahouse, its online store and special event
info, is at its website, lebruitdeleau.ca.
You can also find Le bruit de l’eau on Instagram
at lebruitdeleau
and on Facebook at salondetherimouski.
The article on design and aestheics in Turkish tea
glasses Aimée references in the episode is at
design-and-semantics-of-form-and-movement-desform-2010-november-3.
Nilgün Yalçın, the Turkish tea educator Aimée
mentions, is on Instagram at @nnilgunyalcin.
The tea we’re drinking in
the episode is Hemşın Çayı from Çaykur.
Talking Tea is produced and hosted by Ken Cohen. You can
follow Ken on Twitter @kensvoiceken.
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The views and opinions expressed by guests on
Talking Tea are those of the guests and do not necessarily reflect
the views or opinions of Talking Tea or its
staff.
This podcast features music from “Japanese Flowers”
(https://soundcloud.com/mpgiii/japanese-flowers) by
mpgiiiBEATS (https://soundcloud.com/mpgiii) available under a
Creative Commons Attribution 3.0 Unported license (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/3.0/).
Adapted from original.
Image of Turkish tea served in glasses, courtesy of
Aimee Levesque.
Header image “Raw Puerh mid 1980 Menghai” by Cosmin
Dordea, used under a Creative Commons
CC By-SA 2.0 license. Adapted from original.
