According to tea specialists and gourmets, the reason for this is that inexperienced hands have taken the teapots at such places. Gourmet Deniz Gürsoy says that the culture of preparing tea has not been passed on to the new generation in Turkey. The younger generation looks for the easiest way to do everything, preferring teabags or iced tea.
A full 39 years ago, when he was only 11 years old, he began working at this counter, but he had already started out by running errands here at the age of nine. In 1971 he was promoted and began preparing tea under the watchful eye of the tea master. As Zekeriya Sivriburun’s 80-year-old mentor was ill, he eventually began preparing and the steeping tea himself. His teacher, Ethem Tezçakar, is well known amongst true İstanbul tea lovers, particularly tradesmen (who have tea delivered to their workplaces throughout the day). He was amongst the oldest of İstanbul’s tea masters. At the family-owned tea counter where he worked, tea has been prepared and served for over a century.
For three generations, bread has been put on the table using the income generated from this teashop. Now, all that is left of Ethem Usta at the shop is a black-and-white photograph of him. His son Bekir, an architectural engineer, works in construction in the morning and then works at the teashop in the afternoon. “The old masters of tea preparation are gone, and so the good teas of the past are gone as well,” Bekir Tezçakar laments. He himself can’t drink just any tea, he says, because he grew up with the fine brews his father prepared. He abhors the tea at modern cafeterias and says that the new generation has forgotten how to prepare true Turkish tea.
Zekayi Can, a tea master for 35 years, says he won’t drink tea at just any place, either -- especially not tea that has been sitting in the pot for some time at restaurants. The front entrance of his small teashop near the Grand Bazaar’s Kürkçühan is never empty. Waiters buzz around like bees as they rush to deliver orders of tea throughout the day and bring back empty glasses. When we say waiters, though, don’t think of young teenagers. These are older, experienced waiters we are talking about, not youths just doing the job because they cannot find any other form of employment.
Perhaps that is where the secret of teas can be found: experience. Ahmet Kayhan, a tea master of 20 years who is also an administrator of the İstanbul Chamber of Coffeemakers, blames the poor quality of today’s tea on poor knowledge transfer from master to student. There are no more masters with a snow-white towel slung over their shoulders pouring tea into glasses, he says; they are all gone now. Owners of teahouses and other establishments find anyone willing to accept a cheap wage to prepare their tea. At luxurious cafes, customers order from amongst a selection of teabags, which is another point of contention for the master. “I’ve been in the tea business for 35 years. My hands had no splits or deformations before; now they’re all irritated. They’re cracking. For this reason, I don’t believe in the new teas that have been produced in recent years, especially teabags,” he says, asserting that the signs of a master at tea making can be seen physically as well. And perhaps it’s best to heed the advice of one who has been making tea for decades.
Zekeriya Usta remembers when he first got started in tea making. People would recommend good tea makers to one another and the profession of tea preparation was both highly revered and well paid. Tea masters were treated like university graduates. Business owners would first test the tea prepared by those going to work in the kitchen. Zekeriya Usta says, however, that it’s not like that anymore, and he thinks that the advent of teabags and tea makers has played a major role in this. He also complains about modern beverages, saying that their variety has contributed to a decrease in tea drinking -- and therefore drop in tea quality.
Food culture writer Deniz Gürsoy: Chivalry died when teabags were discovered
Our tea has been the same for the past 80 years, but the technique for steeping it hasn’t quite been transferred to new generations and for that reason there has been an interruption in our tea culture. The water used for making tea must absolutely be spring water with the lowest mineral content possible. The infuser teapot must be heated up entirely by the boiling water in the teapot beneath it and after hot water is added to the tea in the infuser, the temperature inside should not fall beneath 95 degrees. Turkish tea should be steeped for 20 minutes; 10 minutes is sufficient for imported black teas. It is not possible to capture the same taste of traditional tea by using teabags, period.
Add cold water to cooked tea to alleviate bitterness
Twenty-year master of tea preparation Ahmet Kayhan employs a unique method to adjust the taste of tea that is too bitter: He puts boiled water in the infuser teapot and after adding tea, adds half a tea glass of cold water to it, which takes away the bitter taste. After the tea has steeped in the infuser, over steam from the water-filled teapot beneath, it is ready for serving. Kayhan says tea prepared in teapots made of porcelain, copper and aluminum have a far superior taste.
National
