Tea and tea houses in Iran

Greetings,

My brother is goint to a longer trip to Iran in late October - early November. He will take a train from Istambul to Tehran, and a bus on the same way back to Istambul. I really envy him. :-) Among other things, he would like to experience the tea culture of the country. Does any of the more experienced and widely travelled members of this NG has some recommendations about which teas he should try and which tea houses he should visit during his stay in Tehran?

Thanks in advance, Gyorgy

Reply to
Gyorgy Sajo
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Me too! Theirs is one of my favorite cuisines in the world.

No help from me, but I look forward to reading the answers!

N.

Reply to
Natarajan Krishnaswami

Hi Gyorgy, How was your brother's trip? Does he have any good tea stories? :)

N.

Reply to
Natarajan Krishnaswami

Hi,

Yes, he had quite a trip, and he had some very interesting teas back with him, too.

To start with, he searched quite a long time in vain for any genuine Persian teas. In spite of that Iran is a tea producing country, they sell and drink Indian teas most places. It is true even of such places as Tabriz, the capital of East Azerbaijan, one of the tea producing areas of Iran. The sellers at the city market had a very low opinion about local teas and they kept recommending Indian teas for him. In spite of it my brother bought some of the highest priced local teas, but when he tasted it at the hotel he found it indeed so bad that he discarded the rest of it.

A couple of days later after moving to a hotel in Teheran he told about his frustrating experiences to the hotel manager. To his great surprise the manager offered to share some of his own tea with him. It turned out that he was from the city of Masouleh which lies in an important tea producing area near the southern coast of the Caspian Sea. He used to receive regular shipments of the local tea for his own consumption and sometimes he even sold some of it to the hotel's guests. He even claimed that a group of tourists from Japan (!) were so enthusiastic about this tea that they contacted him after returning to Japan, begging for more.

The manager used to receive this tea in half a kilo sealed bags and he let my brother buy one of those bags. My brother was so mindful that he waited with opening the bag until he returned from Iran and let me have the honor of the first tasting.

As I opened the bag, the rich, sweet and malty scent of the dry leaves hit my nose immediately. It had a promise of a tea of great body. The heavy, luscious scent reminded me both of some very nice Autumn Flush Darjeeling teas and of some better Ceylon black teas. I must say, surprisingly, because the small black broken leaf particles did not look very promising. I prepared the tea with boiling water and let it steep for five minutes. The taste confirmed my positive expectations. It was malty with a huge sweetness and it resembled quite a lot an Autumn Flush Darjeeling with heavy scents of fallen autumnal leafs. I would describe it as a full bodied tea with very lasting and pleasant sweet aftertastes. My brother had some interesting associations when drinking this tea: its round, velvety taste reminded him of warm milk. All in all a quite interesting, unique black tea.

My brother has also promised that he will report about tea houses in Iran, so stay tuned.

Gyorgy

Reply to
Gyorgy Sajo

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