Turkish tea

I am exceptionally fond of the tea served at our local Turkish restaurant, Istanbul Turkish Kitchen, here in Ithaca New York. I am exceptionally fond of their food, too, but as this is a blog mainly about tea, I’ll concentrate on the tea.

Turkish tea at Istanbul Turkish Kitchen, Ithaca, New York (http://istanbulithaca.com).

Turkey developed its tea growing capacity with the fall of the Ottoman Empire, in order to replace coffee that had to be imported. It’s grown in Rize Province, near the bend of the eastern Black Sea coast.  Rize has that warm moist climate that makes tea plants happy.

Tea (çay) gardens near Rize, Rize province, Turkey. Photo by User:Wikimol, from Wikipedia.

Was fascinated to read in Wikipedia that Turkey has the highest per capita consumption of tea in the world, “at 2.5 kg per person—followed by the United Kingdom (2.1 kg per person).” 

As for the tea that I had the other day: it was honey-sweet, roasted, and malty, warm-flavored, and delicately rose-like, with no trace of either bitterness or astringency. I was led to investigate what is known about the composition of Turkish tea that would give this unique (sorry for the over-used word!) flavor, so different from most other black teas.

As it turns out, I found one article* with the details that explains why the tea has this flavor. First, the warmth of the flavor was probably due to the lack of linalool, as much as to the presence of other compounds. This compound is found in all the other black teas I have tasted, and gives other black teas a slightly citrusy, flowery (it’s part of the cool scent of roses), and somewhat cooler taste, because it binds primarily to the cool receptors (TRPM8). According to the article, two “cold” compounds are abundant in Turkish tea: (Z)-2-penten-1-ol with its horseradish /mustard quality, and (Z)-2-hexen-1-ol, which has a green vegetative note. These might have imparted some fresh coolness to the tea, but I certainly didn’t detect them. 

While lack of linalool would shift the flavor to the warmer side of the spectrum, other compounds reinforce the warmth. In particular, benzyl alcohol has a warm sweet odor with a distinctly roasted quality. No doubt it was present in abundance in the tea I sampled. The same goes for benzaldehyde, with its sweet cherry-like odor. Note that benzaldehyde also has an almond quality, but I didn’t sense any of that in the tea: cherry yes, almond no. Finally linalool oxides with their floral qualities were probably present in the tea I tasted, and also among the compounds Alasalvar and colleagues found.

Three other compounds with a malty odor and flavor were found to be abundant in Turkish tea, namely 2-methyl propanal and 2- and 3-methyl butanal. I would be very surprised if they weren’t a significant component of the delicious flavor I experienced. Similarly, there are a number of other chemicals in Turkish tea which confer a roasty quality that no doubt were in the tea I enjoyed so much.

The one other chemical that I would have expected and was missing—in addition to linalool—was methyl salicylate. That sweet wintergreen compound has been detected in oolongs and particularly in black teas, but wasn’t on the list of the compounds in the Turkish black tea. I didn’t smell or taste it either. Plants make it as an insect repellent and as a warning compound to other plants about the presence of viruses.

I wonder why it isn’t there. 

* Cesarettin Alasalvar, Bahar Topal,Arda Serpen, Banu Bahar, Ebru Pelvan, and Vural Gökmen. Flavor Characteristics of Seven Grades of Black Tea Produced in Turkey. J. Agric. Food Chem., 2012, 60 (25), pp 6323–6332; DOI: 10.1021/jf301498p