Azerbaijani Traditional Tea Ceremony

Hello, I'm Jamila Moussaieva, an international social etiquette consultant and author of etiquette books. In preparation for this video, we went out shopping to a local green market where we shopped for all different goods that we'll be serving the Azerbaijani tea ceremony with. And the reason I took a lot of time and effort to prepare this video is because I wanted to show the world how beautiful and rich Azerbaijani tea ceremony is. I have a huge love for my culture and I have a huge respect for tradition, which is why I prepared this video with a lot of love and passion. And I hope you enjoy it as much as I enjoyed making this for you. Hello, right now we are here in Baku in Green Market, which is one of my most favorite venues. It is an open area market where they sell all kinds of foods, vegetables, dry nuts, dried fruits, tea, herbs, all kinds of things that you want to find fresh, organic, and you want to make sure that they would taste amazing. You can find them all here. It's colorful, it's bright, it's full of energy. I love coming to Green Market just to look at things, enjoy things, taste things, and smell things. So let's together take a walk here in the Green Market and see what kind of fruits and products we have that's very specific to Azerbaijan, as well as we will be shopping for Azerbaijani tea ceremony. Together with me, you will see how I do the shopping for tea, different kind of additives, all kind of herbs and nuts, and you'll get to see a glimpse of Azerbaijan. I particularly love coming here because I get to actually not only see visually all kind of new dried fruits that I want to taste, but I also get a chance to taste them. So the seller usually gives you a piece to try before you make the purchase, which is amazing, especially when you're trying something completely new and you're not sure whether you want to purchase the whole bunch or not. So for example, some of my personal favorites are dried pineapple, dried apricots, and dried plums over there. These are dried pears. I've never tried them, but I think I will try them today. They're all different kinds of dried fruits, as well as nuts. So you have all different sorts of nuts, walnuts, almonds, cashews, and they're all from different regions, so they taste different and they're of different size, which is great because you have, you get a chance to try different kinds of nuts just by standing here alone. Speaking of dried fruits, here we have two different sorts of mango. We have dried melon, dried watermelon, dried avocado. I've never heard of this before. So this is the first time I see this and this is the first time I'll be trying it. We have dried kiwi, dried cranberry, dried pineapple, oranges, apples. I guess it's also cranberry, but of a different way of drying it. And then we have dried grapes, the white ones and then the black ones. We have dried apple. So as you can tell, there's all different kinds of dried fruits, but also dried vegetables apparently as well. So now that we are done buying dried fruits and nuts, we're at the section where we'll be buying some additives to tea. In Azerbaijan regularly, we don't just drink plain tea. We add different kind of things into our tea to enhance the taste. So here are the most common ones that I'll be buying today. There's rose water, there is rose petals, the rose flowers, gloves, cardamom, cinnamon, and let me see, and thyme herb. These are the most common ones that we will be purchasing today so that we can host our traditional Azerbaijani tea ceremony. If you guys remember from my aromatherapy video, I was talking about a herb that was great at protecting your house from evil spirit. It was great at cleansing your aura and your energy. So this is the one. It's called uzerlik. It's widely accessible here in Azerbaijan. You can buy it in any market. Every single household has this either tied at their house door or they just take these little balls from here and they burn it in fire and the smell that it releases protects the house from evil spirit and evil energy. Actually, you can take a little bit of it and put it into your mouth so that it can protect you throughout the day from evil people. I don't know if it's true, but it works. As I mentioned before, in Azerbaijan, we don't take our tea plain. We usually add different kinds of herbs and spices into our tea depending on what people like, the guests would like, or the host likes. But sometimes in this green market, you can purchase this ready-made mix. This is black tea with rose petals, lavender, cloves, thyme herb. Everything is pretty much mixed in this little package. You can use this to brew twice, so it's a package that will be enough for two brews or maybe for a larger group of people. I like this little package so much because I think it looks so cute. It's a beautiful decor in your kitchen, but also you could buy this and give it to your friends as a gift. Now we're off to our final shopping destination, which is buying fruit desserts. The reason I call them fruit desserts is because they're very different from jams in the way that they're prepared. You cannot imagine a traditional Azerbaijani tea ceremony without fruit desserts. We eat them morning, lunch, dinner, it doesn't matter. Here are some of the most unusual ones. These ones are made of olives, kiwi, walnut, eggplant, tomato, almonds. These are the ones that you get to see rarely, but they are still there, they exist. And then the most common one, the one that every household has, is a fruit dessert made of raspberry. The ones that you will get served most often in a restaurant is fruit dessert made of cherry, made of apple, watermelon. If you ever visit Azerbaijan, make sure you come by this shop. I personally love this shop because everything is so neatly organized. It's just a visual, aesthetically beautiful shop. Half of the shop is filled with fruit desserts, and then the other half is filled with pickled fruits and vegetables. You can find here the most rare kinds of pickles and the most rare kinds of fruit desserts. Anyway, so we are here in the shop, shopping finally for the right kind of tea. There are all different kinds and sorts of tea, both made locally and from abroad. There are all variety of black, green tea, and all kinds of different spices and herbs. So when choosing the black tea, that's the most important decision to make, I always opt for teas with black leaves because when the tea has black leaves, it takes longer to brew, but it has much richer flavor and it's considered to be more exquisite. These are how the black leaf tea looks like, and to compare it with more thinly shaped leaves, like this one, it takes less time to brew, but then again, it doesn't taste as rich as the black, big leaf tea. So here I'm done shopping for everything that I need to host a traditional Azerbaijani tea ceremony. As you can tell, I've bought all different kinds of herbs, I've bought the premium quality tea, and now we're ready to move to the second part of this video, which is hosting an Azerbaijani tea ceremony. Before we start talking about Azerbaijani tea ceremony, I want you to take a look at a beautiful traditional Azerbaijani dance called Nelbeki dance, it literally translates as tea saucer dance, and it beautifully shows how gracefully and masterfully women handle tea saucers and tea cups while dancing. The reason I wanted to start this video with this particular dance is because I think it beautifully embodies how important tea is to Azerbaijani culture. We love tea so much as we have created a beautiful dance to display it. In fact, speaking of the weddings, tea plays a particularly crucial role in the marriage proposal. In fact, when a guy's family goes to a girl's family to ask for her hand, if the family gets a sweetened tea, the answer is yes, if the tea is unsweetened, the answer is no. However, you never let a guest leave the house without offering him a cup of tea. Even when you drop by someone's house for just a couple of seconds, you will never leave the house without being offered a cup of tea. When you're invited over for someone's house for dinner, expect to get tea served first while you're waiting for dinner, and then you'll get served another cup of tea after the dinner. So as you can see, in Azerbaijan, we serve tea both as aperitif and also as digestive. When you want to meet someone for business, you can also invite them for tea. At funerals, tea also plays a huge role. You'll offer a cup of tea to anyone who is passing by. As well, you'll get offered a cup of tea while shopping, while waiting for the purchase to be completed. As you can tell, tea is offered everywhere, anywhere in Azerbaijan, at any time during the day. Tea plays an essential role in the social life of Azerbaijani people. We rejoice over tea, we grieve over tea, we brainstorm ideas over tea, we pass our time over tea. We love tea as a nation so much that we even have a word for a person who loves tea. He or she will be called çaykhor, which means a person who loves drinking tea. Unlike the British, which enjoy tea during a certain period of time in the day, Azerbaijani people enjoy tea for breakfast, for lunch, for dinner, and any time in between. If you ever visit Azerbaijan, there are also special houses called tea houses or çaykhanas, where usually men gather together to enjoy a cup of tea, play bagamon, and discuss life. Traditionally, çaykhanas were only reserved for men, while in today's world, modern times, çaykhanas are open both for men and women. Drinking tea for us is not just about quenching our thirst or hunger, it's really about socializing, bonding, networking, making friends, enjoying life. It's our joie de vivre. When someone invites you to meet for tea, expect to spend at least an hour with that person. Right now in this video, you will see why you'll need at least an hour in order to have a lovely Azerbaijani tea ceremony. First things first, in Azerbaijan, we take our tea hot, freshly brewed, and strong, and usually, mostly black. The tea is grown locally here in the Lankaran region, which has a subtropical climate and is great for growing tea. There are a wide variety of teas to choose from, but essentially, the big difference comes to the shape and the size of the leaves. If the leaves are big, they're usually of a premium quality, but take longer time to brew. The thinner tea is usually much quicker to brew, but it's of less quality. Azerbaijanis take their teas very seriously, which is why you'd rarely see someone offer you a tea bag instead of a freshly brewed tea. If you're invited to someone's home for a cup of tea, expect that it's going to be a freshly brewed tea. We also don't take our tea with milk or cream, but there are other things that we like to add into our tea to enhance the taste of the black tea. Here at the table, I have the ones that we purchase in the bazaar that are displayed right here. These are the ones that we most often use. What kind of herb or spice you add to your tea depends on your personal taste, how you personally like to take your tea, but also it depends on what kind of health properties you're looking in that particular spice or herb. So let's start with rose petals. They're great at helping detox your body, normalize your blood pressure, but also get rid of bad odors in your mouth. So if you ate something that had a strong smell and you want to get rid of it, you can have a cup of black tea with rose petals in it. A great alternative to rose petals would be a rose water, which in Azerbaijani language is called gulab. It's a water made of rose petals and it's a little bit more concentrated. It smells like roses. On its own, it doesn't have a very rich taste, but when you add just a little bit to your tea, it enhances the flavor of your black tea. Next, I have here cardamom. It smells amazing. I love the smell of it, especially in wintertime. These are my favorite to add to a black cup of tea. If you have digestive problems, if you want to get rid of your puffiness and swollenness, they have diuretic properties, which means they make you urinate faster. So if you ate something very heavy of a meal, adding this to your cup of tea will help you digest the food much faster. Next here, I have cinnamon, which is a great spice to add to your tea. It helps amazingly with your metabolism, as well helps reduce the blood sugar level. So if you ate something sweet, particularly in Nowruz, if you haven't seen the video on Nowruz, please make sure to check it out. So if you ate something sweet for Nowruz, adding cinnamon to your black tea is a great way to help you handle and digest that sweet goodies that you ate. Next that I have here is my personal favorite spice to add to my tea. These are gloves. They help get rid of pathogenic bacteria in your mouth. They help lower the blood sugar level. They're great for boosting your immune system, especially in wintertime. This is a great thing to add to your tea. And I also love just the smell of it in the tea. So for wintertime, for boosting your immune system, for getting rid of any bad odor that you might have in your mouth, this is a great spice to add to your tea. The final herb that is probably the most popular in Azerbaijan, people drink it together with a black tea, but also on its own, is the wild thyme. You see it looks like this, smells amazing too. Its main properties is that it has anti-inflammatory properties. It helps fight the cold. So in wintertime, this is a must-have in every single household. Having looked at two different kinds of tea, as well as different goodies that we could add to our black tea, let's talk about how to prepare a proper Azerbaijani tea. For this, you'll need a ceramic pot that looks like this. First you have to do is open the pot and wash it with boiling water. So you prepare the pot to welcome the tea leaves. Next, it comes to choosing the right kind of black tea. I personally prefer large leaf tea. I know it takes longer time to brew, but it tastes a lot better. It has better health benefits for you. So the rule is that we take one teaspoon for the pot itself, and then one teaspoon for each person that will be drinking tea. It also depends on how you like to take your tea. If you like to take your tea strong, then obviously add more leaves. If you like it lighter, then add less. When you finish doing that, you take boiling water. I have here, but I would usually do it in the kitchen. I have this for video purposes. And then you would pour it over the pot. You can pour it up until two-thirds of the pot is filled. You'll cover the pot and then let it brew over low heat on the stove. Now, if you are at home, you'll place this pot over low heat stove and let the tea brew slowly. You'll watch for the leaves to rise up to the pot. If all of them are up, you can now remove the pot from the stove, cover it with fabric, and let it rest. In Azerbaijan, this resting time, covered in fabric, is called Yerdemi, literally translates as the pot is taking the rest. And in this process, it continues brewing slowly, releasing all the good nutrients that tea has. A more traditional way of preparing tea is with samovar. A tea that was prepared with samovar tastes completely different, and you will never be able to compare it with any other kind of tea. The word samovar comes from a Russian language and means to boil on its own. Though the word itself is a Russian word, the samovar as object has become a very symbolic element in Azerbaijani culture. The way you brew tea with samovar is that there is a specific cylinder inside of it where you place the wood. And then you pour the water inside this metallic container. The water starts boiling and it starts steaming. You place the ceramic pot on top of this so that the steam that is evaporating can brew the tea very slowly. The tea in ceramic pot is called dam, which translates as the brew. So depending on how strong you'd like your tea, that is how much you'll add the brew, and then you'll mix it with the boiling water. So in the example of the samovar, I add a little bit of brew, then I add a little bit of boiling water. I personally like to take my tea a little bit lighter than the older generation. They love to take their tea very black, but for me personally it tastes a little bit bitter. Samovars are especially popular in summer time when people are outdoors and they gather together, families, neighbors, and prepare tea. Now that we have finished preparing our tea, it's time to pour it. We have the special pear-shaped glasses, crystal glasses that are called armudu. From Azerbaijani language, it translates literally as pear-shaped or pear-like. The shape and form of this glass is very recognizable. It reminds me of a female hourglass body shape, but in Azerbaijani culture it's believed that it reminds the person of the body shape or the figure of the hostess. Besides the cultural belief about armudu, these specifically shaped glasses have a particular function to them. As you can tell, the top of the cup is wider and the middle part is thinner. This shape allows the tea to cool down proportionally over the time that you're enjoying the tea. The top part will cool down faster, the waist is ensuring that the tea stays hot, and then the bottom part is the one where the tea will slowly start to cool down. Also, when you're holding the tea, it's easy to grab it at a waist so that the cup doesn't slip from your hand. The reason these armudu cups are transparent is because we, as a tea-loving nation, love to see the color of our tea. As I mentioned earlier, the older generation loves to take their tea black, so when they can see through this cup that the tea is black, they know that it was brewed well. As you can tell from this talk, drinking tea is not just about the ritual of quenching the thirst, it's really about visual aesthetics. We love looking and admiring our cup of tea. The saucer is also a very important element in this. It helps to hold the cup, but also, unlike the coffee etiquette where I showed that you would never pour the coffee on a saucer, on a teacup, you're allowed to actually cool down your drink. So, you can take the tea, pour it on a saucer, let it cool, and then either drink it from the saucer, or then transfer it again to the cup and drink it from the cup. Saucer also comes handy when you're offering just a cup of tea to a guest that is there for a couple of seconds, stopping by to see you. You can place some sugar cubes, which is how the tea is usually served. Now that we have figured out what kind of cup to serve it in, the question is, how much to pour? There are two different ways of pouring it. For some people that love to have their teacup filled with tea, you do not let any lip space for it. In Azerbaijani, it's called dodahyari, which means literally a space for your lips to fit in. So, I'll show you in this example. I would ask a person if they want any dodahyari, and if they don't, I can pour it, fill it up almost to the top, therefore leaving not a little lip space. For other people, they prefer to leave a little bit of a lip space, which allows the drinking to be much easier so that you don't burn yourself. In that case, you leave about one to two centimeters of a space between the top of the cup and where the tea is filled. There are four important elements that accompany our tea. That is fruit desserts, lemon, sugar cubes, and a mix of nuts. Let's talk about every single element individually. First things first, we start with the lemon. Everyone knows that you cannot offer a cup of tea to your guests without offering them sliced lemons. It is a must-have that accompanies every single cup of Azerbaijani tea. You can choose to place the lemon inside the cup and leave it there throughout the time that you're drinking it. However, if you are going to drink your cup with sugar and lemon, make sure to add the sugar first, and then you add your lemon. Because, as we all know from chemistry, the lemon releases acid, which doesn't allow the sugar to dissolve properly. So that rule applies here too. You'll first add your sugar, and then the lemon, in case if you want to drink your tea with both. However, in Azerbaijan, people rarely drink with dropping the sugar cube inside the cup. The older generation especially loves dunking a sugar cube into their teacup and then placing the sugar cube into their mouth and drinking sipping tea like that. It comes from the older times when rulers would need to know if their tea was poisoned or not. Hence, they would first dunk the sugar cube, and if the tea was poisoned, it would react with sugar, and therefore they would not drink the tea. What came about as a method of caution, of making sure that you don't die, actually became a long-established tradition of drinking tea that way. There are three different varieties of sugar cubes that you can get served. The regular sugar cube, it's very easy to dissolve. You dunk a little bit into the tea, put it on top of your tongue, and with one or two sips of tea, it dissolves. That is the more regular one. The more traditional ones are kallagand, which is a lot more tough than the regular sugar cube. It almost has a bone-like texture to it, and it takes one kallagand only to dunk into your tea, and with only one kallagand, you can actually sip the entire cup of tea, because it takes longer time to dissolve. The third kind of sugar cube is more exotic, I would say. It's very traditional, and it's homemade. It looks like a light brownish color. It's prepared with coffee and walnuts. The walnuts can either be chopped, or they can be just grinded and added to this. Especially the kids love it, but I also love this kind of sugar a lot more. Next important element that accompanies every single Azerbaijan tea ceremony are fruit desserts. They're very different from jams in the way that they're prepared. They're not boiled. They're usually served wholesome, instead of being mashed, like the jams. As you saw earlier, there's a wide variety of fruit and vegetable desserts that are very specific to Azerbaijan, and they're quite unusual, like the eggplants, the tomato, the olives, the walnuts, the almonds. They're quite unusual, and then there are the more common ones, like the one made of watermelon, white cherries, apples, feihua. Feihua is a fruit that's very specific to Azerbaijan, as well as, I think, some of the Latin American countries. Next, there is also a variety of different kinds of nuts, like almonds, walnuts, nuts, pistachios, and dried fruits, that will be usually white and black dried grapes that tea gets served with. There is no particular rule about in which order you can consume your fruit dessert or nuts. You can consume either or both. It's really up to you. Unlike the British afternoon tea, where there's a specific order that you have to follow in Azerbaijani tea ceremony, there are no rules. Finally, there's also a variety of different kinds of sweets that are usually served with tea. That depends on the season, on the region where you are. It varies from region to region. It varies from the time of the year. So, here at the table, I have these sweets that are called uchbujak. They are triangular, rolled thin dough that's filled with nuts and sugar. This is very specific to Shekhi and Gabala region. Next, I have here halwa, which is a mix of sugar, flour, butter, and this is usually served during a funeral. So, every single guest has to take a teaspoon of halwa and drink it with tea. The other sweets that are usually served with tea are pakhlava, shakarbura, that you've probably already seen in my Nowruz video. If you haven't, please make sure to check it out. I've shown the beautiful pastries that we prepare for Nowruz. Looking at this beautiful, vibrant, very aesthetically pleasing table, you can see why it takes hours and hours for Azerbaijani people to enjoy their tea. It is also important to mention here that in Azerbaijan, we don't count the number of cups that we drink throughout the day. In fact, there's a specific saying that says, çay nedir, say nedir, which translates what is tea and what is the count of it. So, in Azerbaijan, when you're drinking tea, you don't have to keep tabs. Again, to compare it with a British afternoon tea ceremony, where the appropriate number is considered to be from two to three cups throughout the afternoon tea, in Azerbaijan, there's no particular rule about the number of cups. Our approach is drink as much as you like. Thank you so much for watching this video until the very end. I hope that you enjoyed and learned about Azerbaijani tea ceremony. I personally took a lot of pride and love in preparing this video and I hope you could feel it. Whenever in Azerbaijan, please make sure to enjoy a traditional Azerbaijani tea ceremony and if you're ever in the old town, make sure that you check out this beautiful venue called Muram Club. Thank you and I'll see you in my next video. Bye!