A view over the brim of several thousand Apple Teas

The first person who introduced me to Apple Tea was a Turkish street vendor, attempting to sell my mother and sister some rather shoddy looking eveningwear by the esteemed brand ‘Guchi’. I thought it was part of the general tourist attraction nature of street vendors, alongside their regular invitations to purchase my sister for a selection of camels. Classified as an herbal tea, I did catch glimpses of street vendors preparing the drink. It’s made from a sugar infused with the taste of apple with boiling water, much like instant coffee. Much to my surprise at the time, especially for someone who is not a tea aficionado, I enjoyed its sweet taste an awful lot. My dad was less fond of the beverage than I was, mainly because its introduction into an evening usually meant he was going to be parting with money very soon.

But over the course of our holiday in Turkey, Apple Tea started to surface everywhere. A remote restaurant in the mountains, whose menu included whatever fish the owner had caught from the stream that ran through the dining area that day, served Apple Tea as a complimentary drink with the meal. The captain on a small boat we went on a cruise with, a mad faced, scraggly bearded man who could have walked onto the set of Pirates of the Caribbean and nobody would notice, served Apple Tea with Madeira cake for afternoon tea. Apple Tea was a sign of hospitality in Turkey. A perhaps more tourist friendly sign of hospitality, due to its sweet and easily appreciable taste, but really no different than the very British custom of inviting guests into the house for a cup of tea.