Turkey: Drink Post

The famous Turkish coffee! It is as good as its reputation has lent us to believe. Ben was so kind as to take us to a quality place (read: no tourists) down a small alley. It’s thick and rich, almost like hot chocolate. You don’t drink the last quarter of it, they grind the beans down into a paste and they don’t filter it, so the last bit is a bitter sludge. Apart from that, they do have some Starbucks and other chains, but if you want coffee outside of Istanbul it’s Nescafe.


Strangely, Turks don’t seems to be big coffee drinkers. They are tea-aholics. Everywhere you see people drinking tea, or a tea man carrying a hanging style tray held by three chains or wires of Turkish style glasses handing them out to store owners and workers. And they love their suger. We drank a lot of strong tea.


The national beer of Turkey is Efes. You go to a bar, they serve Efes. You go to buy beer at the local store, it's a fridge full of Efes, with the bottom shelf being Tuborg... the poor man's beer in Turkey. They found the beer they like and feel no need to explore further. It's a good thing it tastes good.


The wines we had were all fabulous. Turkey has a lot of wineries, I tried two reds and they were both soft sweet tannins, but not sugery, very smooth. One had a hint of port. We bought a few bottles for our kind hosts Pat and Ben, and one bottle for the lender of the life-saving coat, so we'll hear soon hopefully how those went. They might taste like we bought them from a convenience store. Because we did. If you ask someone in Turkey where to buy something inevitably they say why my cousin's place of course! Yes it's a laundromat, but he sells wine! Of course it is the best wine in the country, why would you ask such a thing? It's hard to find stores is what I'm saying.