Day 3 Trabzon, Iyidere, and Ayder

Friday August 4, 2006

Submitted by Colin Graham and Mary Weir

 

Breakfast at Trabzon’s Otel Oron included chocolate and walnut

Silver Weaving demonstration and visit to work and retail shop.

Fatimah Hanım is a continuing education teacher of the skill of weaving silver and copper wire. [1] She showed us one form of weaving. An employee of the shop showed a second form.

The first demonstration used sterling silver drawn wire with matches used as the loom. The technique is somewhat like crocheting. A wooden hammer (with a special wood) is used to flatten the finished object. Traditionally this work is done for dowries, and may be sold to provide cash at the time of the wedding (like carpets and the wood in poplar groves). The schools have begun to apply the technique to produce other objects, such as worry beads. Less expensive objects are made with copper wire, which is immersed in an (“normal” -- sulphuric?) acid bath and brushed for tarnish removal and cleaning before being dipped in molten silver.

How to make tea: 1 tiny spoon of leaves per glass of tea. Use a double boiler pot set. Put the leaves in your upper pot and bring the water to a boil in the lower pot. This will scald the leaves in the upper pot. Add the boiling water to the top pot, lower the heat, and simmer for 20 minutes.

picture by Emily Dewhurst

Interview with Mayor Ahmet Mete of Iyidere (“Good river”).[1] Ahmet Bey belongs to the AK Party, an opponent of the party of the former Prime Minister, Mesut Yilmaz,[2] who was visiting Rize that day, and for whose caravan half the highway was blocked. The Mayor’s office was very large and elegant: wood floor and paneling, lovely desk, air conditioning; the rest of the building was somewhat run-down. The mayor serves a 5-year term; there are no term limits. The mayor and council run alone, not on party lists as used for the Turkish parliament. There are 9 members of council and about 5500 people in the city. 7 members of the council belong to AKP; 2 to another party. All are men. Of municipal staff of 30, 3 are women (enter one). Headscarves are not an issue in the Municipal hall.

The municipality’s responsibilities include roads[3], by-law enforcement (fines only), and administration of education through the secondary level[4].

Lunch at Kardelen Restaurant in Iyidere.

Çaykur tea factory. (Çaykur’s Iyidere Çay Fabrikansı).

During the 5-month summer and fall production period, 165 tons of tea arrive daily and the plant runs 24/7 with 3 shifts. The leaves are dried for 6 hours to reduce moisture content to 50% from the original 80% (on a slowly moving belt). The tea leaves themselves come from plantations individually owned and may be transhipped several times before reaching the factory. The withered leaves are then crushed for about 45 minutes, in 2 passes (in large round bins). The first pass is gentle; the second uses some pressure on the leaves, the goal is to break, not crush. Then the leaves are roasted at about 107-109 C. Oxygen is added to supersaturate the leaves as they are roasted so a lower temperature can be used. (More oxygen gives a better brew with fewer leaves.) Green tea is roasted in a less intense way. The twigs are separated out and later burned to provide heat for a later batch. The roasted leaf fragments are separated by size (smaller is higher quality). Tea is then packed in huge bags for storage (up to one year). It will be repacked in containers for retail sale. “Altinbaçe” is the best quality of Çaykur tea. Tea has an infinite shelf life if it is kept dry. Caffeine content is1.5-2%.

Mahmet Dermercioğlu, the assistant director, told us that SE Asian tea may have additives for flavour or aroma; Turkish tea does not and takes longer to process. Çaykur’s tea is tested 3 times a year for caffeine and minerals (cobalt, calcium, magnesium, and copper). This factory was built in 1961. Çaykur has been making green tea for only 2 years.

Visit with the director of the factory: laminate floors, paneling, no a/c. Rest of the building in good condition. The quality of tea depends on: clean leaves, the type of the leaves, the speed at which the leaves are processed (slow is better). Çaykur has 36 factories in Rize, 8 in Trabzon, and several elsewhere. The largest factory handles 300 tons/day. Tea bush seeds were smuggled to Turkey in 1954 in an umbrella handle, starting the industry in Turkey.