Bellevue-Tea.co.uk

This month, the team from bellevue tea will be on Stand S185 at the Food & Drink Expo in Birmingham's NEC. We will be serving exhibition visitors a lovely cup of tea, as they make their way around this expansive show. If you are planning to attend the show, or would like to - we invite you to register for FREE entry here: Click Here - we would love to see you at the show - do please come over and say Hello and ask us about our special show offer!

After a few days in Istanbul, I realised that tea is as much of an institution in Turkey as it is in the UK. I had always thought that coffee was the preferred beverage of the Turks, but I now know that when it became very expensive to import after the First World War, tea drinking was encouraged. Hooray! And so it should be!

Tea has been grown in Turkey since the 1940s even though it’s a long way from the tropics, where tea is usually grown, rather surprisingly Turkey ranks 5th in the world’s tea producers. Tea is certainly at the heart of Turkish life and offering tea is considered to be a sign of friendship and hospitality. It is served in small tulip shaped glasses without milk and is usually sweetened with sugar. I quite enjoyed sweetening my tea for a change. It was a welcome injection of energy while sightseeing. Black tea is normally served and apple tea is very popular too.

We saw tea being consumed by everyone from the restaurant tout trying to keep warm on a damp winter’s evening to the shopkeepers in the Grand Bazaar. It is sold out of booths in the walls of Hagia Sophia or off carts pushed around the small streets near Istanbul’s spice bazaar. On a boat trip on the Bosphorus a tea seller was kept busy plying the day trippers on the upper and lower decks with hot tea.

Certainly drinking tea without milk makes it much easier to serve and having fresh, hot tea always available everywhere is one of life's splendid little luxuries in Turkey. I would recommend it to anyone.
 

The Outsider Tart bakery in Chiswick, which stocks and serves Bellevue tea, is run by two fabulous Americans, dedicated to "putting tasty, wholesome cakes back on the tea-time pedestal where they belong." Their latest incredible baked creation was featured in The Times magazine last month: meet the 'Whoopie' pie. So called because of the seemingly involuntary exclamation made by children, when first they see and taste this cream filled "inside out cupcake"!

We hope you agree, cakes should always be served with a nice cup of tea, so we are very pleased that Bellevue teas are stocked and served in this emporium of baked treats. We highly recommend you visit the Outsider Tart bakery next time you are in town, or you can hit their super-sweet website and order on-line: www.OutsiderTart.co.uk