08/10/2026
🍃 From Tea Research to the Tasting Table
Today in Rize, our Tea Tour took us to Recep Tayyip Erdoğa University, where tea is much more than a crop, it is a major field of research, innovation and development. 🇹🇷🍃
We began the morning with a fascinating presentation on the university’s work in tea. We were amazed to discover just how much research and innovation is taking place here, from developing new tea varieties and improving harvesting and processing, to tea quality, mechanisation, sustainability and finding new uses for tea and tea waste.
And yes… the patents! 🤯
There are some wonderfully inventive ideas emerging from their tea research, including technology for measuring water in harvested tea leaves and systems for tea processing.
The university has also established a remarkable national tea gene pool containing more than 2,000 tea genotypes and commercial varieties, making it an important centre for the future of Turkish tea.
Then came the part we particularly love… tasting tea! ☕️
We tasted handmade black, green and oolong teas from dr.atillapolat looking closely at the dry leaf, aroma, liquor, flavour, mouthfeel and overall quality.
There was a fantastic exchange of opinions around the table, with everyone keen to hear different perspectives. Having wen.zhuo.liu a member of european.teagrowers brought an especially valuable expert perspective to the tasting and made for some fascinating discussion.
What we loved most was the spirit of learning and sharing, researchers, tea producers and tea people from different backgrounds coming together over the same little leaf.
Rize really is a place where tea tradition meets tea science. And today we got to experience both. 🍃☕️
