By Imane Boulal, Travel Designer at Adler Marlow

If you come to my family’s house in El Jadida, you will be offered tea before you are asked why you came. This is not politeness exactly, or not only politeness. It is closer to a language of its own. The tea establishes that you are a guest, that there is time, that whatever needs to be discussed can be discussed after the first glass. Business, condolences, a marriage proposal, a neighbor returning a borrowed dish: all of it happens around the tray.

Most people arriving in Morocco already know that atay matters here. What is less often explained is why it is made the way it is, how much it changes as you move across the country, and what the small details actually mean. That is what this piece is about.

What atay actually is

Three things: Chinese gunpowder green tea, fresh spearmint, which we call naana, and a quantity of sugar that alarms most visitors the first time they see it measured out.

The tea is gunpowder, a Chinese green tea rolled into tight pellets, named for the resemblance. Most of what Morocco drinks comes from Zhejiang province on the east China coast. We call it barud, which is simply the Arabic word for gunpowder, so the name survived the journey intact.

The mint is naana, a curly-leaved spearmint. This matters more than it sounds. Peppermint, which many people abroad assume is correct, has a menthol intensity that flattens the tea underneath it. Spearmint lifts the tea instead of competing with it. Make this at home with peppermint and you will produce a version of atay rather than the thing itself, though in Morocco we do make atay with other herbs too, which is a different matter entirely.

The sugar is not a matter of taste so much as of structure. Gunpowder tea brewed as strongly as we brew it is genuinely bitter, and the sugar is what makes the whole thing cohere.

How tea arrived in Morocco, and the story that is not true

Here is the version you will read almost everywhere. During the Crimean War in the 1850s, British merchants found their Baltic ports blockaded, were left holding shiploads of Chinese green tea with nowhere to sell it, and offloaded the lot at Tangier and Mogador, now Essaouira. Morocco, presented with an accidental surplus, invented mint tea.

It is a good story, and the historical record does not support it. The scholar Graham Cornwell, in his history of tea and sugar in Morocco, found that tea had reached the Moroccan court around 1700, where it stayed a rare and heavily taxed luxury for roughly a hundred and fifty years. What changed in the nineteenth century was not a dramatic shipment but a collapse in price. Tea landing at Mogador multiplied around twenty-five times between 1857 and the end of the century, while its value rose only eightfold.

Tea did not arrive by accident. It became affordable, and then it became universal, spreading so completely through every level of Moroccan society that within two generations it was impossible to imagine the country without it.

The ritual

The berrad

Tea is made in a berrad, the long-spouted metal teapot that sits directly on the heat. The shape is functional rather than decorative: the long spout is what makes the high pour possible, and the metal lets the pot go straight onto a flame or a brazier.

Berrads come in every shape, size, and color, from plain working pots to elaborately engraved silver. They make a wonderful gift, and an equally good one to bring home for yourself.

The first wash

A generous pinch of gunpowder goes into the pot, followed by a small amount of boiling water, which is swirled and then poured away. This first wash removes the dustiest bitterness from the dry leaves.

The brew

The pot is filled with boiling water and left to steep. Then the mint goes in, pushed down into the pot, along with the sugar. From here the tea is often returned to the heat, though not always. It depends on the person making it and how they prefer their atay.

The tasting

A glass is poured and returned to the pot. Then another. The person making the tea tastes as they go, adjusting sugar, deciding whether it has brewed long enough. This is not ceremony. It is quality control, and it is the step most often skipped in demonstrations put on for visitors.

In my family, everyone makes atay, and it can be made at any point in the day.

Why the tea is poured from a height

The height aerates the tea as it falls, which softens the bitterness. It also produces the layer of foam on the surface, the rezza, which is the visual sign of a glass poured properly. A Moroccan host will notice immediately whether the foam is there.

Tea is not the same everywhere in Morocco

This is the thing I most want visitors to understand, and it is almost never mentioned. Moroccan tea is not one recipe. It changes meaningfully as you move around the country, and knowing that turns tea into a way of reading where you are.

Northern cities (Tangier, Tetouan, Chefchaouen): Stronger and darker, often less sweet. Served not in a berrad but in a tall glass, and known as atay chamali. Lemon verbena appears in some households.

Fez, Meknes, the imperial interior: The most precise preparation. Balance is the point, and the tea is judged on it.

Casablanca and the Atlantic coast: Balanced and everyday. Tea as routine rather than occasion.

Souss and the south (Agadir, Taliouine): Darker, stronger, longer boiled, and sweeter. Saffron appears for guests and celebrations.

Atlas Mountains: Wild herbs, sage, thyme, pennyroyal. Brewed strong against the altitude and the cold.

Sahara: Three rounds over a brazier, slow and ceremonial. Little or no mint, since it does not grow there.

Winter, everywhere: Mint is scarce, so chiba (wormwood) or louiza (lemon verbena) take over.

One regional difference worth knowing by name: in the north, around Tangier, Tetouan, and Chefchaouen, atay is served not in a berrad but in a tall glass. It is called atay chamali, northern tea, and ordering it that way will tell any waiter in the north that you know what you are asking for.

What to do when you are offered tea

Take the glass with your right hand. Hold it by the rim and the base rather than wrapping your palm around it, because it will be extremely hot. Drink it when it arrives, or whenever suits you. There is no waiting for a signal.

One thing worth knowing in a shop or a souk: tea is offered freely and does not obligate you to buy anything. Some visitors avoid accepting because they fear a transaction is being created. It is not. You may decline the goods and keep drinking the tea.

A few words

A small amount of Darija changes how this goes. People notice.

Atay: Tea

Atay b’naana: Mint tea

Atay, afak: Tea, please

Bla sukkar, afak: Without sugar, please

Nus nus: Half and half, for tea sweetened partway

Had atay bnin: This tea is delicious

Baraka, shukran: Enough, thank you

A note on sugar, which is changing

The sugar is no longer the fixed thing it once was. More and more people drink atay without it, myself included. It is now common for a household to make two pots, one sweetened and one not, so that everyone is accommodated. Others ask for nus nus, meaning half and half, which gives you the sweetness without the full weight of it.

If you are offered tea in Morocco and you would rather have less sugar, say so. You will not be the only one at the table asking.

How to make it at home

This will not taste the same as it does in Morocco, for reasons involving water, altitude, and the fact that you are not sitting in someone’s courtyard. It will still be good.

1. Put a tablespoon of gunpowder green tea into a teapot, ideally one that can take direct heat.

2. Add a splash of boiling water, swirl for a few seconds, and pour it away. This is the wash.

3. Fill the pot with boiling water and let it steep for two to three minutes.

4. Add a large handful of fresh spearmint, pushed down into the pot, and sugar to taste, or none at all.

5. Return to a low heat for a few minutes without letting it boil over.

6. Pour a glass and return it to the pot. Repeat twice. Taste, and adjust.

7. Pour from as high as you can manage without causing an incident. The foam is the point.

Serve with almonds, dates, or Moroccan pastries, and do not plan anything for the next hour.

Where to drink tea well

Nothing will beat atay made in someone’s home, unhurried and with every step properly done. That is the version to hope for.

Short of that, Morocco is full of restaurants and tea houses that make it the traditional way and make it beautifully. In Marrakech, 1112 Marrakech is worth a deliberate stop while you are in the medina, both for the tea and for the setting. But I would also say this: some of the best glasses I have had came from the smallest cafes, the ones with four tables and no sign. Do not walk past those.

Atay means a great deal to almost every Moroccan. It is, quite literally, a hug in a cup, a kass. My father-in-law says that atay should be drunk for its sweetness and its piping hot temperature, and he is right about both. It gathers people around the same table and makes them talk about their day at the end of school or work. It can be a session of spilling atay between friends. It can be warm, steady support during a funeral, or a sweet note at a celebration. Whatever else is happening, the tea is poured.

FAQs