Morocco - The Ubiquitous Mint Tea

Mint Tea certainly seems to be the official drink of Morocco. Armed with the Lonely Planet's advice that to refuse it is a great social insult, Mum and I drank rather more of it than we would otherwise have chosen whilst we were in Morocco.

Our first mint tea experience was with an elderly apothecary, determined to sell us spices and cosmetics. Whilst he was preparing the tea, adding block upon block of sugar until the taste satisfied him, he dazzled us with a bewildering array of products, the descriptions of which I had to try and translate from French for Mum.

The apothecary, like most of the storeholders in the souq, was set up with a little gas bottle which can be used as a stove for preparing stews and most importantly, the mint tea. The tea is prepared from a mixture of dried green tea, fresh spearmint, which you can buy by the bundle from special herb stalls, and (extremely) large quantities of sugar. The tea is generally served in small glasses, but you're lucky if you can escape with only drinking a single glass.