Moroccan Mint Tea

Moroccan mint tea is green tea infused with spearmint and heavily sweetened, and in Morocco it is not simply a drink. It is a sign of hospitality and friendship, served all day, after every meal and through every conversation, and Moroccans take enough pride in it to argue over who among their friends makes the best cup. Its history is more recent and more accidental than most people expect. Tea reached Morocco in quantity through the Crimean War in the 1850s, when the British East India Company diverted shipments intended for the Baltic states and found itself with a surplus of Chinese tea to sell. Moroccans were the first to infuse it with mint, as a way of countering the bitterness of gunpowder green tea, and the combination stuck. It is drunk across Morocco, Algeria, Tunisia, Libya and Mauritania, and in parts of the Near and Middle East. It is called shai bi na'na' in classical Arabic and atay or latay in Maghrebi Arabic. The method here involves two rinses of the tea leaves before the tea is made, one of which is kept as the essence and returned to the pot, and one discarded. That step is what removes the harshest bitterness while keeping the strength.