How Russians Drink Tea: The Samovar, Zavarka and Lemon Tea

A very strong concentrate called zavarka is brewed in a small teapot, which sits on top of a samovar, a large urn that keeps water hot all day. Each person pours a little zavarka into a glass and tops it up with hot water from the samovar’s tap, as strong or as weak as they like.

Our 2015 blog called this “nearly impossible” to copy at home, and warned that zavarka on its own is fierce stuff: a “volatile drink, purely on its own.” Olga, a Russian intern at Teabox, described it the same way: zavarka is “a high concentration of tea to water,” and a little of it is topped with hot water from the samovar “to lighten the flavor.”

The method suits a household that drinks tea all day. One pot of concentrate serves everyone, the water never goes cold, and nobody has to wait for a kettle. Tea in Russia, Olga told us, is not a cup in the morning and another in the afternoon: “The day starts and ends with tea, with numerous cups being drunk in between.”

The samovar is a small stove as much as a kettle. Charcoal or wood burns in a chimney through its center, heating the water around it, and the warmth keeps the teapot on top hot. A faucet pours the hot water to dilute the zavarka.

Where it came from

The first Russian samovars were made in 1778 at Tula, an arms-making city that became the center of the craft, and the design probably came from Persia. Our writer Peter GW Keen called Tula “the Detroit of tea kettles,” and called the samovar itself “a Persian vessel that came to Russia by happenstance.”

No two are quite alike. Samovars have been made of silver, copper, brass, a zinc-copper alloy called tompac, cast iron, steel and even gold, in shapes from eggs and barrels to classical urns. When Keen looked in 2016, he found about two thousand listed on eBay and rarely saw the same design twice. Today many are heated electrically.

The center of the home

Used all day without relighting, it became the gathering point of the Russian home. In poor homes it was central in every sense: to lose the family samovar was humiliating, and to own a fine, large one was a matter of pride and sharing. The great Russian writers put it in their stories as a symbol of Russian life. Pushkin wrote, “Ecstasy is a glassful of tea and a piece of sugar in the mouth.”

The same urn is used in Kashmir, where it keeps Kashmiri kahwa hot. Keen notes that there, Hindu samovars were traditionally made of brass and Muslim ones of copper.

Russians love their tea black, sweetened with honey or sugar, often with a slice or wedge of lemon, and served in a glass set in an ornate metal holder called a podstakannik. Bowls of jam are spooned between sips, and tea time comes with cakes, sandwiches and cookies; it can last “anywhere from thirty minutes to several hours.” As Olga put it, in Russia “you are more likely to be invited for a cup of tea than for a meal.”

Sugar is part of the ritual, but in moderation. Keen counts Russia, with Turkey and Morocco, among the tea cultures where sugar “really does add to the experience,” measured in a spoon or two, not the ten teaspoons hidden in some bottled teas.

Olga’s samovar and smetannik

Olga, a Russian intern at Teabox, told us how her family gathered around the samovar after birthday parties for one last cup, and shared a recipe for smetannik, a sour cream cake for Russian tea time. It is four thin layers of plain and cocoa sponge, spread with sweetened sour cream and left in the fridge for at least 12 hours to soak it up. We ate ours with Assam black tea and raspberry jam.

Tea from the saucer

Some Russians even drank their tea from the saucer, to cool it quickly. Keen describes an 1860s photograph by William Carrick of two carriers in a St. Petersburg tea room, one drinking from his saucer beside a large samovar. Our writer Anik Basu found bloggers who describe saucer drinking in 19th-century Russia as a class marker: merchants and the hurried used the saucer, while aristocrats drank their tea hot or waited for it to cool.

The lemon habit traveled too. Our old Tea 101 post says Russian Caravan inspired the custom of adding a slice of lemon to tea “to brighten the color,” and links it to the creation of Russian Earl Grey, a variation that adds citrus peel and lemongrass to black tea and bergamot. The version it describes uses naturally dried Thai lemongrass and sun-ripened, dried orange peel, for a smooth, sweet and refreshing cup.

Russian Earl Grey is now an international style rather than a Russian one; Keen noted in 2016 that two of the top five global tea brands sold Russian Earl Grey bags. More on bergamot blends is in Earl Grey tea, and for more on tea rituals from Moscow to Morocco, see Tea cultures of the world.

Indian tea has a long Russian connection. Kangra in Himachal Pradesh, whose green tea made the region’s name, was for many years “the main source of supply of green tea to Central/West Asia and Russia.”

Writing in 2016, Keen called Russia the largest importer of Indian tea, historically buying “the heavy, low-quality black tea that was suited to samovar brewing.” When the Soviet economy collapsed, that trade fell away, and Keen wrote that it “came close to bringing down major parts of the Indian industry, especially the Nilgiris.” By 2016, he added, Russia and the former Soviet republics had become a growing market for fine teas, mostly black.

No samovar? You can get close with a teapot. This is the Russian lemon black tea from our Tea 101 recipes: a strong brew in the pot, diluted in the cup. It works with Russian Caravan or any bold black tea; a strong Assam is what Tea 101 suggests, and an Assam is what we drank with Olga’s cake. More lemon recipes are in How to make lemon tea.

Filling the cup only halfway with the strong brew is the samovar idea in miniature: the concentrate is softened with water, and each person can make it as strong as they like.

For a smoky cup in the Russian Caravan style, use a smoky Darjeeling such as Teabox Roasted Darjeeling Black. Our tasting data marks it as good with both lemon and milk.