Tea, mist and the high pastures of the eastern Black Sea

The eastern Black Sea is green for a plain reason. The Pontic Mountains stand close behind the shore, rising to more than 3,900 metres in the Kaçkar range, and the damp air off the sea gives up its rain on their northern slopes. On the state meteorological service’s long-term figures, the coasts of Rize and Artvin are the wettest in the country. So the forest comes down to the water, tea covers the lower slopes, and mist rises from the valleys in the afternoon. It is a green that has nothing to do with the Mediterranean.

What the rain grows

Tea is younger here than it looks. A law of 1924 named it among the crops Rize was to grow, and the first factory opened there in 1947. It is picked from May to October, in three flushes, on slopes so steep that wire lifts strung across the valleys, the varangel, carry the sacks. Drink it where it grows, in a tulip glass, strong and often.

Further west, around Giresun and Ordu, tea gives way to hazelnuts, of which Türkiye is the world’s largest grower. The harvest begins in August, on dates each province sets every summer: the orchards nearest the sea first, the higher ones over the following weeks. The nuts are picked by hand and spread out to dry in the sun. The hazelnut harvest, with a family is a morning in their orchards, in August or September, and lunch at their table, with tea from the gardens further along the coast.

Up to the yaylas

Higher up are the yaylas, the high summer pastures. Families go up with their animals in late spring, once the snow has gone, and stay until September in wooden houses, making butter and cheese and cutting hay for the winter. From mid-July into early September one yayla after another holds its festival, its şenlik, where the horon is danced in a ring to the kemençe, the region’s small three-stringed fiddle.

They are not all alike. Ayder, at 1,350 metres below the Kaçkar peaks, has hot springs and is busy for it. Pokut, at about 2,000 metres, is known for the cloud that fills the valleys below it, and a path leads on to its neighbour, Sal. Spend the day on foot across the meadows, with lunch at a family’s table: butter, cornbread, fresh cheese and muhlama, which is cornmeal cooked in butter with the local cheese until it pulls into threads.

The anchovy that Istanbul associates with this coast is a winter fish, fried in cornmeal or baked with rice as hamsili pilav. In summer, eat what the yayla makes.

Sümela, on its cliff

Sümela, the monastery of the Virgin, is built into a cliff face at about 1,200 metres, above the Altındere valley inland from Trabzon. By tradition it was founded in the late fourth century by two monks from Athens, and it was added to until the 19th century. Its monks left in 1923, in the exchange of populations between Greece and Türkiye.

It was closed in 2015 while the rock above it was made safe, and reopened in stages from 2019. Go early, and not at a summer weekend, when the narrow road up the valley fills. If you can, walk up from the valley floor rather than drive: the path climbs about 250 metres through the forest and takes under an hour.

Rain, roads and Uzungöl

Plan for rain. On the same service’s long-term figures it rains in Rize on about 14 days in every month, July and August included, and August is twice as wet as May. Every day here needs a version that works in the wet. The mountain roads are narrow and slow, and distances that look short on the map take hours.

Uzungöl, about 100 km from Trabzon, has been a nature park since 1989. The village that once lived from its herds now lives from hotels, guesthouses and restaurants, and in summer it is crowded. Go in the first hours of the morning, then on up to the yaylas above it.

The sea is not the reason to come: the coast road, finished in 2007, runs along most of the shore. Four nights here go well with Istanbul in July and August, when the south coast is at its hottest and the average high in Rize stays under 27°C. Spend two on the Trabzon side, for Sümela and Uzungöl, and two in the Kaçkar valleys, for the yaylas. Then fly out from Rize–Artvin, which opened in 2022 on land reclaimed from the sea, so that the coast road is driven in one direction only. When to go, place by place has the rest of the year.

If you go

When

June to September, when the high pastures are open; August and September for the hazelnut harvest.

Getting there

About an hour and three quarters by air from Istanbul to Trabzon. Rize–Artvin, nearer the Kaçkar valleys, also has flights from Istanbul.

How long

Four nights, with one day kept free for the weather.

Worth knowing

Bring a waterproof, even in August.