Turkish latte, high tea, and all that jazz.

The current market for specialty coffee and tea in Israel is all of the following: restless, innovative, and growing despite political unrest and security concerns.

Since this journal published its first article about Israel (April 1995), the country's coffee market has seen both notable successes and significant failures. Entrepreneurs who assumed specialty coffee is a quick or easy way to earn a shekel have learned otherwise, as have companies who failed to take local taste preferences and consumption patterns into account.

Some bold examples of innovation include a cross-cultural brew called "Turkish latte"; "Helsinki," an Israeli coffee blend inspired by a Finnish prototype; and a "mobile beverage dispenser" that doles out fresh coffee, tea, or hot cider from a "walking backpack" any time, anywhere.

Several brands of iced tea - Lipton, Nestea, and Wissotzky - lined Israel's supermarket shelves for the first time this past summer, and Israelis are no longer strangers to the grace of high tea, replete with fine bone English china and open-faced sandwiches.

Espresso carts and cybercafes made their debut in 1995, and the sound of live jazz bands at cafes and tea houses is helping to initiate Israel's Generation X, the least rigid niche market in the country, into the pleasures of specialty coffee and tea.

Now open for business in central Jerusalem is Second Cup's first international specialty coffee franchise, the only one of its kind in Israel thus far.

What's the best news of all? Committed roasters and retailers have begun to understand the value of consumer education to stimulate and democratize the growth of specialty coffee and tea in Israel.

In Israel, upgraded, fresh-roasted versions of botz (literally translated as "mud") and Turkish coffee are emerging as a third category of specialty coffees, joining Western espresso and filter traditions.

Botz, an ultra-fine grind, earns its name from its dubious method of preparation. After boiling water is poured on the grounds, the sediment at the bottom does, indeed, look like "mud." But rather than delegitimize entrenched traditions, it makes better sense to gentrify them. This is why the two best-known specialty roasters in Israel, Ava Coffee Ltd. and Arcaffe Israel Ltd., have decided to turn "mud drinkers" on to fresh beans and improved preparation. Ava Coffee's Helsinki blend, 95% Arabica and 5% Robusta for good reason, is a case in point and a fine example of international synergy.

"The inspiration for the blend," says chief roaster Michah Reiner of Ava, who is working toward an ISO 9002 certificate and introducing the Agtron system into his operation, "came from an esteemed colleague, Robert Paulig of Finland, who created a unique filter blend with cardamom. With his permission, I adapted his filter blend for Turkish coffee and played with the spice mixture. The result is Helsinki, my way of paying tribute to the Finnish origin and of playing on the word 'Hel,' the Hebrew word for cardamom."

Greg Wolf, ex-New Yorker, SCAA member, and owner of Cafe Me'od ("Very Coffee") in Haifa, is the inventor of the "Helsinki"-based Turkish Latte (and of five different types of chai). Greg's labor-intensive beverage, brewed below the boiling point in a feenjon and served in tiny cups, is topped with milk froth and enhanced with a hint of chocolate or cinnamon.

Arcaffe Israel Ltd. (a joint venture with Arcaffe of Livorno, Italy), which opened its first roastery/beanery cafe in Herzliyah Pituach in 1995 to excellent reviews and has since added another location in Tel Aviv, has an outstanding array of seven 100% Arabica espresso blends and one filter blend roasted in-house on a Petroncini. Their estate coffees selected by the parent company in Italy, do, however, share space with a maverick called "Mediterraneo" for botz and Turkish coffee drinkers.

In an international market seeking to enhance its repertoire of specialty blends and beverages, exotica like Turkish Latte is worth exploring.

Consumer Education, Taste Profiles, and Consumption Patterns

Although the espresso craze is "hot" in Israeli media, the concept of specialty coffee is poorly understood. Will the current Israeli hoopla surrounding "black gold" translate into an enduring demand for quality?

Unlike their American and European counterparts, fiercely competitive retailers in Israel have not united organizationally to advance the industry as a whole. Industry-wide consumer education to reach a broader public could make a real difference. The consumers want information. When Arcaffe hosted an exemplary tasting, cupping, roasting, and how-to demonstration in November 1996, no less than 1,000 people asked to participate.

To be successful, Israel's specialty coffee industry needs to shed the aura of snobbery with which Israeli food editors imbue it. Espresso jargon has already been spoofed in Haaretz, the most highbrow of Israel's newspapers. High import taxes on all types of grinders, espresso machines, machinettas, and automatic drips also relegate specialty coffee to an elitist corner.

Taste preferences are unusually diverse, since Israel is a beehive of immigrant and ethnic niche markets. Collectively, espresso-based beverages fare better than filtered coffees in Israel, hence the increase in imported Italian espresso beans, up 25% in the last two years, from 70 tons to 125 tons per annum. (Segafredo, Lavazza, and Illy now compete with Bristot and Saquella for market share.)

Wolf, whose family roasted organic coffee in the U.S. for 30 years, finds that Israeli and American taste profiles are different in some respects and similar in others: "Overall, taste buds in Israel are looking for something sweeter. Israel's Generation X goes for flavored coffees and syrups, which account for close to 25% of all coffee drinks that go out in my cafe, and that's not skewed male or female."

The manager of Cafeneto, Shlomo Abrass Pash, who builds his own carts and permanent kiosks, observes, "People in Israel walk and eat in the street, but they don't walk and drink [coffee or tea]." With that lesson in mind, Pash signed a contract with ID Design of Denmark, a Danish furniture chain with branches in the Far East, Dubai, Jedda, Riyadh, and Tel Aviv. All the Israeli branches will feature a Cafeneto corner, allowing customers to sip while adding up the bill after browsing through a gallery of 130 furnished rooms. Pash, inventor of the mobile beverage dispenser, shifted gears to differentiate himself from a competitor, Coffee-to-Go, an espresso cart company in Ramat Gan with 21 locations and a 5-year contract with Carriage Works.

Against all this activity, Second Cup (which is express freighting coffees to Israel from its Canadian roasting facility) has not entered virgin territory. Its Jerusalem franchise is more impressive than anything Israelis are used to, but the Canadian giant does face nimble Davids. To coax Israeli palates into trying its signature flavors and blends, Second Cup Jerusalem liberally offers free samples and devised the Hebrew motto "Discovering Each Flavor" (kol Ta'am me-hadash), a play on words that, to Israelis, sounds just like "New Every Tune" (kol Pa'am me-hadash). To associate filter with quality, the Jerusalem franchise deliberately prices filter- and espresso-based drinks equally.

High Tea and Iced Tea

According to Shalom Seidler, c.e.o. and managing director of Wissotzky Tea (Israel) Ltd., Israelis annually consume 3,500 tons of black, herbal, fruit, and leaf teas. Seidler, the sixth generation of tea tasters and blenders in the Wissotzky saga, observes, "For decades tea was the 'poor relative' of coffee in Israel. But there's a mystique about tea that's attracting a younger and health-conscious generation. In the last three years, the tea shelf in Israeli supermarkets has changed in variety and size."

Seidler's decision to open a Tea House in Tel Aviv was one component of a multipronged strategy to differentiate Wissotzky from Lipton, Nestea, Twinings, and other competitors in Israel. First, for the mass market, Wissotzky produced a new line of herbal and fruit teas in 1990 and a line of better quality black teas in 1995. Second, their iced teas, pasteurized and in a bottle, were introduced this summer. Third, to elevate tea culture in Israel, Seidler - who studied tea blending at the Anglo-Asiatic Co., Wissotzky's London branch - opened the Wissotzky Tea House-Shop in Tel Aviv. The selection of 60 loose teas, homemade marmalades, gracious decor, and high tea on English Westminster china clearly attract an upscale crowd. There is a daily free sampling of a leaf tea and an iced tea from large samovars in the storefront of the shop.

Wissotzky, founded in Moscow in 1849, is exporting to the former USSR, where the company's pre-communist and old Russian origins are a marketing asset in the current political climate. Seidler has also sent an experimental container to Taiwan and a sales force for the company is already in New York. On the Israeli front, two more Wissotzky Tea Houses will open in the near future - in Haifa and Jerusalem

Ava Coffee has also entered the specialty tea market. "I was encouraged by a client, The Coffee Mill in Jerusalem, who convinced me the market exists," says Michah Reiner, who began importing a line of single origins, blends, tisanes, and flavored teas from Germany in 1996.

All of Wissotzky's products and Ava's coffees, teas, and syrups are under strict kosher supervision.

There is still room for development in Israel's market for specialty coffee and tea. There are still only three specialty roasters in the country: Ava, Arcaffe, and Siach Kaffeh. As the market matures and consolidates, it will in all likelihood imitate less, invent more, and pay greater attention to a treasure of ethnic traditions in its own backyard.

For instructions on how to prepare Turkish Latte, contact Greg Wolf, Gredjo Ltd., Greg Cafe Me'od, 3 Derech Hayam, Haifa 34631, Israel. Tel: [phone], fax: [phone], e-mail: [e-mail].

To order the mobile beverage dispenser, contact Yossi Shem-Avi, The Abba Co./Cafeneto Division, 1909 Tippah Avenue, Charlotte, North Carolina 28205. Tel/Fax: [phone].

For more information or how to obtain the Helsinki Blend, contact Michah Reiner, AVA Coffee, Derech Ha'Atsma'ut 51, Haifa 33033, Israel. Tel: [phone], Fax: [phone].

Goldie Wachsman Maxwell is president of GWM Communications of New York, London, and Jerusalem and can be contacted via e-mail at [e-mail] or Tel: [phone] or Fax: [phone] (in Jerusalem). In London, Tel: [phone] or Fax: [phone]. In New York, Tel: [phone] or Fax: [phone].