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Feature
SB visits… Tatratea
The Spirits Business travelled to Slovakia to learn more about the inner workings of tea-based herbal liqueur Tatratea.
Landing at Poprad and stepping out onto the airport’s runway, new arrivals are immediately greeted by the dramatic backdrop of High Tatras. It’s quite the welcome. The mountains are synonymous with the country’s Spiš region, known as a hub for holidays with its ski fields, and also – as we’d soon find out in detail – the home of Tatratea.
Whilst Poprad could definitely make the grade for having one of the world’s most spectacular airport runway views, this was a discussion for another day. We were led by Tatratea’s export manager, Dávid Chovanec, to the small town of Kežmarok where Tatratea is produced.
The spirit’s maker, the Karloff distillery, was the base of operations for our two-day stay, and is on the site of a former flax-weaving factory in a building that is 150 years old. Kežmarok is home to nearly 16,000 people, but less than 70 work at the distillery.
At present, the site is undergoing restorations – carefully considered to preserve the building’s heritage – with a number of attractions in the pipeline to help boost Tatratea’s goal of becoming a global brand, including a cafe, a restaurant, a new shop and visitor centre, and the site’s star chimney repurposed into a viewing platform (with mountain views, of course). While skiing might currently be the region’s number-one crowd-puller for those visiting from abroad, supplementing the slopes with a visit to Tatratea could be a common play in a few years.
A presentation on the brand’s history from Tatratea tour guide Katka Zavadska informed us of this, along with a few other facts.
The Karloff Company was initially established in Western Slovakia by businessman Jan Semaňák, but relocated to Kežmarok in 2008, near to where he was born. There was also the sound reasoning that a brand named Tatratea should be based near the Tatras. Today, Semaňák’s children, Erik and Stella Semaňák, run the distillery with a view to follow in their father’s footsteps, and taking Tatratea from its ‘local speciality’ roots to a spirit with international recognition. “We aren’t a big corporation, we are a family business,” Zavadska said. “Our motto is to be the best, not to be the biggest.”
As for the spirit, Tatratea is a rarity in the sense that it is a tea-based liqueur – of which there are few and far between. The recipe for its flagship product – Tatratea Original 52% – draws upon old mountain recipes thought up by Slovak grandmothers of yore.
The idea was to pick herbs from the surrounding meadows and forests to make tea and combine this with a homemade spirit. Without modern medicine, the drink was used to cure illnesses – which Zavadska has heard referred to as a “miracle drink”.
Beyond its healing powers, it was also commonly used as a greeting drink in the chalets of the High Tatras, and then accompanied by singing, dancing, the crack of a whip and pistol shots. Naturally, we were treated to this custom and the traditional burning drink – black tea filled with half hot water, half apple juice and Tatratea’s 52% Original.
The Tatratea tasting
While the 52% Original may have started it all, the range is now 15 strong with different coloured bottles for each expression to match their spotlighted ingredient (say purple for 62% Forest Fruit). The range spans from light and accessible (17% ABV) profiles to the super-strong and somewhat intimidating (72% ABV). As you might have deduced, the percentage is in the name to make the alcohol level clear and upfront. Opt for the 72% Outlaw, and you know what you’re getting into.
The distillery also used to make an 82% ABV liqueur and had 500 bottles of it. This is no longer available, Zavadska told us, “because of European Union law – it’s forbidden to make at more than 80% ABV, so we don’t have this one today”. “That’s a shame,” I replied.
In any case, we got stuck into it after the presentation with a tasting board of all 15 expressions, helped along with bountiful cheeses and cold cuts to aid with digestion. “Until everything is empty, we cannot move,” Chovanec joked. Taking his comment to heart, we started with 22% Coconut, in a white bottle, then moved onto 32% Citrus (which is said to work extra well when combined with summer drinks, or mixed with cucumber and soda) and through to Jan Semaňák’s favourite, 42% Peach (made with white tea, peach extract and lemongrass for freshness, plus a touch of rose water).
The 62% Forest Fruit is made with blackberries and blueberries and goes well when mixed with hot red wine, almost like a take on Mulled Wine that warms up the whole body. The strongest, 72% Outlaw, is named as such because it’s an outlawed drink in Hungary due to its high strength. It is made to the same recipe as 52% Original, but with less sugar and with quinine extract. Proceed with caution, but these do well locally as “Slovaks really like strong alcohol”.
Zavadska said the 22% Coconut was an inquiry from Californians. “They wanted something less strong and with coconut flavour. At first, we didn’t want to make it because coconut isn’t a local thing here in Slovakia, but the founder [Jan] tried it, and it did well, because right now it’s our sixth bestseller.”
The range was launched in three stages, representing three different flavour profiles: series one being tea-dominant drinks; series two being fruit-forward drinks; and series three being herbal drinks, which are no longer liqueurs and are considered more as digestifs, because they are made with less sugar and stevia instead.
Experiencing every expression one after the other, you get a real idea for the versatility of the liqueurs – hot drinks, cold drinks, summer flavours, winter spices. It’s easy to understand why the range is being picked up in many bars not just in Slovakia, but in neighbouring central European countries such as Hungary and the Czech Republic. There’s something for everyone, as the old saying goes.
We next tried the 37% Hibiscus and Red Tea, which balanced the sourness of hibiscus with rooibos tea from South Africa. Then there was 47% Flower, which, pardon the pun, is apparently “not everyone’s cup of tea”, as it’s a flower liqueur, made with seven types of flower, including marigold, lavender and nettle (packaged in a yellow bottle, of course). However, given the addition of honey extract instead of sugar, it is said to make a nice addition to summer drinks and long cocktails.
Following that was 67% Apple and Pear, made from apple and pear distillate and a touch of cinnamon, clove and ginger, which makes it popular over Christmas. A hot tip for the bakers out there: this is also recommended as a secret ingredient for levelling up an apple pie recipe.
Up next was 17% Milk and Tea, the lowest strength of the lineup, which by this stage was a welcome change of pace. Inspired by England, it combines condensed milk with black tea. It is also recommended over ice cream in the summer, or with a latte.
Once that was gone, it was onto the 27% Acai & Aronia, made with local blackcurrants. The switch to blackcurrant in 2022 was due to logistical reasons: it’s expensive to bring açaí over from South America. Blackcurrant, which is grown in Slovakia, makes it a sweet and fruity liqueur, full of antioxidants and vitamins, and pairs well with cranberry juice if you’re making cocktails, Zavadska explained.
Tatratea Original 52% is made with a black Assam tea from India, however other variants feature white tea from Sri Lanka, rooibos from South Africa and green tea from Vietnam. A mix of herbs from Slovakia, fruit distillates and extracts, natural aromas and a 96% alcohol from sugar beet from the Czech Republic makes up the complete grouping. The most important ingredient is sugar, as to classify as a liqueur, it must contain at least 100 grams of sugar per litre of alcohol.
The tour
Some may say we did this back to front… but the next part of the afternoon was the tour. In need of a walk following the tasting, we were led around the premises, starting with the tanks for the macerates and concentrates.
The first thing to consider (besides safety) is maceration, Chovanec said. Manoeuvring around the tanks, he explained that the process is “similar to making tea at home, where you take your dried ingredients and pour hot water onto them. We also use alcohol at 96% ABV from the Czech Republic – half water and half alcohol – and we leave that for six to eight weeks to macerate.”
All macerates are 50% ABV, at a water level of 700 metres, comprising 800 litres of pure spirit and roughly 1,200kg of black tea. Chovanec stressed that the team checks the mixture constantly because it’s a black tea – as when making tea at home, if you forget about it for a few hours, it gets too bitter. This can happen at the distillery if the team isn’t vigilant.
After the six to eight weeks, the macerate is filtered. This is mixed with three important agents: black tea, oak shavings and a mixture of herbs and spices. This leads us to the concentrate, which matures for another six to eight weeks – the ‘magic period’ – and is then mixed with mountain water from the High Tatras, more alcohol, sugar, sugar syrup, natural aromas and fruit extracts, until we end up with the final product, which is then rested in steel tanks, for – yes – another six to eight weeks.
The whole process is said to take about half a year.
The packaging
The final step of production is bottling and filling. The bottles played a key part in Tatratea’s bid to modernise. Previously, the liquid came in clear ‘ordinary’ bottles that could be mistaken for syrup, but the team stepped up their design game by hiring a studio, which has created something akin to a Thermos flask.
This carries both tradition – as locals carry a flask up the Tatras to share a drink at the top – and also an eye-catching look for bars and retailers that might want to stock the collection on their shelves. The T logo, besides standing for Tatratea, comprises old Slavic sun symbols and contains a rooster among its motifs, which were installed on top of old houses as a form of protection from the devil, according to folklore.
The bottles undergo a rigorous process, including spray paint, screen printing, hot stamping, 16 valves for bottling and then being capped off with an excise stamp for Slovakia. Approximately two million bottles are produced a year.
In addition to the Tatratea range, the distillery also produces Czechoslovakia Vodka and a coffee liqueur named Tatra Coffee. When asked about gin, Chovanec says this could happen in the future, but it’s a difficult category from a production standpoint. Why? “Gin is very aromatic,” he says. “You need a long cleaning line and that makes it hard to switch from vodka.”
The bottling plant marked the end of the process and, with the tour done and dusted, we enjoyed some well-earned downtime and dinner at a local restaurant ahead of the next day’s activity, a 16km hike up the Tatras. Naturally, we volunteered to do this.
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