We had a pleasant interview with the creators of the 1543 Pashas & Coffees brand at the Tourism Supply meeting. 1543 Pashas & Coffees General Manager Levent Yurtbekleyen, General Coordinator Faik Gürsel and Foreign Trade Manager

Behiye Gürsel answered GM Tourism and Management Magazine's questions. 

1543 Pashas & Coffees is a brand new and revisionist brand. It has an innovative story. We created the brand with the aim of developing a brand that will make Turkish coffee the crown jewel of the 21st century coffee world. After 10-12 years of reference work, we presented our products to Turkish tourism in Alanya in 2022.

The reason we focused on this market was that this story, which my partner Levent and I planned for years, would open to the world through tourists. Today, we are a country that hosts approximately 60 million tourists a year, and it is obvious that this will increase, with targets showing 80 million. With this large audience, we aim to put Turkish coffee ahead of espresso in the world coffee market. We want to bring Turkish coffee to where it deserves, it already has a taste and aroma ahead of espresso.

Turkish coffee is essentially called Turkish coffee because of the way it is made. Grinding the roasted coffee into powder and boiling it in water gives it the title of Turkish coffee. This gives the coffee the deepest aroma and the highest taste among all the coffees in the world. It is also very healthy, a method that has been preferred for centuries.

With the name 1543 Pashas & Coffees and the motto "And God Created Joy", it was strategically planned to easily convey all the messages it wanted to give to the consumer under its brand. 1543 is the birth date of Turkish coffee.

Turkish coffee is the main starting point for espresso, then filter coffee in the following centuries, and therefore all coffees such as macchiato and cappuccino that are drunk today.

Turkish coffee first entered the Sirkeci customs in 1543.  It is presented to Sultan Suleiman by the Governor of Yemen, Özdemir Pasha, with green beans. It is prepared in the palace kitchen by much more experienced, expert chefs. We can call the palace's expert chefs the F&B professionals of that day, and we can consider Topkapi Palace as a luxury hotel. These are not an irony, they are real.

A presentation is to be made to the richest family in the world, preparations are made for this presentation for months, a roasting method is developed. Grinding it into powder, pounding it is developed, then it is foamed in boiling and served in stemless kallavi cups. After Sultan Suleiman the Magnificent drinks it, he sends the coffee to his harem. The harem finds it bitter and Turkish delight is poured to be served with Yemen coffee.

Then it becomes a palace coffee, a coffee of the elites. The pashas are at the head of the elites. That is why we used the pasha in our brand name.  Our first four varieties that we currently offer are a paye of the action, struggle and passion for coffee of our pashas in that era. All of them saw Sultan Suleiman the Magnificent and lived through that era; Cerrah Pasha, Damat Bayram Pasha, Barbaros Pasha and Haydar Pasha. Bayram Pasha is the only pasha who married the sultan's daughter, he is very handsome. Barbaros Pasha is a pasha who organized coffee parties on his ships in the Mediterranean after victories. Haydar Pasha is a pasha who drinks coffee with elegance with his identity as an architect and artist. None of them were developed as 'Let's find an authentic pasha name'.

We also have other pasha names that we have registered. Coffee used to grow in only one region. Arabica bean is a Yemen, Ethiopian bean. It was only planted there at that time. For 500 years, colonial empires England, Holland, France took these coffee beans from Yemen and Ethiopia. These regions also came out of Ottoman hands. Holland planted it in Indonesia. England planted it in China and the China Seas. America planted it from Hawaii to South America, the French and Spanish also planted it.

Like sugar cane, due to cheap labor, they planted and grew coffee in those regions at an altitude of 800-2000 meters, and the name of Arabica beans remained Arabica. Today, 100% Arabica is written on the packages, but the beans now come from South America and Africa. The name of that seed is Arabica due to its origin, as if there is a confusion that it can be considered from Arabia.

We are the first and only Turkish company and Turkish coffee producer in the world that makes multi-blend (multi-continental and multi-country). These references bring Turkish coffee passions together with quality without alienating them from the taste they are used to, and take them to brand new pleasure points. On the one hand, the long R&D studies we have done, the reference values that will reach the target audience of the last century, who drink much more quality coffee than us, are drinking and are used to it before us, were passed and tastes were created.

Brazilian beans are found in all our blends. The reason for this is that the chocolate note and cocoa note are found in South American beans, and this is a dominant aroma in Turkish coffee. We have tried to present our four Pashas to coffee lovers by blending the most qualified beans from all over the world and creating brand new notes. We think we have been successful in this goal.