The Story of Georgian Tea
Most people think of Georgia as the birthplace of wine and the location of the mighty Caucasus mountains, not as a place for excellent tea. However, tea has been produced in Georgia for more than 170 years, taking advantage of the perfect tea-growing climate and soil of western Georgia’s subtropical hills. During the Soviet Union, Georgia grew to be the world’s fourth largest producer of tea, filling the cups of millions of people across the former USSR. Today, dedicated artisans keep the traditions of Georgian tea alive, creating high-quality products for a wide variety of markets around the world.
A tea roller on a homestead at a local tea production in rural west Georgia.
Characteristics of Georgian Tea
Georgian tea is especially distinctive because of western Georgia's unique climatic conditions: the winters are mild enough for tea bushes to survive, but are still too cold for the pests that afflict tea plantations in more tropical regions. This allows Georgian tea to be grown naturally without any pesticides. In addition, the winters allow the bushes to enter a period of dormancy for several months out of the year, helping to keep the bushes vigorous and healthy. In general, the teamakers featured on this website favor completely natural methods of agriculture, such as the use of organic fertilizer and avoidance of machine plucking. In combination with artisanal, small-batch production methods, the resulting teas can be rightly considered amongst the highest quality in the world.
Georgian tea tradition existed long before the arrival of the tea plant (Camellia sinesis). In the Caucasus Mountains, locals enjoyed a wide variety of botanical teas sourced from the natural abundance around them. From time immemorial, communities seem to have hand-rolled and fermented tea from groves of wild blueberry bushes in remote mountains and forests (spp. Vaccinium myrtillus and Vaccinium arctostaphylos). Rhododendron leaves, blackberry leaves, wild mountain thyme, rose hips, hawthorn berries, sea buckthorns, young mulberry leaves, different varieties of mint, and many more wild plants are also used to make teas. No one knows exactly when Georgian mountaineers began to ferment their fruit leaf teas, but it may have long predated the cultivation of tea in Georgia.
A village in mountainous upper Adjara, where blueberry bushes, used for making fermented herbal tea, flourish in the wild.
History of Georgian Tea
The Russian Empire first brought tea to Georgia in 1847. In the middle of the 19th century, China retained a near-monopoly on global tea production, leading major colonial powers such as the United Kingdom to develop their own sources of tea production in India and Africa. The Russian Empire, seeking the same kind of an independent supply chain of tea, began planting experimental tea farms in various regions of its southern territories. They soon discovered that Georgia produced excellent tea.
Russian imperial scientists researched the best varieties and methods for producing tea in Georgia. In the late 19th century, a team of Chinese tea growers, led by the agronomist Lao Jin Jao, were invited to Georgia to supervise and improve tea production. From their headquarters in a quaint house in Chakvi on the Black Sea coast, they improved the quality and efficiency of Georgian tea production. Georgian tea was awarded the gold medal at the World Expo of Paris in 1900.
After the October Revolution in 1917, the Soviet Union applied its ideals of mass production to Georgian tea and heavily developed and mechanized the sector. During the 20th century, tea became one of the leading crops in western Georgia; so many tea plantations and tea factories were created in Guria, Samegrelo, and Imereti that the local population was not sufficient to staff them, and families from other parts of Georgia were resettled to these regions to work. Georgian black tea was exported all over the Soviet Union and drunk from Leningrad to Vladivostok, while Georgian green tea was especially popular in the Soviet republics of central Asia such as Uzbekistan and Kyrgyzstan.
Unfortunately, the Soviet innovations in tea production also sowed the seeds of Georgian tea’s decline. An overwhelming focus on quantity of production rather than quality led to the ruining of the name of Georgian tea in the planned economy which was its only market. The knowledge of the illustrious heritage of quality tea production was retained only by a few artisanal tea makers.
The ruins of a tea factory in the Guria region of western Georgia.
Georgian Tea Today
The Georgian tea industry collapsed soon after the fall of the USSR, as the command economy opened its markets to the world and Georgian tea was undercut in Russia by cheap imports. A further blow came during Georgia’s civil war from 1991 to 1994, when nearly all the tea factories and machinery were ripped apart and sold as scrap metal as people struggled to survive. It fell to those few artisans who had retained the knowledge of proper production methods and the enormous potential quality of Georgian tea to rebuild what was left behind.
In the decades since, Georgian tea has made a slow comeback. A close-knit community of tea growers is rehabilitating abandoned factories and overgrown plantations. These artisans keep the traditions of Georgian tea culture alive in Guria, still the heart of Georgian tea, as well as in Samegrelo and Imereti. Tea tourism has also become a popular way for teamakers to profit from their craft; as the closest tea-growing region to Europe, there is significant interest from many tea lovers to visit tea plantations and see firsthand how tea is made.
Today, Georgian tea is slowly becoming more and more well known in the western market; production increases from year to year, and as Georgia becomes an ever more popular tourist destination, more people are learning about the great taste and fascinating story of Georgian tea. Still, today’s teamakers mostly prefer to maintain their focus on producing tea of the highest quality, rather than ramping up into mass production. I believe that the teamakers I have featured on this website represent capable artisans of the highest skill and integrity, whose products may stand proudly in the ranks of the finest teas the world has to offer. Our hope is that more and more people around the world will have the opportunity to taste and enjoy them. We look forward to hearing from you.
Davit Tenieshvili of Teni Tea, one of the best teamakers in Georgia, at his home in Kveda Bakhvi, Guria.
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