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Lana & Inga Zhgenti (Plantacia)

Location

Melekeduri village, Guria region

  • Lana Zhgenti
  • Inga Zhgenti

Contact Information

Lana and Inga are two sisters with a small tea production and a sweet setup for receiving guests. Lana speaks English while Inga is fluent in German. They can be contacted on the Plantacia Facebook page, the @sisterszhgenti__plantacia Instagram, by WhatsApp on +995 577 618 696, or by email at Lanazhgenti@gmail.com. Their home is just a few minutes' drive outside Ozurgeti, the central city of Guria, and they are always happy to welcome visitors!

Tea Tourism

The Zhgenti sisters have an especially cozy situation for guests interested in Georgian tea. Melekeduri is a dreamy village, and the sisters' plantation is perched on an extremely scenic piece of land looking down over the Skurdumi valley. Tastings at the farmstead are conducted with distinctive taste; Lana and Inga have a keen sense of design, from the rustic yet comfortable aura of their outdoor tasting patio to their elaborate collection of teaware. Visits are focused on participation – guests can try their hand at every part of the tea making process, from plucking leaves in the field all the way to drinking a cup of tea they crafted by themselves.

Lana and Inga are accomplished cooks, and offer masterclasses on Gurian specialties; guests can expect a proper treat while visiting! They have recently finished constructing a traditional oda style wooden house, which will become their new guesthouse for overnight visitors in the 2025 season.

Types of Tea

Lana and Inga mainly produce black and green tea, along with the traditional Georgian classic, fermented wild blueberry leaf tisane. They have recently completed a new factory and are currently putting out around three tons of tea per year.

The sisters make powerful teas with rich flavors. Their green tea is especially intense, with a strong, fresh leafiness reminiscent of fresh fruit skins, combined with a hint of citrusy sweetness. Their black tea is bold and tannic with a honeyish note, and feels more similar to a classic breakfast tea than is typical of a Gurian black. All of their teas are plucked entirely by hand and made with careful attention to quality.

At the moment, the Zhgentis wholesale their tea to other brands, so the only way to try it is to visit them in Melekeduri or write and have some sent! However, they are planning to develop their own brand in the near future.

Images 1 & 3 by Tom Pinnegar; other images courtesy of Zhgenti sisters.

The Zhgenti Sisters' Story

Like everyone in the Ozurgeti area, the Zhgenti sisters grew up around tea. It was a tradition, a family activity, and a way of life. Jobs and travels took them different places for a while, but the tea bushes remained alive on their hectare of family land, and in 2016, they started out at making tea themselves, with some old Soviet equipment they'd been able to find. Since then, step by step, they've been growing and getting better: a grant program helped them get new equipment, they bought more plantation land in the village, and just recently finished a new 200 square meter factory.

Hosting guests just seemed to happen naturally. People were coming by and were interested, so Lana and Inga started to improve their conditions for hosting. After their outdoor tasting patio was complete, they started work on an oda house to be able to properly host overnight guests. Oda is a traditional Gurian architectural style, entirely out of wood, which is rarely chosen for new constructions these days, but it just seemed the natural step for them to maintain the aesthetics and honor the history of their home. The oda guesthouse will begin functioning in the 2025 season.

Everything is a process, Lana says; everything is a way of getting better. Lana and Inga set out to make something satisfying, something with taste, something beautiful with a rich history, which they could bring to the world and to which the world could come. Their hope is to create a comfortable, even magical village environment, where old traditions, from tea to folklore to community spirit, are preserved and made viable for the future.

Together with Lika Megreladze and Dato Tenieshvili, they are members of the "Tea Route" tea tourism association.

Images 1-5 by Tom Pinnegar; images 6-10 courtesy of Zhgenti sisters.

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