Gurian Georgian Black Tea

Guria is a region of western Georgia on the Black Sea, once the center of Soviet tea growing. Its black tea is earthy and fruity with a medium body, and it has been making a slow comeback since the Soviet years. Brewed in a teapot at 94°C.

Origin & Story

Georgia is a surprise: a tea country on the Black Sea, with gardens in the warm valleys of Guria and Adjara. The story is usually told from 1847, when Prince Mamia Gurieli set up the first plantation near Ozurgeti, in Guria, and samples were shown in St. Petersburg in 1864. Around the turn of the century a Chinese tea expert, Liu Junzhou, planted a large garden at Chakva in Adjara, and Georgian tea won a gold medal in Paris in 1900.

Under the Soviet Union tea became an industry. By the 1980s Georgia was the world's fourth-largest tea producer and supplied some 95% of the Soviet Union's tea, with a harvest that peaked in 1985 at about 152,000 tons from nearly 70,000 hectares. Guria was nicknamed the tea Donbas, after the Ukrainian coal region, and its town of Lanchkhuti had processing plants.

The cost was quality. Harvesting machines worked like hedge trimmers and mixed tough old leaf and twigs in with the tips, and Georgian tea earned a poor name. When the Soviet Union ended, the market vanished and most plantations were abandoned; only household plots survived.

Since then a few artisan makers and small farmers have brought it back, helped by schemes such as a UNDP small grants program that supported 29 small enterprises in Guria. Their black tea is described as earthy and fruity with a medium body, made to be drunk without additions.

Brew 3 g of leaf in 240 ml of water at about 94°C for three to four minutes in a teapot, and taste it plain.

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