Gurian Green Tea

Guria, in western Georgia on the Black Sea side of the Caucasus, is where Georgian tea began in the 19th century. This revived green tea is light and clear, with fresh herbaceous notes, meadow flowers, a fruity tang and a buttery texture. Brewed in a glass teapot at 80°C.

Origin & Story

Georgia is not a country most people connect with tea, but for much of the 20th century it was the main tea garden of the Soviet Union. It began in Guria, in the west, where Prince Mamia Gurieli is said to have planted the first tea bushes, as ornamental plants in 1809 by one account, and to have set up the first plantation in 1847 near Ozurgeti. In 1864 he showed samples of his tea at an exhibition in St. Petersburg.

Industrial plantations followed. Seeds and seedlings from India, Java and Ceylon were planted, a tea factory was built at Salibauri in 1898, and the Russian merchant Konstantin Popov hired Chinese tea workers for a large plantation at Chakvi, in Adjara. Under the Soviets tea became one of the main crops of western Georgia, in Guria, Samegrelo and Imereti.

The Soviet emphasis on quantity damaged the tea's reputation, and after the Soviet collapse in the early 1990s the industry fell apart. By 2014 only about 1,800 hectares were still planted, with around 800 productive, a drop of some 99 percent from the peak years of the 1980s.

Today a small community of artisan producers is bringing the old bushes back, often organically. This tea is light and clear, with fresh herbaceous notes, meadow flowers, a fruity tang and a buttery texture. Brew it with water at about 80°C and 3 g of leaf for 240 ml, in a glass teapot, for two to three minutes.

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