Georgia’s tea growers working to revive a Soviet-era industry

Story: This abandoned building in Western Georgia was the Institute of Tea and Subtropical Crops of the Soviet Union.

Here, scientists have tried to perfect the sowing methods to spread tea fields that provide a large part of the debates of the broad communist state.

This industry was crumbled after Georgian independence – but some are now trying to bring it back.

“This is my garden, this season from this May tea.”

This is Lika Megreladze, a scientist at his mother’s Tea Institute.

There is a guest house in a village that is not far from the institute, where it develops its own small tea plantation for visitors.

“It was the Research Institute for all the Soviet Union, tea and other subtropical cultures. Large laboratories, different laboratories. There were experimental areas for tea, experimental tea factories for different plants and many things.”

Megreladze remembered the collapse of the tea industry after the Soviet Union collapsed in 1991.

“Georgia, a young country, could not save this great industry,” he said.

By 2016, it shows that the Georgian tea production fell 99% from the 1985 summit …

It is one of the few signs of that time with this overturned statue of Vladimir Lenin, the Soviet founder outside the institute.

Tea plants were introduced to Georgia by a Chinese expert invited by the Russian officials of the empire at the beginning of the 20th century.

Guria’s warm, humid climate developed, extending from the Caucasus Mountains to the Black Sea coast.

And now, the industry sees a revival.

“Nothing happened here for 40 years. It was a forest.”

Nika Sioridze and Baaka Babunashvili began to rehabilitate the abandoned tea fields ten years ago.

They process tea leaves in an abandoned Soviet Silk factory.

In order to re -introduce Georgian tea to local and European buyers.

The Greengold Stream, which is partly financed by a government grant, is one of the few new companies that bring tea fields to life.

The Soviet Union also put quantity in quality.

Now, to rediscover the tasks as a high -quality, different product for a new era of Georgian tea.

“We must be different from Chinese tea producers and Taiwan tea makers. Because Georgia we need a little bit to make Georgia and our own tea.”