- Georgia once produced the bulk of Soviet Union’s tea
- Production fell by 99% after Soviet Union broke up
- Small producers focus on quality to revive niche industry
ANASEULI, Georgia, July 18 (Reuters) – When Lika Megreladze was a child, life in her native western Georgian region of Guria revolved around tea.
Her mother worked for decades as a scientist at the Soviet Union’s Institute of Tea and Subtropical Crops in the village of Anaseuli, perfecting cultivation methods for a Georgian tea industry that supplied the bulk of the vast communist state’s brews.
Now the institute lies abandoned. Yellowed papers are strewn around its decaying corridors, and a statue of Soviet founder Vladimir Lenin lies toppled and overgrown in the courtyard.
Throughout Guria’s verdant subtropical hills, sprawling plantations have relapsed into jungly thickets interspersed with wild forests of tea. Dozens of cavernous old tea factories now stand empty and deserted.
Introduced to Georgia in the early 20th century by a Chinese expert invited by the Imperial Russian authorities, tea plants flourished in the hot, humid climate of Guria, which stretches down from the Caucasus mountains to the Black Sea coast.