Georgian long tea. Georgian tea, the history of tea growing in Georgia

Previously, Georgian tea was quite recognizable. During the years of the USSR, it was realized in very convenient cans, which could then be used for various purposes. And what do we really know about this drink? When did the tea culture of Georgia originate, and what varieties is it famous for?

Tea culture of Georgia

For the first time, tea began to be grown on the territory of Georgia during the Crimean War. According to legend, an English officer fell in love with a Georgian girl, and it was she who contributed to the fact that Georgia became his home. After a while, this officer decided to take up the cultivation of tea plantations.

Another version says that tea came to Georgia from China. But be that as it may, it all started small, but, nevertheless, at the end of the 18th century, Caucasian tea took part in the exhibition. However, the quality of the drink was rather poor at the time.
Around the beginning of the twentieth century, Georgian tea changed somewhat - it became clear how to improve its quality. The whole secret was the number of tea buds. However, despite the fact that the secret of quality was revealed, the raw materials of Georgian origin still could not compete with the raw materials of Chinese origin.

On a note! Production volumes at that time were insignificant, the process itself developed extremely slowly and, accordingly, it did not pay for itself!

It was only during the Soviet era that tea production in Georgia began to gain momentum. Plantations expanded rapidly, several factories were built, and breeders were actively developing new hybrids.

On a note! Soviet breeders were able to create a hybrid that tolerated quite low temperatures and severe frosts - about -20 ° C!

The most extensive plantations were located on the Black Sea coast of Georgia. Under such conditions, the tea bush was actively developing, growing, and its leaf acquired special quality characteristics. Thus, the main goal was achieved - Georgian tea was exported and the whole world learned about it.

Main types of tea

Two types of tea are produced in Georgia: black and green.

Black

The origin of Georgian black tea is closely related to the Chinese Kimmen. Its highest grades contain a large number of tips - unblown buds, on which the quality of the drink depends.

Black Georgian tea does not give as intense color to the infusion as raw materials from India or the island of Sri Lanka. For this reason, to obtain the required strength, at least 1.5 spoons of tea leaves are placed in one cup. This drink has a very bright aroma and a rather pleasant taste.

On a note! Georgian tea Soviet times and the modern drink are somewhat different in their quality. For example, if earlier a tea leaf had many different inclusions (dust, fragments of shoots, etc.), which became the reason for its notoriety, today the manufacturing technology has changed and does not allow the presence of such impurities!

Georgian black tea was not distinguished by a variety of varieties - there were only five of them.

• Among the highest quality are "Extra" and "Bouquet". They included tips and delicate apical leaves.
• Top grade but already contained a cut sheet.
• The first grade was even lower in quality, as it consisted not only of a broken leaf, but also of shoots.
• And the second grade had the lowest characteristics. There were many foreign impurities in him, which ruined his reputation.

However, despite this characteristic, it was the second-rate drink that won the love of Soviet citizens - it was "Tea No. 20". And the secret of its popularity was that it contained about a fifth of the raw materials from India or Ceylon.

Green

Georgian green tea had a wider range of varieties - there were several dozen of them. And for convenience, its varieties were marked quite simply - with numbers. And the higher the number on the package, the higher the quality of the drink.

On a note! Georgian tea has numbers from 10 to 125. Accordingly, the number 10 indicates the lowest quality, and 125 - the highest!

But at the same time, there were varieties that were outside the numbering scale. These are "Bouquet of Georgia" and "Extra". Others have the following nomenclature:

• the highest grade - numbers 125 and 111;
• the first - from 85 to 110;
• the second - from 45 to 65;
• the third - from 10 to 40.

Georgian teas that were not included in this nomenclature and had the highest quality won worldwide recognition. But at the same time, even the representatives of the first, second and third grade were pretty good. For example, in the countries of Central Asia, drink number 95 was especially popular. It had a beautiful strong infusion and a characteristic tart taste.

Enjoy your tea!

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The first tea plantations in Georgia appeared in the regions of Ozurgeti and Chakvi after the Crimean War. Jacob McNamara, having married a Georgian woman, stayed in the country and started creating small plantations.

By the beginning of the twentieth century, Georgian tea could easily create significant competition for Chinese tea, but due to the slow and insufficiently large production volume, imported varieties pushed it out of the market.

Only in the 1920s a program for the development of the tea business appeared in the country. A special research institute was created, the purpose of which was to create new varieties of tea. For the same purpose, the construction of factories and the regular planting of plantations began.

Georgian tea was distinguished by a rather tart taste and speed of brewing, and in terms of the quality of the valuable nutrients it contained, it was in no way inferior to the best foreign samples.

Georgian tea varieties

Among the variety of varieties, the leading place was occupied by Georgian tea "Bouquet of Georgia" and "Russian Uncle", which received a gold medal at the famous Paris exhibition. Its quality was of the highest standard. The composition consisted of young leaves from the very tops of tea bushes and a large number of buds, or, as they are also called, tips. Next came the varieties "Kara-Dere", "Ozurgetsky", "Zedoban" and "Extra".

Varieties of green tea were labeled with special numbers from 10 to 125 and were divided into first, second and third varieties. The numbers indicated the quality of a particular species. The best and, accordingly, the highest grade was considered number 125.

The first grade included teas with numbers 85, 95, 100 and 110. The second grade was numbered 45, 55, 60 and 65. The third and lowest were teas with numbers 10, 15, 20, 25, 35, 40.

Popularity

Georgian green tea gained its popularity due to its good cleansing properties. And when interacting with the cat's eye, he raised the immune system.

Today, the assortment of tea varieties is increasing every year, which allows you to choose the drink you like the most to your taste. Not only black, but also white, green varieties are very popular, as well as unique teas with the addition of blueberries, raspberries, quince leaves and a wide variety of Caucasian herbs and berries.

So, for example, "Georgian Tea 1847" from a major producer in 2016 performed at the international championship in Seoul. Despite the fact that the variety was produced relatively recently, it won prizes in the competition in the category "Making tea". This type of tea became the winner in as many as four nominations: "Best result of 2016", "Aftertaste", "Unrivaled aroma" and "Excellent taste". Georgian tea aroused great interest at the championship and received the highest possible marks. At the festival in Prague, the Georgian drink, where all the variety of varieties was presented, also won prizes and received significant recognition.

Georgian tea, produced and grown correctly, is not inferior even the best varieties Chinese. And since the popularity of natural products is noticeably growing in the country, a real Georgian drink, produced only organically, is in great demand today.

And all why? Tea bushes are relatively little susceptible to diseases caused by various pests, therefore, chemicals are never used for cultivation. Thanks to such an important factor organic product is rapidly gaining popularity.

Georgian tile tea

Georgian pressed tea is especially popular among tourists, military men and hunters. This kind there is no equal, thanks to its compactness and convenience not only in transportation, but also in use.

Tiled tea consists of homogeneous mass, has a hard and smooth surface, which also adds some popularity to it. The tiles are quite durable, do not crumble or break in the hands. Compaction takes place under high pressure, due to which the bulk of the resinous substances is squeezed out of the crumb. It is distinguished by its special strength and rich velvety aroma.

Dignity

The indisputable advantages of Georgian tea include the presence of a large number of tips in its composition, due to which the tea is maximally saturated with all the necessary nutrients.

Flaws

During the production of tea, some mechanical spoilage occurs, in which a large amount of small crumbs resembling dust appears. Before brewing, the tea must be sieved so that the taste is richer and the tea is transparent. It is the presence of this factor that affects a slight decrease in the demand for tea among buyers.

Cooking method

The main feature of brewing this type of tea is the overheated teapot. Only after the container is almost red-hot, the tea leaves are poured into it and poured with boiling water. With this method, two or three minutes are enough for the tea to infuse and a rich aroma to appear, after which you can already start your meal.

Another brewing option is a combination of green tea and milk, which turns the drink into a magic elixir.

It is believed that if you regularly drink green tea with milk, then the perception of stress decreases, the work of blood vessels improves, brain activity is stimulated, and the aging process slows down and digestion improves. The caffeine contained in the green leaf relieves fatigue and has a beneficial effect on the body's metabolism. Fluoride strengthens teeth, and vitamins in the brewed drink help break down subcutaneous fats.

Tea is an excellent natural drink.

The history of Georgian tea has more than one millennium. And although this story had many difficult stages, a short period of flourishing, but it is interesting, and worth remembering. When did Georgian tea appear?

By the 19th century, tea had become very popular in Russia. It was imported into the country in tens of thousands of tons. Such popularity gave rise to the idea that tea should be cultivated in their own country. The most promising area was considered the Caucasian coast. It is worth noting that Georgia at that time was part of the Russian Empire.

For the first time, tea bushes were planted in Russia after the end of the war with Napoleon. Duke E.O. Richelieu ordered to deliver them to the Imperial Botanical Garden near Yalta. Unfortunately, the first bushes died. After 16 years, the attempt was repeated, this time the experiment was successful. Saplings brought from China gave seeds. Nikolay Gartvis, director of the museum, having studied the properties of the plant, recommended further cultivation on the Caucasian coast. And the seedlings were sent to the Sukhumi Botanical Garden and Ozurgeti.

In Ozurgeti, 200 tea bushes were planted in the state garden, another batch of seedlings was planted in the garden of the Mingrelian prince David Dadiani. The exotic plant successfully took root, gave seeds, but government funding for a large plantation was not easy to obtain. It was only at the end of the 19th century that it became possible to continue the commercial cultivation of tea in the Caucasus. The company "K. and S. Popovs ”, land was purchased for tea plantations in Kapreshumi, Salibauri, Chakve for tea plantations. More than a million rubles were invested in the event.

The company was headed by the merchant Popov K.S., for patronage he invited Liu Jun Zhou, a specialist from China. The work in Chakva was organized like a typical village factory. Frying pans, bamboo baskets, and winnowing machines for tea production were brought from China. The plantations were planted with imported tea. By 1897, they managed to get about 500 kg of leaf per year. Chakwe tea received a gold medal at the Paris exhibition. This marked the beginning of the development of tea growing in Georgia.

Before the revolution, there were already three tea factories in the Caucasus. They were big enough, equipped with English cars. There were also handicraft enterprises. They processed raw materials that they collected on their own plantations. By 1917, tea plantations occupied about 1000 hectares of land. Despite the fact that the gross volume was 140 tons, they did not make up even one percent of tea imports to Russia. The varieties "Kara-Dere", "Bogatyr", "Ozurgetskiy", "Zedoban" were recognized as very high quality. Georgian tea from the KS Popov factory was valued above the rest.

History of Georgian tea 1917-1940

With the outbreak of the First World War, the development of tea growing in the Caucasus stopped. The tea districts were occupied by the Turks in April 1918, then the British came. Tea farms were abandoned and destroyed in some places. After the revolution, private tea companies were nationalized and transferred under the control of the Tsentrochai organization.

In 1921, at the congress of tea growers, a set of measures was developed to revive the tea industry in Chakva. And four years later, 10 wagons of Georgian tea were sent to the Nizhny Novgorod fair. At the same time, the management was transferred to the Tea-Georgia JSC. The government viewed the development of tea business in this region as a program of great importance. An experimental station was opened in Chakva, and the All-Union Scientific Research Institute in the Ozergutsky District.

If in 1921 Georgia produced 550 tons of tea, then by 1940 there were already 51,300 varietal tea leaves. In the 30s, all equipment for the production of tea began to be made directly in Georgia. In 1932, artificial leaf wilting was introduced using special cameras by Sh. Mardeleishvili. This reduced the duration of the process.

The tea leaf was picked by hand. Tea Stakhanovites began to appear. In 1936, tea picker Patsia Dolidze set a world record, she collected 120.7 kg of leaf in one day. Girls performed 250% of the daily norm, becoming participants in socialist competitions. In 1957, Tatiana Chaidze's link (in the third photo) harvested almost 9 kilograms of leaves from one hectare. In 1959, the world record of Ceylon tea growers was broken, Tatiana Chaidze harvested 16450 kg of tea leaves from one hectare.

Tea growing development 1940-2000

By 1959, 65 factories were successfully operating in the Caucasus, of which eight produced only green tea, which was in demand by the peoples of Central Asia. During the year, "Tea-Georgia" produced more than 28 tons of black long tea, almost 6,000 tons of green tea, about 9,000 tons of brick green tea. Tea was delivered to Odessa, Moscow, Irkutsk, Samarkand to tea-packing factories. Georgian tea was packed in paper or cardboard packaging, gift metal boxes.

Georgian black was produced in several varieties. "Bouquet" and "Extra" contained tips and top leaves. Black leaf cut tea of ​​the first collection was produced under the highest grade. Tea of ​​the second grade contained many foreign inclusions, it was produced from tea twigs collected by machines. Tea "Vigor" and "Tea No. 36" were blended teas. They were composed of a mixture of Indian, Georgian and Ceylon teas.

Georgian green tea was produced more widely, it contained commercial varieties under numbers from 10 to 125. Teas of the highest quality (above No. 125) were considered "Extra" and "Bouquet of Georgia". The first grade included teas No. 110, 100, 95, 85. The third grade - No. 40, 35, 25, 20, 15, 10. The second grade - No. 65, 60, 55, 45. The highest grade - No. 125 and 111 according to all indicators passed the world-class quality green tea.

Prosperity and decline

In the 60s and 70s, Georgian tea growing flourished. But then there was a rapid decline. The quality of tea was also affected by the transition from manual picking to mechanical picking, and the violation of processing cycles in order to speed up the process. Moreover, people were not interested in the production of tea, believing that fruits can be earned faster and more. In the 80s, the production of tea in Georgia decreased by 2 times, after the collapse of the Soviet Union, production was abandoned.

Only 3 tea factories remained operational, the rest were redesigned. The tea plantations are overgrown with weeds. Even the local population prefers to drink imported tea, the share of Georgian tea in the domestic market is less than 10%.

Today, tea production in Georgia is practically not developing. The factory in Chakva produces only brick green tea for the peoples of Central Asia. The production of elite teas, required by laborious processes, has been abandoned. Now in Georgia, like many years ago, tea is produced in an artisanal way by people who are passionate about tea culture. I would like to believe that someday tea production in this country will revive again, and we will still be able to pamper ourselves with a mug of aromatic Georgian tea.

The history of a large-scale tea project in brief. Popular brands of tea from Georgia. Reasons for a negative attitude towards the drink. How to please yourself while brewing Georgian tea.

Shop counters are stocked with a variety of teas. Among them, there is almost always only one missing, which is remembered by many since Soviet times - Georgian tea. Maybe because it was remembered for its poor quality. But there were reasons for this.

A bit of history

The point is not even that tea plantations in Georgia appeared relatively recently - at the beginning of the twentieth century. Prior to this, attempts to grow it did not lead to noticeable results. But the growers managed to adapt the Chinese tea bushes (they used the Keemun variety) to the conditions of the Georgian area and to achieve a good quality of raw materials. Georgian teas have surpassed Chinese originals in some respects. The share of tips (not unfolded tea leaf buds) - the most valuable ingredients of the dry mix - reached 5.5%. This is a pretty high figure. At the Paris exhibition in 1899, Georgian tea called "Dyadyushkin's Russian tea" was awarded a gold medal. But production volumes were scanty, and the product remained unknown to most buyers.

Long and fruitful work on a scientific basis to create new varieties of shrubs began in the 1920s. To carry out breeding work, a research institute of tea growing was created. The area of ​​tea plantations has significantly expanded (up to 60 thousand hectares), dozens of tea factories have been built. High quality plant varieties have been developed that can withstand low temperatures. Various brands of the product went on sale, the most famous of which can be called "Bouquet of Georgia", Georgian Tea 36, ​​Tea 20. At the end of the 70s, Georgian tea was imported from dozens of countries in Europe and Asia. And in the Soviet Union, it became the most affordable and widespread drink.

How tea's bad reputation came about

But no one would dare to call him beloved. The increase in production and the technological innovations introduced for this purpose turned into a real disaster, a sharp degradation of quality. The era of hand picking of tea leaves is over. Tea harvesting machines, when the decisive issue was not quality, but speed, worked roughly. The rejection of some technological links and simplification of the tea leaf fermentation process also played a role. As a result, cuttings of shoots, coarse lower foliage and even dust were insisted in a cup of tea. It was no longer necessary to talk about the taste and aroma of such a drink.

The situation was saved by tea compositions made from various raw materials. Popular was Georgian Tea 36, ​​which is still produced today. It is a blend of Georgian and Indian teas, therefore it has more tart taste compared to Georgian. Indian should be at least 36% by volume of the mixture.

Today is a drink day from Georgia

In recent years, the Georgian product has occupied a small segment of the tea market, which is defined as 3.5%, influenced by a long-standing prejudice against this product. Despite the fact that the quality of tea has changed for the better. Along with the old ones, okay famous brands(Georgian Tea 36), there were also new ones - "Gurieli", "Tkibuli". These varieties are exported to Poland, Germany, the USA and the countries of Central Asia.

To enjoy the Georgian tea drink, you need to learn how to brew it correctly. For one cup of strong drink, you need one and a half to two teaspoons of tea leaves. In this case, we get a high-quality, light-colored tea with a mild taste and original aroma. Remember that Georgian tea is infused quickly.

The original brewing method

Tea connoisseurs suggest this tricky way: the teapot must be heated to 100% temperature while remaining dry. This can be done on a gas burner fire, taking precautions, or in a pot of boiling water. The dry tea leaves are pre-sieved through a sieve to remove debris, and they are poured into a container with 1.5 teaspoons per glass and 2 more teaspoons per kettle. In an incandescent teapot, the tea leaves will be dry heated and, as a result, taste and aroma will be released. Pour boiling water over and let it brew for three and a half minutes, sometimes two is enough. And you can enjoy Georgian tea.

In 1854, during the Crimean War, a British warship was wrecked near the city of Poti. The crew was taken prisoner, but according to the noble customs of those times, the officers were housed in the homes of the local nobility - more as guests than as prisoners.

One of them, the Scotsman Jacob McNamarra, fell in love with the daughter of Prince Eristavi, who had shown him hospitality: the fifteen-year-old Princess Sofiko. The girl answered him in return. Their love was so strong that Prince Eristavi could not refuse a foreigner who asked for the hand of his daughter. Only he set a condition: Sofiko will not go anywhere. The Scotsman wants to be with her - let him give up his homeland ... Jacob McNamarra stayed in Georgia.

But he could not live without tea and therefore had to spend a fortune on the delivery of this precious drink. It was then that he decided to try to plant his own tea plantation. Prince Eristavi supported his son-in-law.

Jacob ordered tea seeds not from dealers, but from his old friends from the British navy. He had to wait a long time, but in the end the living seeds, not spoiled by the greedy Chinese, ended up in his hands, were planted in the fertile Georgian land in the region of Ozurgeti, and sprouted.

Already in 1864, the first samples of "Caucasian tea" were demonstrated at an industrial exhibition in St. Petersburg.

From the book "Our Georgian Tea" by Mikhail Davitashvili ...

“In the morning there was a commotion in the estate of the Georgian prince Mikha Eristavi in ​​the village of Gora-Berezhouli: the owner was leaving on a long journey to St. Petersburg. As soon as dawn broke, a train-drawn carriage was brought to the house. Servants began to carry and tie the chests.

In the sixties of the last century, the trip of a Transcaucasian resident to Russia was a great event for him and the whole family. But it had a very special meaning for the prince himself. He had to pass a serious test. He brought to the capital the fruits of his many years of work - the first samples of Georgian tea.

The whole family took a lot of trouble to make this tea. Since the time when Mikha Eristavi laid the first tea plantation in Georgia, he made all household members ardent adherents of tea growing. When the peasant girls began to collect shoots from the bushes, the prince's house turned into a tea factory ...

Eristavi had a Georgian-translated instruction on how to process tea leaves. Trying not to deviate from the precious document, the wife, sons and daughters of the prince, led by him, performed mysterious manipulations, withering, rolling and drying tea leaves. The tea, according to the estimates of the household, turned out to be excellent ... Everyone was jubilant.

Eristavi intended to create a large subtropical economy, but his own funds were not enough for this. In 1860, he asked the tsarist government for a loan of 20 thousand rubles. The answer was given four years later, when his plantation had already brought the harvest and samples of dry tea were made, and read: "Refuse." The Kutaisi civil governor, in a report on this issue, profoundly stated that "the development of tea trees" in Georgia is "an unfeasible business"; which, perhaps, only in greenhouses, "under artificial conditions" ... etc.

And here is Eristavi in ​​St. Petersburg. He is holding material evidence that it is possible to produce tea in Georgia. In 1864, thanks to the efforts of an enthusiast, the first domestic tea appeared at the All-Russian Agricultural Exhibition in St. Petersburg. But praise, praise, help ... Mikha Eristavi returned to his estate empty-handed. In the same year, he made another attempt to attract the attention of the government to his work. At the end of the year, he presented tea samples from the harvests of 1862, 1863 and 1864 to the Caucasian Society of Agriculture. Expertise approved tea from 1863. But the Caucasian society did not live up to Eristavi's hopes. As Georgy Tsereteli noted in those years, "it was cut off from the life of the country, the members of the society were not engaged in serving the common interests, but in personal affairs."

To be fair, it must be added that these first samples of Georgian tea were imperfect; But the essence of the matter is that neither our first tea grower, nor the Caucasian society itself received any support from the tsarist government. In 1870, Eristavi died, and for fifteen years the experiments on tea production practically stopped. They were renewed in 1885 by the great Russian chemist A.M.Butlerov. From the leaves of the tea bushes of the Sukhumi Botanical Garden, he made quite good tea... He also had his own section of tea between Sukhumi and Novy Afon. But Butlerov also died before he could complete these experiments.

However, the idea of ​​domestic tea growing did not die out, it was promoted at various times by Russian scientists: Dokuchaev, Voeikov, Krasnov, Williams, it was picked up by the Georgian public. Prominent public figure Niko Nikoladze, writer and publicist Georgy Tsereteli and many others ardently advocated the development of tea culture. Nikoladze planted tea seedlings in the Poti garden and in his native village Didi-Jikhaishi. Prominent writer and public figure Ilya Chavchavadze wrote in the newspaper Iveria in 1887: “Transcaucasia, thanks to its rich climate and soil, can produce almost everything that grows on earth and provides benefits. Our region has grown so successfully even a cinchona tree and a tea bush that now the government itself is trying to flourish and spread both one and the other culture. "

Tea plantations are located near Chakvi, Ozurgetti, Kabuletti

The tsarist government "tried to prosper and spread" tea more than moderately. More than once, high authorities in the rank of minister or governor refused to allocate land plots for tea plantations to individuals and communities, and the business that had been started collapsed, the initiative was extinguished. When the Caucasian Society of Agriculture asked for permission to send its trainee with an expedition to tea countries, an official of the Ministry of State Property refused, presenting a "full-fledged" reason: "a trainee can die there ..." Tea traders were also enemies of domestic tea, raking in huge profits. There were cases when, on the initiative of Russian scientists in China, Japan and India, tea seeds and seedlings were purchased, delivered to Georgia, planted in the ground, but did not give good shoots, normal bushes; checks revealed that they were deliberately tampered with. Most often, the seeds lost their germination over a long journey, sometimes they were sown in unsuitable soils; young bushes perished from frost or inept care.

And yet, time took its toll. Tea, in the late 19th and early 20th centuries, some landowners, wealthy people, and sometimes peasants (rarely local residents, more often settlers) began to breed tea.

It took a lot of years and efforts of many people for a highly organized tea economy to be created in Georgia in the first half of the 20th century, and tea received the deserved right of industrial culture, i.e. tea growing has become the pride of the country's agriculture. Through the efforts of many enthusiasts, work continued on the selection, cultivation and processing of tea, and by the beginning of the 20th century, tea was already being harvested on the territory of Georgia, several tea factories were operating. The varieties “Bogatyr”, “Kara-Dere”, “Zedoban”, “Ozurgetsky” produced before the revolution were of very high quality. One of the best was considered "Russian tea Dyadyushkin" - black tea with tips (tea buds) up to 5.5%. This variety received a gold medal at the 1900 Paris Exhibition.

1917 ... The young Soviet republic, having lost ties with many traditional exporters of tea, and faced with the threat of being left without a product of prime necessity, urgently took steps to develop tea growing in Georgia, and then in Azerbaijan and the Krasnodar Territory.

The success in growing tea in the Georgian SSR was impressive. State policy and support for state farms allowed The Soviet Union already in the years of the first five-year plans, to abandon the import of tea seeds and significantly reduce the import of tea from abroad. Tea growing has become the pride of socialist agriculture in Georgia, its leading industry. The All-Union Scientific Research Institute of Tea and Subtropical Crops and the All-Union Scientific Research Institute of the Tea Industry worked in Georgia. The Georgian Agricultural Institute and a number of other scientific institutions also dealt with "tea issues".

In 1948, Ksenia Bakhtadze for the first time in the world bred artificial tea hybrids: varieties "Georgian No. 1" and "Georgian No. 2". Subsequently, the breeding work continued, high-quality varieties of tea were bred, while possessing a unique vitality. For example, the hybrid "Georgian breeding No. 8" withstood winter temperatures down to -25 ° C.

A tea-packing factory on a tea plantation near Batumi, approx. 1909-1915

However, manual collection of varietal tea leaves is very hard work. Picker to collect daily rate(15 kg of a leaf), had to make about 36 thousand tears of the flushes that came up with my fingers (usually three leaves with buds or 4-5-leafed).

Therefore, there was an urgent need to create and implement complex mechanization in tea growing as soon as possible. Therefore, there was an urgent need to create and implement complex mechanization in tea growing as soon as possible.

But only after the end of the Second World War in Georgia was created the first in the world practice of agricultural engineering, comb-pneumatic tea-collecting machine for selective collection of high-quality tea leaves "Sakartvelo", put into production in 1962. The achievements of the tea industry convincingly prove that in the last century tea has become an integral part of the Georgian economy. Moreover, by the end of the 70s, Georgia for the production of black baikhov and tiled tea was listed in one of the first places among the main manufacturers (of course, after India, China and Sri Lanka).

Tea harvesting machines "Sakartvelo" on the plantation of the Ingirsky state farm.

By the end of the 1970s, 95 thousand tons of ready-made tea were produced in Georgia per year. Georgian tea was exported to Poland, East Germany, Hungary, Romania, Finland, Czechoslovakia, Bulgaria, Yugoslavia, Afghanistan, Iran, Syria, South Yemen, Mongolia. In Georgia, black long tea, green leaf, tiled, and brick tea were produced. Black tea was consumed by the European republics of the USSR and European countries, green tea was consumed by Kazakhstan, Turkmenistan, Uzbekistan, and the countries of Central Asia.

Set "Soviet tea assorted" 1939.

"Amateur with a flower". Top grade. NARKOMPISCHEPROM.
First grade. Tea-packing factory them. Lenin. MOSSORSOVNARKHOZ.
First grade. Tea-packing factory them. Mikoyan, Odessa. MPPT USSR. GOST 1938-46

Recession. In the 1970s, along with the growth in the production of Georgian tea, a progressive decline in its quality was noted. The transition from manual to mechanical picking of tea leaves led to a sharp deterioration in the quality of raw materials. The race to performance has led to widespread technology disruption, from allowing tea picking in wet weather to speeding up tea leaf processing by eliminating the mandatory drying step. After the collapse of the USSR, Russia, due to the low quality of Georgian tea, reoriented itself to the supply of imported varieties. Georgian tea production was practically abandoned and, despite the emergence of firms producing competitive products, has not yet regained its former positions.

After the collapse of the USSR, the leadership of independent Georgia took a course towards curtailing tea production and destroying plantations under the pretext that tea was an alien product for Georgia. International statistics noted that in 1993, production practically stopped altogether. The war, especially in Abkhazia, severed economic ties and created chaos in production.
Today Georgian tea production is in deep decline. The total area of ​​tea plantations is 50 thousand hectares.
Hundreds of thousands of specialists from tea farms and factories, machine operators, tea pickers were left without work. Many women were forced to look for work in the tea plantations of Turkey. And tea plantations in Georgia ... a tea bush in free development grows into tea tree and loses its main purpose - to provide industrial tea leaves. Moreover, the restoration of a badly neglected plantation is an expensive manual labor. Therefore, the irrecoverable loss of tea plantations and, accordingly, Georgian tea cannot be allowed in any way. After all, this is the property of the country, accumulated at the cost of the labor of hundreds of thousands of people.

By the way, it is interesting that the son of Jacob and Sofiko, Nikolai Yakovlevich Marra (“Jacob” is translated as “Yakov” in Russian, and the surname was shortened and simplified) became an outstanding linguist, collector of Caucasian folklore, academician and vice-president of the USSR Academy of Sciences.

Soon Georgian tea will be 160 years old. will wish him the restoration of his former glory!