Story: This abandoned building in West Ggeorgia used to be the Institute for Tea and Subtropical crops of the Soviet Union.
Here, scientists worked on perfecting cultivation methods for vast tea plantations that supplied most of the brews of the enormous communist state.
That industry crumbled after Georgian independence – but some are trying to bring it back now.
“This is the tea from my garden, this season, from this May.”
That is Lika Megreladze, whose mother was a scientist at the Tea Institute.
She has a guesthouse in a village, not far from the institute, where she cultivates her own small tea plantation for visitors.
“It was the only one, throughout the Soviet Union, research institute for tea and other subtropical cultures. With huge laboratories, different laboratories. There were experimental fields for tea, for different plants, there were experimental tea factories and many and many things.”
Megreladze recalls the collapse of the tea industry after the Soviet Union collapsed in 1991.
“Georgia, a young country, couldn't save this huge industry,” she said.
By 2016, the official figures showed, the Georgian tea production, 99% had fallen compared to the peak of 1985 …
With this overdoed statue of Soviet founder Vladimir Lenin outside the institute one of the few signs that have been left of that time.
Tea plants were introduced to Georgia in the early 20th century by a Chinese expert invited by the imperial Russian authorities.
They flourished in Guria's hot, humid climate and extended from the Caucasus -Bergen to the Black Sea.
And now the industry sees a revival.
“Nothing happened here for 40 years. Here was a jungle.”
Nika Sioridze and Baaka Babunashvili started to rehabilitate about ten years ago.
They process tea leaves in an abandoned Soviet sides factory.
With the aim of re -introducing Georgian tea to local and European buyers.
Partially financed by a government subsidy, their Greengold -tea is one of the various new companies that have brought tea fields back to life in the area.
The Soviet Union had also brought quantity about quality.
So now they say that their task is to reinvent Georgian tea as a high -quality, distinctive product for a new era.
“We have to differ from Chinese tea makers, Taiwanese tea makers. Because Georgia is Georgia and we need some niche to make our own tea.”
