Georgian Tea: History, Brands and Where to Drink It in Tbilisi

Georgian tea is the ordinary tea plant, grown in Georgia itself and sold as black or green tea. It's the hot drink among the traditional Georgian drinks, and it has a story as dramatic as the wine's, just with fewer people telling it.

The word you need is chai, which is simply tea. Georgian black tea is kartuli shavi chai, the phrase to use in a shop, and green tea is mtsvane chai, from the same word for green that names one of the country's white grapes.

Tea wants warmth and a lot of rain, which is why it grows in the wet west of Georgia, between the Black Sea and the hills, and not around Tbilisi. The historic tea regions are Guria, Adjara, Samegrelo, Imereti and Abkhazia.

2 place names are worth knowing: Ozurgeti, in Guria, home to the Gurieli tea factory, and Chakvi, on the coast near Batumi, where the Chinese tea merchant Lao Jin Zhao lived and worked. Both sit on the far side of the country from Tbilisi, so a plantation visit belongs to a trip west; in the capital, you drink the tea and buy it.

When	What happened
1809	Mamia V Gurieli, ruler of Guria, takes an interest in tea and plants the first bushes
19th century	Tea spreads through Guria, Samegrelo, Abkhazia, Imereti and Adjara
1890s	The Chinese tea merchant Lao Jin Zhao arrives in Georgia
1900	Tea he brought to Georgia wins a gold medal at the Paris World Expo
Soviet era	Georgia grows most of the Soviet Union's tea
After 1991	The industry collapses and plantations are abandoned
2016	The state starts paying to bring abandoned plantations back

Tea reached Georgia through a prince. The Batumi museum that tells the story dates Mamia V Gurieli's interest to 1809, and the tea company that now carries his name says the first plants reached his botanical garden with a Scotsman, Jacob Montague Marr.

The name every Georgian tea story comes back to is Lao Jin Zhao, who arrived at the end of the 19th century and was still in Chakvi through the 1910s and 1920s. The same museum, the Nobel Brothers Technological Museum in Batumi, still keeps his slippers and the hat he wore in the tea fields.

Under Soviet rule Georgia grew most of the Soviet Union's tea. After 1991 the industry collapsed and the plantations were abandoned, and that abandoned land is exactly what the revival is now paying to win back.

Slowly, and with state money behind it. Georgia's Ministry of Environmental Protection and Agriculture started a tea plantation rehabilitation programme on 18 January 2016 that pays 60 to 90% of the cost of bringing an abandoned plantation back, on costs capped at 2,500 GEL a hectare, and hands primary-processing equipment to cooperatives.

The programme's stated aims include organic tea, more of the country's own supply and more exports. That tells you where the growers are heading, not what's already in every pack.

Gurieli is the company that took the prince's name. By its own account it runs a factory in Ozurgeti with 120,000 square metres of plantations, makes black, green, Earl Grey and berry teas, and exports to the USA, Canada, Germany, France and several other countries.

The Bitadze tea house in Tbilisi sells tea under its own names too; its business listing gives Georgian Tea 1847 and Golden Bud. Past those names, the region printed on the pack tells you more than the brand does.

If Georgian tea is the whole point of a stop, the address is the Bitadze tea house at 15 Galaktion Tabidze Street, also known as the Bitadze tea museum. Its business listing describes a tea house, a tea museum and a tea school under one name, plus tea tours and a trade in tea and wine.

Come here when you want tea to be the reason you walked in, not a line under the coffees. Go with room in your bag, because the other half of the visit is leaving with a pack.

Tbilisi's cafes run on specialty coffee, and Georgian tea by name is rare on their menus. The tea that comes up most in reviews here is Turkish-style, and a good deal of it is free.

A cup costs anything from nothing after a Turkish meal to 8 GEL for a single tea bag at one specialty cafe, going by one reviewer at Rituals Matcha Bar. That makes tea one of the few things on a Tbilisi bill that can come to zero.

For tea with something sweet, one reviewer paired a rose petal tea with the Napoleon cake at Matasse1822. For something heavier, the karak tea at an Arab and Indian kitchen is sold as strong and creamy, and reviewers bring it up 12 times.

Turkish tea, and the glass that comes free

The Turkish kitchens pour tea the Turkish way, dark, in a small tulip glass on a saucer, and often without being asked. At one kebab and lahmacun place, complimentary tea comes up 15 times in the reviews, and reviewers at Nasimi and Kava mention free tea too.

Mountain tea in Georgia means a herbal tea made from mountain herbs, thyme and mint among them, rather than leaves from the tea bush. What goes into a mix varies from maker to maker, so the ingredient list on the pack is the thing to read.

In Tbilisi, Gisho lists herbal tea next to its Georgian tea. Herbal tea also comes up 6 times in the reviews of a burger bar in Old Tbilisi, of all places, next to its fresh fruit lemonades and apple pie.

Beyond the Bitadze tea house, our lists have one more stop: a family-run wine shop whose own listing offers natural teas from all over Georgia next to its wine, honey and homemade jam. It sells churchkhela too, which comes up 11 times in its reviews.

Tea is about the lightest souvenir Georgia sells: a few packs weigh less than a bottle of wine and can't break in a suitcase. Buy loose black tea that names its region, add a herbal mix, and you've covered most of the people you're buying for.