Bouquet of Georgia on the zone. Ceremonial: how do they drink tea in different countries? Advantages and disadvantages of tea

Pretty good tea is grown and sold in Georgia.

True, not all Georgian tea is good) I'll tell you which is delicious and which is not.

Here Bastian knows which one to steal)

Georgian tea by weight

In the markets you can find a huge amount of loose tea. It is so cheap that it is even suspicious to buy it)

It is large-leaved, but not at all fragrant. And with an unusual aftertaste for us.

All in all, I can't recommend it. We tried it once and don't want to do it again.

Various types are sold, for example, from a blueberry leaf. There are plenty to choose from, but I can’t guarantee that you will be satisfied with the result.

Maradidi tea

Georgian tea Maradidi can be bought in stores. I met only in mini-markets, those on the first floors of houses.

Very similar to loose. It is also cheap - 3 lari per 200 grams. And not very tasty either.

The rest of the teas that I will talk about are also not expensive - the price is around 3-4 GEL per 100 grams.

This instance is already more interesting.

Remember Indian elephant tea? Here's the exact taste.

Just a rich taste of black tea.

And with what love described by the manufacturer!

Gurieli

Gurieli is a very popular Georgian tea. It can be bought in almost any store, both in the form of sheets and in bags. It is also often served in cafes.

This tea is way better than the ones listed above. Tastier, more flavorful.

Good black tea with bergamot.

And just black without additives.

But green with jasmine I can not advise. There is a lot of flavoring, even gives chemistry.

Don't be fooled by the word export on the packaging)

Rcheuli tea is also very popular. I personally like him much less than Gurieli.

There are many different flavors, including fruity ones. But he's kind of weird.

Berga

Berga tea is not Georgian, but it is sold in almost all stores and it is delicious.

This is Azerbaijani tea, black (and as the name implies) with bergamot.

Delicious, flavorful, rich.

Azerbaijan

The name seems to hint that tea is also not Georgian, but you can buy it on almost every corner.

Happy tea! Ciao!

Nowadays, when mentioning Georgia, it is more often not the Georgian tea that was widely known in the times of the USSR, but such products as wine, tangerines or Borjomi. Not everyone already knows and remembers that the Georgian lands are the birthplace of the northernmost tea in the world, which boasts a pleasant, unusual taste and moderate cost.

The first appearance of tea on the territory of Georgia dates back approximately to the end of the 18th - beginning of the 19th century. Scientists put forward several versions of how and when this happened. According to one, back in 1770, Empress Catherine II sent the Tsar of Georgia Heraclius II a gift in the form of a Russian samovar and a tea set.

There is another version. According to it, the first who ordered to plant a tea bush in Georgia about 210 years ago was the Georgian prince Gurieli. However, the plant was used only for decorative purposes, as an element of the prince's garden.

In any case, we know exactly when Georgian tea began to be grown for sale. This happened about 170 years ago, when Chinese tea bushes were brought to Georgia.

The ancestor of Georgian black tea is considered to be Chinese varieties, especially kimun (kimen) tea.

At first, tea was the drink of the Georgian elite, but over time, when it took root in new lands, tea plantations began to grow and multiply, and it became available to everyone.

The first plantations on which tea was grown on an industrial scale appeared on the territory of Georgia after the Crimean War thanks to the efforts of the captured English officer Jacob McNamarra. By the beginning of the 20th century, several varieties were produced, the best of which was Dyadyushkin's Russian Tea, which was not inferior in quality to many Chinese varieties. This variety was awarded a gold medal at the 1899 exhibition in Paris.

Tea cultivation in Georgia peaked during the Soviet era. The total area of ​​tea plantations has grown to 67,000 hectares. "Georgian tea" became a brand for the citizens of the USSR, a guarantee of quality, which, although inferior to the best Indian and Chinese teas, was quite high. The annual output was up to 120 tons, the collected tea raw materials - up to 500-600 tons. The overwhelming majority (85%) of tea sold in the USSR came from Georgia.

In the 1980s and 1990s, production began to decline. In a short time, the area of ​​tea plantations decreased tenfold - up to 2 thousand hectares. There were several reasons for this:

• the collapse of the USSR and the loss of the union market;
• civil war in Georgia;
• recession of the economy and production;
• competition with inexpensive Indian and Chinese tea.

The collapse of the tea industry was swift and avalanche-like: the loss of the union market caused a decline in production, followed by the closure of many tea factories and the desolation of tea plantations.

In the time that has passed since the collapse of the USSR, glory has managed to be forgotten. Nevertheless, in Georgia, as in many countries of the former USSR, nostalgia for the Soviet past is growing, and with it, for inexpensive and tasty, and most importantly, “own” Georgian tea.

The Georgian government is gradually increasing the volume of tea production. Now that many old plantations are overgrown with weeds, it will take a lot of time and a lot of money to create new ones.

To send Georgian tea for export, you first need to fill the internal market of Georgia with it. To do this, it is necessary to create conditions for healthy competition - to stop the import from abroad of cheap, but low-quality, sometimes expired products that contain dyes and chemicals. This creates unfair competition.

The expansion of tea production will bring great benefits to the Georgian economy: new jobs, strengthening ties with the EU countries, and raising Georgia's international prestige.

Taste

A distinctive feature of tea is the low content of tannins. Tannins give it (and, by the way, wine) astringency. Therefore, unlike Indian, Georgian has a soft and delicate taste. The content of tannins is directly related to the climate: the warmer, the more astringency. Georgian tea plantations are the northernmost ones, so the softness of the taste of their tea is unmatched.

There is a simple way to brew tea that partially compensates for the shortcomings and is able to emphasize its taste:

• dry tea is sifted through a sieve, separating it from dust and debris;
• a dry teapot is heated to a temperature of 120 degrees;
• put dry tea at the rate of 1.5 tsp. * number of cups + 2 tsp. (to get strong tea, you need 2 teaspoons per 1 cup);
• tea is poured with hot water, insisted.

Advantages

Also, Georgian tea differs from more southern competitors in a less bright color and the ability to extract faster.

Georgian tea from the times of the USSR had a number of significant disadvantages, partially preserved to this day:

• imperfect production technologies;
• episodic violations of production technology;
• weediness: the presence of dust, pieces of shoots and coarse leaves.

However, all of the above shortcomings do not relate to the quality of raw materials, but to technological flaws, and in our time have lost their relevance.

Types of tea from Georgia

Georgia produces and sells almost all types of tea: black and green, herbal and berry. Today, 20% of tea on the Georgian market is produced domestically (for comparison, in the 90s this figure was no more than 5%).

In Georgia, cheap loose tea is common in the form of large leaves with a weak aroma and a specific, not very pleasant aftertaste. The most affordable Georgian tea is produced under the Maradidi brand. And in terms of taste and price, it resembles loose ones.

In recent years, new Georgian brands have emerged that produce better quality tea products:

• Gurieli (a popular brand that produces delicious tart teas: black with bergamot and without additives, green with jasmine);
• Tkibuli (high-quality black tea without frills, tastes like Indian);
• Ternali (high quality small- and large-leaf tea with a refined taste and a reddish color of the infusion; collected in the most ecological Tskhaltub region of Georgia);
• Shemokmedi (black and green tea, large-leaf or in tea bags).

Denis Shumakov will talk about Krasnodar and Georgian tea and share a recipe for making such tea.

Georgian brick tea

Tiled tea is made from tea production waste (cuttings, crumbs). The material for brick tea is not prepared specially, which makes it possible to reduce its cost. In this, as well as the size of the briquettes and the pressing technology, it differs from brick tea.

Green

It is curious that among the varieties of Georgian tea there are more green (about 20 items) than black. At the Chakva tea factory, which was one of the largest in the USSR, today "Kalmyk" green tea of ​​mediocre quality is mass-produced, which is exported to the countries of Central Asia.

Also in Georgia varieties of green tea "Bouquet of Georgia" and No. 95 are produced, widely known among tea lovers for their excellent taste and high quality of raw materials. The production of these and other premium varieties - No. 125 and "Extra" takes place according to technology that has not changed much over the past 100 years, almost by hand.

What happens when you mix Indian and Georgian tea

Georgian tea can be combined with Ceylon or Indian tea. Keep in mind that the latter noticeably set off its milder taste.

In the USSR, varieties "Tea No. 36" and "Cheerfulness" were produced - blends of Georgian, Indian and Ceylon. Tea No. 36 got its name from the minimum proportion of Indian tea in its composition - 36%. In Soviet times, this variety was one of the most popular, in the late 80s, queues of 1.5-2 hours lined up for it. The variety managed to survive the collapse of the USSR and appeared before buyers in an updated, improved form.

“V. V. Pokhlebkin told a lot of interesting things about the history and fate of tea business in the Soviet state and especially in Georgia in his book about tea. The journal "Coffee and Tea in Russia" published in 2000 the considerations of Dr. tech. Levan Lazishvili on the topic “Is it possible to restore the former glory of Georgian tea”. Here we will only give basic information about modern tea production in the modern CIS space, primarily in Georgia, which in the Soviet years was the main supplier of tea and produced 95 thousand tons of it in the record year 1970. Then a decline followed, and in a decade from 1981 By 1991, tea production had dropped even more sharply to the level of 57,000 tons, with a completely poor product quality.

International statistics noted that in 1993 production practically stopped altogether. The war, especially in Abkhazia, severed economic ties and created chaos in production.

Nevertheless, work on some plantations was intensified, several factories were re-equipped. Since 1995, the German company "Martin Bauer", known for its fruit and herbal teas, has been working to increase the production of green and black tea at 15 enterprises in Georgia, investing significant funds in this.

The latest available information indicates a growing attention in Georgia, especially in Adjara, to the undoubted potential of local tea production. The volume of produced products does not reach 10 thousand tons per year, and Georgians, who are not very fond of tea, prepare it mainly for export. Only low-quality semi-finished tea in bags is supplied to Russia and some other neighboring countries. In a rare shop on the tea counter you can find “Tea. First grade. No. 36. Made from selected varieties of Indian and Georgian tea. (V. M. Semenov. "Invitation to tea")

“Among all the Caucasian tea-producing regions, Georgia undoubtedly occupied a leading position in many areas: in the development of the science of tea production, in the introduction of mechanization, in the results achieved, etc.

The main tea plantations of Georgia were located in the western regions of the country and in Abkhazia.

Georgian teas had a rather original taste. They were velvety, tart and made a pleasant impression. Their low extractivity could be easily overcome by slightly increasing the brewing rate and strictly following its rules. In terms of the content of valuable substances, high-quality Georgian tea was not inferior to many well-known foreign varieties.

One of the significant achievements of Georgian tea growers was the development by them in the 30-70s of various varieties of green tea - more than two dozen. The best of them are Georgian green tea Bouquet of Georgia, Extra, premium No. 125.

By the end of the 80s, Georgia reached the fifth place in terms of tea production (almost 150 thousand tons), and the income from it was half of its budget. However, the pursuit of the shaft costly affected the quality of tea products. It has deteriorated and reached a critical level. A rather original way out of the impasse was found: firstly, Georgia mastered the technology for the production of green brick tea, using its low-quality raw materials for this; secondly, she began to mix high-quality Indian tea with her own low-quality black long leaf tea, thus striving to improve the consumer properties of the product.

After the collapse of the USSR, the leadership of independent Georgia took a course to curtail tea production and destroy plantations under the pretext that tea is a product alien to Georgia.

Today, Georgian tea production is in deep decline. The total area of ​​tea plantations is 50 thousand hectares.

The main tea producers are Kartuli Chai JSC and the German company Martin Bauer. The latter invested heavily in the Georgian tea industry and in 1997 collected 6,000 tons of tea. The products of both companies are supplied mainly to the markets of Russia and other CIS countries. (Yu. G. Ivanov. "Encyclopedia of 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 placed in the houses of the local nobility - more like guests than as prisoners.

One of them, the Scotsman Jacob McNamarra, fell in love with the daughter of Prince Eristavi, who showed him hospitality: the fifteen-year-old Princess Sofiko. The girl answered him in kind. 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 would not go anywhere. If a Scot 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 in the British Navy. I 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 Ozurgeti region, and sprouted.

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

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

“In the estate of the Georgian prince Mikh Eristavi in ​​the village of Gora-Berejouli, a commotion reigned in the morning: the owner was leaving on a long journey, to St. Petersburg. As soon as dawn broke, a carriage harnessed by a train was brought to the house. The servants began to carry and tie up the chests.

In the sixties of the last century, the trip of a Transcaucasian resident to Russia was a great event for him and his 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 put a lot of effort into making this tea. From the time when Mikha Eristavi founded the first tea plantation in Georgia, he made all the household members ardent adherents of tea growing. When the peasant girls began to collect shoots from the bushes, the princely house turned into a tea factory ...

Eristavi had instructions translated into Georgian on how to process tea leaves. Trying not to deviate from the precious document in any way, the wife, sons and daughters of the prince, led by him, carried out mysterious manipulations, withering, twisting and drying the tea leaves. Tea, according to the household, turned out to be excellent ... Everyone rejoiced.

Eristavi intended to create a large subtropical farm, but his own funds were not enough for this. In 1860, he asked the tsarist government for a loan of 20,000 rubles. The answer was given four years later, when his plantation had already brought a harvest and samples of dry tea had been made, and read: "Refuse." The civil governor of Kutaisi, in a report on this matter, thoughtfully stated that "the development of tea trees" in Georgia is "an impossible task"; that, perhaps, only in greenhouses, "under artificial conditions" ... etc.

And here is Eristavi in ​​St. Petersburg. In his hands is 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 is praise, but help ... Mikha Eristavi returned to his estate empty-handed. In the same year, he made another attempt to bring his work to the attention of the government. At the end of the year, he presented samples of tea from the harvests of 1862, 1863 and 1864 to the Caucasian Society of Agriculture. The examination approved the tea of ​​1863. But the Caucasian society did not live up to Eristavi's hopes either. As Georgy Tsereteli noted in those years, it "was cut off from the life of the country, the members of the society were engaged not in serving the common interests, but in personal affairs."

In fairness, 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, experiments in the production of tea actually stopped. They were renewed in 1885 by the great Russian chemist A. M. Butlerov. From the leaves of the tea bushes of the Sukhum Botanical Garden, he made pretty good tea. He also had his own plot of tea between Sukhumi and New Athos. 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 different 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 supported the development of tea culture. Nikoladze planted tea seedlings in the Poti garden and in his native village of Didi-Jikhaishi. The prominent writer and public figure Ilya Chavchavadze wrote in the Iveria newspaper in 1887: “The Transcaucasus, thanks to its rich climate and soil, can produce almost everything that grows on the earth and provides benefits. Our region has grown so successfully even the cinchona tree and the tea bush that now the government itself is trying to prosper and spread both one and the other culture.

Tea plantations are located near Chakvi, Ozurgetti, Cabuletti

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

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

It took many years and efforts of many people for a highly organized tea industry to be created in Georgia in the first half of the 20th century, and tea to receive 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 on the selection, cultivation and processing of tea continued, and by the beginning of the 20th century, tea was already being harvested in Georgia with might and main, and several tea factories were operating. The varieties “Bogatyr”, “Kara-Dere”, “Zedoban”, “Ozurgeti” produced before the revolution were of very high quality. One of the best was Dyadyushkin's Russian Tea - black tea with tips (tea buds) up to 5.5%. This variety won a gold medal at the 1900 Paris Exposition.

1917 ... The young Soviet republic, having lost ties with many traditional tea exporters, 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 in the Krasnodar Territory.

The success in growing tea in the GSSR was impressive. State policy and support for state farms allowed the Soviet Union, already during 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 Georgia's socialist agriculture, 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 bred artificial tea hybrids for the first time in the world: varieties Georgian No. 1 and Georgian No. 2. Subsequently, selection work continued, high-quality varieties of tea were bred, while having a unique viability. So, for example, the hybrid "Georgian Selection No. 8" withstood winter temperatures down to -25 ° C.

Tea-packing factory on a tea plantation near Batumi, ca. 1909-1915

However, manual collection of varietal tea leaves is a very hard work. The picker, in order to collect the daily norm (15 kg of a leaf), had to make about 36 thousand tear-offs of suitable flushes with her fingers (usually three leaves with buds or 4-5 leaves).

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

But only after the end of the Second World War in Georgia, the first comb-pneumatic tea-picking machine for the selective collection of high-quality tea leaves "Sakartvelo" was created in Georgia, which was 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 in the production of black long leaf and slab tea was listed in one of the first places among the main producers (naturally, after India, China and Sri Lanka).

Tea-picking machines "Sakartvelo" on the plantation of the Ingir State Farm.

By the end of the 1970s, Georgia was producing 95,000 tons of ready-made tea per year. Georgian tea was exported to Poland, East Germany, Hungary, Romania, Finland, Czechoslovakia, Bulgaria, Yugoslavia, Afghanistan, Iran, Syria, South Yemen, and Mongolia. In Georgia, black long leaf tea, green leaf, tiled, brick tea were produced. Black tea was consumed by the European republics of the USSR and European countries, green tea - by Kazakhstan, Turkmenistan, Uzbekistan, and the countries of Central Asia.

Set "Soviet Assorted Tea" 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 collection of tea leaves to mechanical led to a sharp deterioration in the quality of raw materials. The race for performance has led to widespread disruption of technology, from allowing tea to be harvested in wet weather, to speeding up the processing of tea leaves by eliminating the mandatory drying step. After the collapse of the USSR, Russia, due to the low quality of Georgian tea, refocused on 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 to curtail tea production and destroy plantations under the pretext that tea is a product alien to 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 in tea farms and factories, machine operators, tea pickers were left without work. Many women were forced to look for work on the tea plantations in Turkey. And the tea plantations of Georgia... the tea bush in free development develops into a tea tree and loses its main purpose - to produce an industrial tea leaf. Moreover, the restoration of a heavily neglected plantation is expensive manual labor. Therefore, the irretrievable loss of tea plantations and, accordingly, Georgian tea cannot be allowed. 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” in Russian is translated as “Yakov”, 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. I would like to wish him the restoration of his former glory!

tart and sharp, but with a velvety peculiar taste, unlike others. In Soviet times, the country could be proud of tea grown in Georgia.

History of appearance

By the beginning of the 19th century, tea drinking had become a tradition in Russia, which led to the idea of ​​tea production on the territory of the Russian Empire. Production attempts were made more than once, but the well-established activity for the creation of a tea drink was established only in the days of the USSR. After the Crimean War, the first tea plantations were taken up by an English officer living in Georgia.

Tea growing in Georgia began to develop significantly in Soviet times. In the 1920s, a project for the development of tea business began to operate. For its implementation, tea factories were built and tea plantations began to be actively planted. In 1948, Ksenia Bakhtadze was the very first to select varieties - Georgian No1 and Georgian No2. In the future, several more high-quality varieties were bred and Ksenia was awarded the Stalin Prize. By the end of the 1970s, many varieties were exported and enjoyed huge success. At that time, the production of black long leaf, green sheet, brick, and tile was already established. But the downside was that with the volume of production, the quality began to decline. Manual collection was replaced by mechanical, which led to a deterioration in quality. During mechanical assembly, not only the upper young, but also old coarse leaves began to fall into the composition. The quality was also affected by the collection in wet weather. The technology of drying the sheet has changed - the sheet began to dry once, and not twice, as it was before. Due to this, the taste and aroma were significantly lost. Over time, production declined, as there was a lot of marriage. After the collapse of the Soviet Union, the production of Georgian tea ceased. Gradually, tea growing began to improve, but the former positions cannot be returned.

Not a single variety of Georgian tea from the era of the USSR has survived to this day. In perestroika, the plantations were in a state of disrepair and perished. Those varieties that are produced in modern times do not convey the taste of those grown at the beginning of production, but are much better than those produced in the last years of the Soviet Union.

Black tea

The origin of this drink is related to the Chinese Keemun tea. The more tips in the composition, the better the quality. It has a rich color, light taste and original aroma. If it is used with admixtures of Indian and Ceylon, then the natural taste qualities are masked, since the taste of the latter is sharper. The positive factor of black Georgian tea is its ability to be quickly extracted.

Cons are: shoots, dust, old leaves in the drink; technology violation; the use of reduced production technologies. It was these shortcomings that gave tea a bad reputation that has survived to this day.

Types of tea

• Bouquet of Georgia;
• Extra;
• Top grade;
• First grade;
• Second grade.

Extra and bouquet of Georgia impressed with their amazing taste and the highest quality. They were produced exclusively from the upper leaves of the bush and contained a large number of tips. The quality of the first grade was already lower, due to the fact that the collection was not very clean and included shoots. The second grade was carried out with the help of special machines and contained foreign inclusions.

Georgian tea 36 and Vigor were especially popular. The basis was Georgian tea material, but significantly mixed with Ceylon and Indian.

Green tea

All types of Georgian green leaf tea had numbers - from No10 to No125. Each number indicated a quality, meaning #10 was the lowest quality and #125 was the highest grade. Tea Georgian bouquet and Extra were considered the best varieties at the world level. The first, second and third grades were of lower quality, but the third grade was not bad either. In the republics of Central Asia, Georgian green tea No. 95, which has a characteristic tart taste, was very popular.

Brewing tea in Georgian

The main feature of the Georgian way of brewing tea is that the teapot is heated to a temperature of 100 C, but it must be dry inside. Rinsing the kettle with hot water is unacceptable. Then, dry tea leaves (1.5 teaspoons per glass) are poured into the teapot heated to the desired temperature and hot water is poured in a small stream. It is necessary to withstand three minutes and you can start drinking tea. The release of aroma is due to the double heat treatment of tea. Such a tea drink, prepared according to the correct recipe, has an exceptional and unique aroma.

Undoubtedly at that time in Georgia and not only, Bouquet and Extra tea were considered the most elite. Today, tea production in Georgia is underdeveloped. The factory in Chakva produces a brick green tea drink for the peoples of Central Asia.