Georgia
The origin that supplied most of the Soviet Union’s tea and then almost disappeared. Planting began on the humid Black Sea littoral in the late nineteenth century with Chinese seed and Chinese expertise, expanded enormously under Soviet planning with heavy mechanisation, and collapsed after 1991 — leaving large areas of plantation abandoned to scrub. The current industry is being rebuilt partly from those semi-wild plots, which is unusual: the bushes are decades old, ungrafted and unsprayed by neglect rather than by design.
History on this page: TeaHQ synthesis
TeaHQ's own reading of well-attested general knowledge, with no single source behind it.
This country’s description dates the establishment or the collapse of an industry. The label says on what basis — it governs the historical statements, not the production figures below, which carry their own definitions and sources.
Production, trade and price
| Measure | Year | Value | Basis | Published by |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Harvested area | 2023 | 2,184 ha imputed | FAOSTAT QCL element 'Area harvested' for item 667 / CPC 01620 'Tea leaves', in hectares. FAO's methodology note warns that for permanent crops such as tea 'data may refer to total planted area' rather than area actually harvested, so this is the area under tea and not necessarily the area picked in the year. The associated crop is measured as green leaf. FAOSTAT flags this cell I, a value imputed by a receiving agency; the country did not report it. | Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations (FAO), Statistics Division |
| Production | 2023 | 2,300 t | FAOSTAT QCL element 'Production' for item 667 / CPC 01620 'Tea leaves', in tonnes. FAO's QCL methodology note states the domain 'contains production data for primary products', so this counts GREEN LEAF as plucked, not made tea. It is roughly four to five times the made-tea figure the same country's tea board publishes. FAOSTAT flags this cell A, an official figure reported by the country. | Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations (FAO), Statistics Division |
| Yield | 2023 | 1,053 kg/ha estimated | FAOSTAT QCL element 'Yield' for item 667 / CPC 01620 'Tea leaves', in kilograms per hectare, computed by FAO from the production and area figures rather than reported directly. Because production is GREEN LEAF and the area may be planted rather than harvested, this is green-leaf yield per hectare planted and is not comparable with a made-tea yield. FAO states that yields of permanent crops 'are not as reliable as those for temporary crops'. FAOSTAT flags this cell E, a value estimated by the publishing agency rather than reported by the country. | Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations (FAO), Statistics Division |
Figures are reproduced as their publisher stated them and are not converted, averaged or ranked. Where two publishers disagree, both rows appear — this comes from Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations (FAO), Statistics Division. The largest single trap in tea statistics is that FAO’s series counts green leaf as plucked while national tea boards count finished made tea, and the two differ by roughly a factor of four and a half. The basis column says which each row is, and a figure without it is not comparable to one with it.
How production is organised
Fragmented and being reassembled. Soviet-era plantations were broken up or abandoned, so much of the working area is now small parcels of old, unsprayed, semi-wild bushes reclaimed from scrub by individual growers, co-operatives and a small number of new companies. That is why Georgian tea is sold by producer name rather than by district: the district no longer describes a common way of working.
How firm this is: Inferred by TeaHQ from general knowledge of the trade rather than taken from a source that states it.
What it produces
Black tea predominantly, with some green, from a small revived sector working both new plantings and recovered Soviet-era plantations in the western provinces.
How firm this is: Inferred by TeaHQ from general knowledge of the trade rather than taken from a source that states it. The collapse and partial revival are well documented; current output is small and figures vary widely between sources.
What it is known for
The categories this country is most associated with. Being known for a category is a fact about reputation and volume rather than about quality.
- Black tea — Tea taken deliberately through full enzymatic oxidation, giving the dark leaf, amber-to-red liquor and malty or brisk character most Western drinkers think of as simply 'tea'.
Growing regions in Georgia
Named districts with their own elevation, climate and character. Elevation figures are recorded as ranges because sources disagree on where a district begins and ends.
How tea is drunk here
Soviet-era Georgian tea acquired a poor reputation from late-period mechanised harvesting that took stem and coarse leaf indiscriminately. That reputation attaches to a production system, not to the terroir, and the revival sector is deliberately distancing itself from it.
Teas from Georgia
Sources
- TeaHQ editorial synthesis — TeaHQ
Everything on this page is TeaHQ’s own synthesis of widely-attested trade and production background. No external document stands behind it, which is why the statements here describe practice rather than assert measurements.
Written comparisons
Where TeaHQ has set this producing country against something it is routinely confused with, and argued the differences out in full.
- Georgia vs Turkey as tea origins — Two Black Sea tea industries with opposite twentieth-century histories. Turkey’s was built up and has run continuously; Georgia’s was one of the Soviet Union’s largest and collapsed almost entirely in the 1990s, and what exists now is a reconstruction.