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ISET Economist Blog

Adjara Fact of the Day
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Thursday, 13 September, 2012
Agriculture & rural policy
The history of Georgian tea began in 1897 when Lao Cheng Zhao came from China to the imperial estate in the village of Chakvi. Lao, whose house still stands on the seashore, brought high-quality tea seeds to the country; and the first tea was harvested in 1902. The product is now so bad that local tea growers call poor-quality tea “Lao-class”. However, in 1903, Chakvi tea began to win prizes at international exhibitions.
Georgian tea was the best of all teas produced in the USSR and competed successfully with Ceylon and Indian teas. However, as a production engineer at one of the four tea plants now operating in Chakvi said, Georgian tea was ruined in Khrushchev’s time when the tea plantations started being worked mercilessly in order to reach the planned production figures.
 
There is more here. Do read it all, and note this interview with the director of the Chakvi brick tea plant (in 2004):
 
"This tea is the main brand in Mongolia. They call it ‘Stalin tea’ there. Do you see the hammer and sickle stamped on the molds? This is the main identification mark for Mongolians. They know it’s a symbol of a high-quality, all-natural product. Our Chinese competitors started counterfeiting this mark, so we had to change the design of the brick. They add chemicals too, but what have chemicals got to do with it?"
- "Did you remove the hammer and sickle?," I wanted to know.

- "Go on!," Gogi recoiled in surprise. "Remove it? Noway! We made it clearer so it would be visible right away. I’ll never give up the hammer and sickle! Anything but that."
Tags: #agriculture, #history,
The views and analysis in this article belong solely to the author(s) and do not necessarily reflect the views of the international School of Economics at TSU (ISET) or ISET Policty Institute.

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