Tea making

Large tea plantations were in the Ozurgeti region, Chakvi . They appeared after the Crimean War, when the English officer Jacob McNamara, having married a Georgian woman, remained in Georgia and created small plantations in these areas ^[1] .

In the 1920s, a tea development program was adopted in Georgia, and the Anaseul Research Institute of Tea, Tea Industry, and Subtropical Crops was founded. Tea factories were built all over Georgia and plantations began planting

Ksenia Ermolaevna Bakhtadze was a well-known breeder; in 1948 she bred several new varieties, including the artificial hybrids “Georgian No. 1” and “Georgian No. 2” ^[2] .

For breeding tea, the Georgian princes Eristavi are also known ^{[3] [4]} .

By the end of the 1970s, Georgian tea was exported to Hungary, Finland, Romania, Poland, Yugoslavia, Czechoslovakia, East Germany, Mongolia, Bulgaria, Afghanistan, Syria, Iran, South Yemen.

Today, 7,000 hectares of tea plantations are on the balance of the Georgian state ^[5] . In 2014, Georgia exported more than 1.2 thousand tons of green tea and more than 665 tons of black, which in monetary terms amounted to more than 2.3 million US dollars ^[5] .

The history of Krasnodar tea began in 1901 , when one enthusiast founded a small tea plantation on a half hectare in the village of Solokhaul . Judah Antonovich Koshman , having gained “tea” experience while working on plantations in Chakvi in Georgia , planted the first seedlings of tea on the territory of the present Krasnodar Territory in the very north of the subtropics . The bushes were planted and after a few years gave the first crop. However, in subsequent years, Kuban tea growing did not receive much development, and only after the First World War plantations appeared in several districts of the Kuban with a total area of ​​more than 1,500 hectares.

The northernmost tea in Russia grows in the village of Shaumyan, Tuapse district . Here, at the pilot site of the All-Russian Research Institute of Floriculture and Subtropical Crops, based in Sochi , tea begins to bloom in October and ends with the first frosts. But despite the late flowering, the "northern" teas have one clear advantage over the "southern" - a longer (just because of the colder climate) period of maturation of the tea leaf. The period for collecting tea on Krasnodar plantations lasts about 6 months ^[6]

A great merit in the development of tea growing in the Krasnodar Territory belongs to the NIIGSiTS (now the All-Russian Research Institute of Floriculture and Subtropical Crops) and scientists: A. D. Alexandrov, N. M. Vilchinsky, I. I. Lavreichuk, V. P. Gvasalia, M.T. Tuov, A.I. Troyanskaya, V.A. Evstafieva, T.P. Alekseeva. They have developed and introduced into production new pruning systems for tea plantations, leaf harvesting methods that increase yield by 20-25%, as well as the technology of vegetative propagation of tea, which allowed raising tea production to a new level. Studies on selection, agricultural technology, irrigation and fertilizer of tea have been conducted ^[7] .

Until the mid-1990s, the tea industry was one of the leading agricultural industries on the Black Sea coast of the region. The area of ​​tea plantations exceeded 1.6 thousand hectares, more than 7 thousand tons of green tea leaf were collected from them, about 2 thousand tons of prepared tea were produced annually. Until 1994, more than 700 hectares of tea plantations were provided with an automatic pulse sprinkling system with water rising to a height of 400 meters. The profitability of tea growing exceeded 45%.

The main reasons for the decline in the tea industry in the early 1990s were a sharp increase in the cost of tea products and a decrease in their competitiveness due to the lack of price parity, unregulated delivery of cheap imported tea to the Russian market, as well as packaged tea falsified under the Krasnodar Tea brand.

According to the Ministry of Agriculture and Industry of the Krasnodar Territory , 177.2 tons of green tea leaf were harvested in 2012, 220.1 tons were harvested in 2013, 360 tons in 2014, 328 tons in 2015.

At present, Dagomyschay CJSC, Solokhaulsky Tea OJSC, Matsestinsky Tea OJSC, Hosta Tea CJSC, Shapsugsky Tea CJSC and several small enterprises renting tea plantations are engaged in the cultivation and processing of tea in the Krasnodar Territory.

In Azerbaijan, tea growing is mainly developed in the Aran economic region , where tea factories are located in Lankaran, Astara, Masalli and villages, where mainly black tea is grown ^[8] .

In the Lankaran region, tea tree sections were bred at the end of the 19th century by enthusiast M.O. Novoselov ^[9] . The first tea bush was laid in 1896 ^{[10] [11]} . But the first experimental plots disappeared by 1920. In Soviet times, in 1928-1929. tea seedlings were planted again in the Lankaran and Zakatalsky zones, as a result of which industrial planting of plantations began in 1932 and the first packs of Azerbaijani tea were produced by 1937 ^[12] .

At the end of the 80s of the XX century, the area of ​​tea plantations in Azerbaijan amounted to 13.4 thousand hectares, and tea production - 34.5 thousand tons ^[13] . In the 1990s, due to the war, tea factories began to close. With the development of market relations, the tea industry began to revive. In the modern period, in addition to the Aran economic region , the growth of tea growing has also occurred in the Sheki-Zagatal economic region .

In 2010, Astarachay LLC was established in the Arran economic region ^[14] . In 2017, about 1,500 tons of tea were produced in Lankaran and Astara on the territory of tea plantations, the area of ​​which is 560 hectares ^[15] . And the total volume of tea production in 2017 amounted to 775.2 tons, and the sown area is 1.114 thousand ha ^[16] .

• Krasnodar tea
• Tea in Russia

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• Bakhtadze K. E. Biology, selection and seed production of a tea plant. - M .: "Pishchepromizdat", 1948. - 280 p.
• Kvaratskhelia T.K. , Akulova T.A. , Kantaria G.I. Tea making. - M .: State Publishing House of Agricultural Literature, 1950. - 366 p.
• Bakhtadze K. E. Biological foundations of tea culture. - Tbilisi : Metznireba, 1971. - 367 p.
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• Bushin P. M. The water regime of tea plantations and the rationale for the irrigation regime of tea in the wet subtropics of the RSFSR: dis. Doc.Agriculture. Sciences - Sochi, 1978.- S. 63-87.
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• Daraselia M.K., Vorontsov V.V., Gvasalia V.P., Tsanava V.P. Tea Culture in the USSR. - Tbilisi: "Metznireba", 1989. - S. 6-450.
• Pokhlebkin V.V. History of the development of tea production in Russia and the USSR before its collapse // Tea and Vodka in the History of Russia - Krasnoyarsk Book Publishing House, 1995. - 284-290
• Besedina T. D. Agroecological requirements of tea culture in the subtropics of Russia // Bioresources, biotechnologies, environmentally safe development of the agroindustrial complex: collection of scientific works - Issue 40. - Sochi , 2007. - P. 232-248.
• Korzun B.V., Vavilova L.V. Ways to increase winter hardiness of subtropical crops in the North-West Caucasus. New Technologies Magazine No. 4/2007 Maykop State Technological University , Maykop .