How to brew Georgian green tea from Guria

Georgia grew the bulk of the Soviet Union's tea, and most of it was black. Green tea is the new thing there — In Pursuit of Tea, which imports Renegade Tea Estate's, calls it a new tradition in Georgia — and most of it comes from small gardens in Guria, in the wet west of the country, brought back after decades of neglect. It is inexpensive, unfussy and easy to brew well, so long as the kettle is not taken straight off the boil.

In a cup or a teapot

The water: about 80°C — boiled, then left to stand for a few minutes. TeaHaus, which sells a Georgian green from the Black Sea coast, cools its water to 80°C; In Pursuit of Tea brews Renegade's a touch hotter, at 82 to 85°C.

The leaf: about 3 grams, a heaped teaspoon, to a 240 ml cup by TeaHaus's measure; In Pursuit of Tea uses 3 to 4.

The time: two to three minutes, TeaHaus says, and In Pursuit of Tea gives three. Then take the leaf out. A green tea left to stew in the mug is a different and rather worse drink.

In a gaiwan, short and often

GourmetKava, a Czech shop selling a green tea from the village of Dvabzu outside Ozurgeti, brews about 5 grams in 100 to 200 ml of water at around 80°C. The first steeps are short — twenty to forty seconds — and each one after is a little longer, up to a few minutes, for six to eight in all. In Pursuit of Tea fills a gaiwan a quarter full of leaf and steeps for thirty seconds to a minute.

GourmetKava's warning is the most useful line on the subject: hotter or longer, and the tea over-infuses and goes flat. A bitter cup means it was left too long, not that the tea is poor.

The big pot

The same shop gives the opposite method as well: 5 to 7 grams in half a litre of water at a full boil, for five to eight minutes. That makes a strong, plain pot meant for sugar — or for mint, the way the Tuareg take green tea. It is not the subtle way, but it is a perfectly good one.

What it tastes like

Grassy, with the smell of a summer meadow, is GourmetKava's note on its Dvabzu tea. In Pursuit of Tea finds honey, hazelnut and something savoury in Renegade's; TeaHaus describes its Black Sea green as a light, sweet umami like a Japanese tea, followed by the toastiness of a Chinese one. Between them they put Georgian green tea about where it sits in the cup: somewhere between a sencha and a pan-fired Chinese green such as Dragon Well, with something of both and the sharp edges of neither.

Is it worth buying?

As a curiosity, certainly; as an everyday green, very possibly. It is cheap — GourmetKava's Dvabzu tea was €5.90 for 50 grams, ten sessions in a gaiwan — and it forgives the drinker who has had Chinese greens turn bitter on them, provided the water is kept cool. It will not stand in for a fine Dragon Well or a first-flush sencha, and does not try to. It is the tea of a country rebuilding an industry, and it tastes fresh, green and straightforward. Quality varies from garden to garden, so buy from a shop that names the village it came from.

Where it comes from

Tea came to Guria in the nineteenth century, when Prince Mamia V Gurieli planted the first bushes, according to the Swiss embassy in Georgia, whose development agency helped set up the country's Tea Association. Through the Soviet years Georgian bushes supplied the bulk of the Union's brews, Reuters reported in 2025 — mostly plain black tea — and the industry went with the Union: by 2016, official figures put production 99% below its 1985 peak.

The revival is small and recent. GreenGold Tea makes its tea in a wing of a disused Soviet silk factory in Ozurgeti, Guria's capital; other growers have taken back family plantations that had been left to grow wild. Some of what they make is still black. A good deal of the most interesting of it is green.