It’s a balmy afternoon in Tsageri, a tiny town at the foot of the Greater Caucasus mountain range in north-western Georgia, a small country between Russia, Turkey and the Black Sea. Shota Kopaliani ambles down to the bottom of his garden, pulls open the wooden doors of his micro-factory and empties a bag of hand-foraged mulberry leaves onto his workbench.
The withered table, like the rolling machine and oxidation oven, he built himself. These are the only tools he needs to harness air, movement and heat – the three essential elements for crafting fermented tea. The technique took him two years to perfect, but it’s rooted in a history older than the mulberry-covered hills visible from his window.
Amy Jones stumbled into Shota’s tea-making world by accident. One sip
