The following share originally puzzled me. I had bought it as a tea share, although I couldn´t be sure because, of course, I could not decipher the Cyrillic and Georgian characters. With a little effort, I found out about it on the internet thanks to the Cyrillic keyboard and Russian translation.

Actually, it is a share of the Central Association of Consumers for the Production of Tea in Georgia, issued in Tbilisi in 1926. In contrast to the share of the Wissotzky company, there was only one dividend payment. The issuer had apparently already stopped paying dividends in the second year, because the coupon sheet has been preserved in full except for one year. A repayment of the nominal value of 500 roubles has obviously not taken place either the share remains undervalued in my possession.

Georgia is not only the oldest wine-growing region in the world, but also has the northernmost tea production. As early as 1870, the Tsar had tea gardens laid out on the Black Sea coast, what is now the autonomous region of Abkhazia. Since neither quantity nor quality were sufficient, attempts were made to cultivate tea in the Georgian foothills of the Caucasus and in Azerbaijan. The Soviet government nationalised all the tsarist-owned tea gardens. They continued to be cultivated and the Soviet Union became one of the largest black tea producers.
 

In Grusinia (the Russian name for Georgia) and Abkhazia, all tea plantations were destroyed by the effects of the war in 1993/95 and production came to a complete standstill. Tea production fell dramatically in the Caucasian region. This was due to a lack of technical and logistical capacities, as well as the fact that the domestic varieties were replaced by imports, as the domestic market for teas from Sri Lanka, India, and China was opened. Today Georgia imports three and a half times more than it produces itself.

From today's perspective, the region no longer plays an important role as a tea producer, especially since the quality must be classified as very low due to the harsh climate. When the market collapsed after the fall of the Soviet Union, the tea gardens grew wild. The abandoned tea factories were looted and the devices and machines were often sold abroad as scrap metal. The tea fields became overgrown and recultivation was hardly affordable. Georgia was still producing 77,000 tons of tea in 1993, but between 2006 and 2014 production dropped from 6,600 tons to 1,800 tons.

My partner at the time, Peter Flägel, visited Tbilisi, the tea plantations, and factories in the 1970s. After his return he still had slight problems, since only Georgian brandy was drunk at breakfast. From tea mugs, however!