Hi friends! As you can probably tell, I’ve been enjoying lots of tea from Renegade Tea Estate. Because I’ve been following this tea farm on Instagram, I’ve been very interested in finding out more about how they are making a difference.
Who are the Renegade Tea Farmers?
Located in Georgia, the Renegade Tea Estate is 40 hectare tea farm that’s being brought back to life after being abandoned for thirty years! I’m not sure if you’ve heard of Georgian tea, but it’s actually got a pretty long history – according to The Tale of Tea, Georgian tea won a gold medal at the 1900 Paris Tea exhibition, showing that the country has a history of producing great teas! In fact, by 1940, “the area of Georgian tea gardens had reached 47000 hectares and 37 tea gardens and factories had been built.” Unfortunately, when the Soviet Union collapsed, the demand for Georgian tea also collapsed and now, the tea industry in Georgia is much smaller compared to its heyday.
Now, back to the Renegade Tea Farmers! They are a group of friends who left their corporate careers to help revive the Georgian tea industry by revitalising an abandoned tea farm and introduce the world to amazing Georgian teas! They’ve got a very detailed introduction on their website and I highly recommend reading about their journey and getting to know their team as well! And to add a personal remark, it was this sense of mission and transparency that drew me to the brand and made me want to try their teas in the first place!
Planet: How Renegade Tea is environmentally friendly, from planting to packaging
Farming
The Renegade tea estate is an organic farm in Georgia, a country where the climate is perfect for sustainable farming. There are about 5-6 months a year where tea production is possible, and the plants get a rest for the remaining half of the year. Additionally, since there’s snow and frost during their winters, the farm doesn’t have as many problems with pests and illnesses as farms in other tea-growing regions.
The plantations have been around for 60-70 years and the team makes an effort to maintain the diversity of fauna and flora. By practising organic farming, they can allow the tea bushes to coexist with the other plants and animals – with the exception of cows, horses, and other free-roaming animals which are now kept away with fences so they don’t damage the tea bushes! Pigs, on the other hand, are helpful with cultivation!
This care for the environment extends to their harvesting practices. All their harvesting is done by hand, which means that they don’t use any heavy equipment on the fields. If they have to make any changes – for example, they recently built a service station for workers to be able to rest – then they will choose the most environmentally friendly option, which in this case, was to use solar panel to power the service station!
Packaging
Environmentally friendly packaging is very important for the Renegade Tea farmers – they use carton boxes for delivery, all the printed materials are made out of recycled paper, and if the package needs to travel somewhere further, they use a compostable mailer to protect the package. Their aim is to make sure that their carbon footprint is as small as possible when they’re sending the teas to you!
Their next goal is to find a way to package the tea that is:
- Environmentally friendly
- Maintain the tea quality
- Not too expensive for their customers
And that’s a huge goal! I remember talking to tea farmers in Japan who also mentioned that environmentally-friendly packaging was a challenge to be solved. But I’m sure that one day, there will be a solution to this!
People: How Renegade Tea supports their community
One very cool thing that I learnt when I interviewed Renegade Tea is that they have some workers who used to work on the same tea plantations 30 years ago, when the Soviet Union was around! As you can tell, most of our workers are from nearby villages and during the last production season, they hired around 50 local people, making them one of the biggest companies hiring in the area. During the off-season (October – April), they have around 10 local people working on a daily basis.
When they started their journey 4 years ago, the team agreed that revitalising the Georgian tea industry would also mean bringing life back to the villages, which means that paying their workers well is essential. They’ve managed to keep to that promise and as a result, many of the people they recruited when they went from door to door to hire are still working with them.
I mentioned in the introduction that Georgia’s tea industry collapsed with the fall of the Soviet Union. As this area used to be very dependent on tea, the collapse of the tea industry meant that many households lost their monthly income and never managed to get a stable job after that. Now, Renegade Tea’s hiring practices are making it so that many people can now earn a fair salary in their village, as opposed to having to go abroad to earn a living for their families.
Finally, Renegade Tea also tries to help educate the local community on other issues, such as waste management. Apparently, proper trash systems are not very common in the area, and recycling isn’t common either, so Renegade Tea tries to educate the community about the importance of proper waste management and also help where they can so the local municipality would provide solutions to the locals.
How to Buy Renegade Teas
I hope that after reading this, you’ll agree with me that the Renegade Tea Farmers are doing a lot for their community while being friendly to the environment and producing great teas (my favourite tea from them so far is Renegade Life, but all three teas I’ve tried have been delicious)! I find their prices to be very reasonable as well – definitely much cheaper than a few tea brands that I can think of, and you’ll know that you’re supporting a sustainable and ethical brand!
The best way to buy their teas is through their e-shop: www.renegadetea.com, but they are distributed in a few other shops, such as a few of the Palais des Thes stores in Paris (something for me to check out!) and Tea and Ty in France, or Old Tea Shop at Helsinki. You can find a full list of their distributors at this page.
Lastly, before I end this post, I also want to point out that Renegade Tea puts together a collection every year featuring some of their best teas! It’s something to consider buying if you need a lot of tea and you want a lot of variety. This year, I just bought the three teas that appealed to me the most, but I’m considering this collection next year! I also saw on their e-shop that you can adopt a tea bush or tea garden (and opt to receive teas)! You can find more details about the collection and the tea bush/tea garden at this page – it’s currently somewhere in the middle!
This is a great post! I’ve had several excellent teas from Georgia and have been interested in the revival of their tea industry.
Thank you! Do you mind sharing which teas you’ve had/from which estates? After trying these, I’m very keen to see what other teas are being produced in Georgia!
After seeing so many of your posts about their tea this was so interesting!!
I’m glad you think so! I was so happy that they agreed to talk to me cause then it’s a bit of a mini tea series haha