Ivan-tea: truth and myths about Koporsky tea

2024 Author: Seth Attwood | [email protected]. Last modified: 2023-12-16 15:55

In pre-revolutionary Russia, Ivan tea was fought like a counterfeit of Chinese tea, in the Soviet Union it was weed out like a weed, and now, within the framework of import substitution, we are talking about creating a whole Ivan tea industry, with its own regulations and major players. However, for villages and depressed areas, smaller players are no less important - thanks to their efforts, the hinterland is sometimes saved now.

Thin-leaved fireweed (aka ivan tea) is now in vogue: several large manufacturers have entered this market in recent years - and continue to do so. From the latest news: "MAY-Foods" (brand "Maisky tea" and others) has opened a production of ivan tea in Fryazino and is preparing to launch another, much larger, in the Vologda region (where it will invest 265 million rubles). May has big plans: the company announced that 1,500 hectares of agricultural land were allocated for plant cultivation in the Vologda Oblast. “The MAY-Foods company plans to occupy about 50% of the market and become a driver of the Ivan-tea category in the hot drinks market. The capacity of its tea production is 50 thousand tons per year, including those based on willow tea,”says Sergey Konev, CEO of MAY-Foods.

There is a large producer in the Novgorod region (Emelyanovskaya biofactory), in the Sverdlovsk region (Aidigo and Nomad), there is “Ivan-tea merchant” in the Nizhny Novgorod region, “Yarila” in the Leningrad region, “Northern teas” in Tomsk. Many expect to conquer not only the Russian market, but also enter foreign ones.

They are indeed gradually conquering the domestic market: you can already buy Ivan tea in the Azbuka Vkusa (from 150 rubles for a 50 g bag), and in the capital's Danilovsky market (250–300 rubles each), and in any shop health products. The number of fans is growing: if two years ago the total sales were estimated by players at 100-150 tons, now it is from 300 to 600 tons, in money terms - at least $ 20 million. production just five years ago with a pilot batch of 500 kg. The company does not disclose what part of the lines is loaded, and only says that "they will try to close these capacities as much as possible." 100 tons are produced by "Aidigo" from Yekaterinburg, and "Ivan-tea merchant" from Nizhny Novgorod, according to the head of the company Oksana Cherkashina, even broke the record, producing 112 tons of tea.

For entrepreneur Dmitry Sinitsyn, the founder of Aidigo, the excitement in the market is understandable: in terms of profitability, he says, it is unlikely that any culture can be compared with Ivan-tea in agriculture today. Fireweed here easily bypasses past favorites - sugar beets and bay leaves. If the latter had a profitability of 40-60% in the best years, then willow tea can bring up to 80%, besides, almost all manufacturers do not grow it on purpose, but simply collect it in the meadows near the villages.

Comparing the profitability of Ivan tea with bay leaves, Dmitry Sinitsyn knows what he is talking about: his company started with spices. Then, in 1995, it wasn't fireweed at all - coriander, mustard, black pepper and bay leaf. “Especially the last one,” Sinitsyn recalls. In 1995, he and co-founder of the company Vladimir Vinokurov engaged in "marketing". “We just asked the storekeeper Valentina Yakubovna at the Yekaterinburg Obshchepit base, where they sold dry yeast at that time, what there was an unsatisfied demand for. She answered: "Pepper and bay leaf", - Dmitry laughs.

Having bought the Kurier newspaper, the partners easily found a bay leaf at a nearby base of the Ural Military District, bought a full ZIL-130 car, made a 100% mark-up and sold it out in a week.

Today, of course, such markups in traditional cultures can hardly be dreamed of.

But in the production of Ivan tea (at least at the dawn of this market) profitability is a matter of creativity. Now in Russia there are more than 70 fireweed producers, the market is growing rapidly, there is no established average price. “The demand is such that for a beautiful picture you can sell the same Ivan tea several times more expensive than competitors,” says Lena Karin, owner of the service for sales support for social entrepreneurs “More than a purchase”.

The cost of production can be quite negligible: assemblers are paid 20-30 rubles. per kilogram, then some manufacturers dry and roll everything almost by hand, others do it industrially, sort, ferment and pack, getting higher quality products. Dmitry Sinitsyn claims that Aidigo has invested 5-10 million in the production of ivan tea and it is possible to sell large volumes due to the good quality of the goods. Sales are also promoted by the legend with which the company builds its brand. Fireweed is collected in the Ural mountains, at the source of St. Platonis, it is written on the company's website. “Many years ago,” the legend tells, “evil brothers took their sister Platonida deep into the forest to perish. And 30 years later, having decided to repent and pray for their sister, they returned to the forest and found the beautiful sister unharmed. The reason for this was the holy spring, which preserves health and youth, the water of which Platonides drank”.

Cypriot tales

Like any hype product, Ivan tea is surrounded by legends. Including about the healing properties: heals everything - from prostatitis to cancer, improves the functioning of the heart, kidneys, liver, spleen, further down the list, promotes beauty, prosperity and longevity, has a sedative effect - but also excites. And about the past greatness. “At the beginning of the 20th century, Ivan-tea conquered not only the Russian Empire, but also Europe and was so popular that he divided the profitability from exports with grain and vodka,” says a legend known in the Ivan-tea market.

The founder of the Kiprey tea factory Sergey Khomenko, for example, believes in this legend, as well as believes that the British, fearing competition for their own goods, unleashed a real trade war against the fireweed and in the end won this war. But the tea expert and PR-director of the Turquoise Tea company Denis Shumakov considers all kinds of legends to be nothing more than legends. “The Russian Empire had an exceptionally developed bureaucracy, and trade left a lot of paperwork - advertising, price lists, correspondence,” he recalls. “With regard to Ivan tea, there are not even hints of such documents. Moreover, there is no mention in the encyclopedia of Russian not only life, but also cuisine - "Domostroy", XVI century. " Fireweed, of course, was collected and brewed - but, firstly, not only in Russia, but throughout the northern hemisphere, including the Indians of Canada. And secondly, not only fireweed. “Then all the herbs were used, they also ate the quinoa - but for some reason we are not talking about the greatness of the quinoa,” Shumakov smiles.

Of course, you should not overestimate the healing properties of fireweed - it is used in herbal medicine along with other plants, has its own indications and contraindications. And as for the former popularity - it really happened in the history of Ivan-tea, albeit very specific. Ivan tea was collected and drunk for a very long time, but it began to be produced especially actively from the end of the 18th century, when the Chinese tea market was formed in the Russian Empire.

Russia became a large transit market for the Chinese, and since Chinese (or, as we called it, Kyakhta) tea was expensive, counterfeiting began. Their basis is "Koporye tea", tea made from fireweed, named after the village of Koporye on the Gulf of Finland.

In Koporye, such tea was mass-produced just for mixing into export goods.“Koporskoe is crumbly and sour and cheap,” has been written since then in Dahl's dictionary. Here, in fairness, it should be noted that the counterfeit was not at all the Ivan tea that is sold on the market today, it was really some kind of trashy substitute, rotted and burned to make it black.

Russian merchants (and not the British at all) lobbied for the ban - and at the beginning of the 19th century, a number of laws were issued against the "koporka": at first it was forbidden to mix it into tea and sell it under the guise of Chinese, and then the Minister of the Ministry of State Property Kiselev even tried to prohibit the use of Koporye tea peasants to preserve their health. But Kiselev's reforms failed, and the "koporka" fell out of use not by virtue of a ban, but by itself, as the tea market was saturated with cheap teas.

Russian folk tea

In the Soviet Union, fireweed finally dropped to the status of a weed, and they began to fight against it - weed out, watered with herbicides and blamed for the losses. We remembered its taste and unique properties quite recently - after 2014, against the background of import substitution. And this background seemed so advantageous that large producers rushed to get preferences from the government for Ivan tea.

In March 2015, the Public Chamber held hearings on the topic "Development of a legislative framework for the development of the Ivan-tea industry in Russia and support for domestic producers of Ivan-tea." The participants in the hearings decided that ivan tea "can be safely called a national drink, which is an integral part of the daily diet of all Russians."

From the outside, of course, it looked like a certain exaggeration - more than 200 thousand tons of ordinary tea are sold in our country, Ivan tea is a thousand times less, but it was much more important that the development of the Ivan tea industry "claims to be an important vector of economic development." and can become a national project with a “high proportion of innovation component”.

Following the hearings, the Public Chamber recommended that the government consider the issue of reducing tea imports and finding ways to promote Ivan-tea products to foreign markets. After the failure of the pre-revolutionary protectionists, these measures would have looked like a convincing revenge - but it has not come to the consideration of recommendations so far. “The National Union of Russian Tea Producers, which was created on the wave of import substitution in 2015 and organized these hearings, collapsed -“they didn’t even have time to register it,”says Sergei Tsitrenko, head of the Siberian Teas partnership. In October, the Vologda Ivan-Chai company and several other manufacturers are planning to register a new union - its first event should be an exhibition in the Urals.

Tea for friendship and social responsibility

If for large enterprises Ivan-tea is a fashionable feature and additional profitability, then for small producers from the provinces, it is not very profitable, but socially oriented projects to save depressed areas.

The fact is that fireweed grows everywhere, including in the north, in remote and depressed areas of Komi, the Arkhangelsk region, Siberia. Where there is nothing at all, there is ivan tea. For many, this means that there is also hope.

The artist Mikhail Bronsky came to a village in the Arkhangelsk region to the ancestral home, which is more than a hundred years old, in the mid-2000s. There were 16 houses in the village, mostly old people and alcoholics lived there. Bronsky was imbued with the idea of reviving the village and began the production of Ivan tea growing there: he attracted fellow villagers to harvest, taught them how to roll a leaf and dry it in Russian ovens, which are still in their homes.

“My idea is that you can earn money from wild plants: they bring very good money for the village. And while berries are not every year, Ivan tea always grows, you can rely on it. Therefore, the choice of culture for the revival of the settlement was obvious,”explains Mikhail Bronsky.

During the season, he employs up to a hundred people from all the surrounding villages. The harvesting season lasts from a month, for a kilogram of raw materials, collectors receive 20 rubles.

One of the families brings up to 200 kg of willow tea a day, helping out 4 thousand rubles a day. per day.

The artist used his talent in business - he took over the production of hand-painted bags, attracted other artists to this business and began to sell goods at higher prices. If usually a box costs 250 rubles, then "Tea Bronsky" - 300-600 rubles. for 70-120

Now there are 18 houses in the village, and some of them were built on the site of the demolished old ones. A banker even came to the revived village to be under construction. “No one will go into a dead village to build a dacha, and we have new houses simply because people live here all year round and no one will loot while there are no summer residents,” Mikhail Bronsky is sure.

Oksana Cherkashina's project "Ivan-tea merchant" attracts about 1000 people for harvesting in Bryansk, Novgorod, Kostroma and other regions. They all work for several weeks during the harvest season, which helps save dozens of villages by providing jobs for the residents.

“Ivan-tea is now supporting our Rus resort in Ust-Ilimsk, Irkutsk region, and thanks to him, we, in general, survive,” says Sergey Khomenko, director of the resort and founder of the Kiprey tea factory. This project employs a thousand people who have no opportunity to earn money in any other way.

Initially, Khomenko began to collect ivan tea in the resort area to give it to guests. It turned out that fireweed was becoming popular, and as the Siberian resorts felt worse and worse, the tea business grew and helped to support the entire "Rus". Small deliveries began to be organized to Moscow and St. Petersburg.

“Until the market is saturated and profitability is good. To start a small production, prohibitive investments are not needed - 5-6 million rubles. Our only problem is that we are not salespeople and we do not know how to sell, so for many years the market has not been occupied by existing manufacturers,”says Sergei Khomenko.

“We are not afraid of the May company. They are doing an important job - they are shaping the culture of growing willow tea as opposed to picking wild plants, which can lead to the emergence of a new industry in agriculture. But even if they occupy all store shelves, online trade will still be in the hands of small manufacturers. There will be a place for everyone, Sergei Tsitrenko from Siberian Teas is sure.

But in general, the small players are not happy with the arrival of large players in the industry. They fear that the big ones will lower prices and saturate the market - and when Ivan tea appears in every store, it will not be so easy to maintain the myth of its uniqueness. And pay collectors 20-30 rubles. there will be nothing for a kilogram.