Why go
Solokhaul gives a concrete setting for the story of Russian-grown tea. Juda Koshman brought tea seeds from Adjara in 1901 and developed plants able to grow in this cooler northern setting. His house and old tea bushes connect a familiar drink to the slopes above Sochi.
The full story
Tea was popular in Russia long before it grew successfully near Sochi. Earlier planting attempts in the region failed in the cool conditions. At the start of the twentieth century, Juda Antonovich Koshman, who had worked with tea in Adjara farther south on the Black Sea, brought seeds to Solokhaul. A successful plantation followed in 1905. The crop later became associated with Krasnodar tea. Its importance was not simply that tea could be produced domestically: cultivation here showed that a plant usually linked with warmer regions could be established on these Caucasian slopes. Koshman's house and tea bushes at Solokhaul give that agricultural experiment a visible place. The village is inland from Sochi's seafront. A visit therefore works best as its own excursion through the hinterland, with the history of the fields in mind. It is also a reminder that Sochi's mild coastal image conceals meaningful differences in temperature and terrain as the land rises.