Our Visit to the Charleston Tea Plantation (Garden) Last Month

On this past October 25th, the morning after driving in to Charleston, South Carolina from Asheville, North Carolina, Melissa and I decided to go west and explore two of the area's features: the Angel Oak Tree on John's Island (click HERE for my article) and the Charleston Tea Plantation, which seems to be in the process of being renamed Charleston Tea Garden most likely because "plantation" carries with it connotations of slavery.  In any event, we managed to get past the morning precipitation by the time we arrived there, beyond the aforementioned Tree and onto sparsely populated Wadmalaw Island.  The first thing you notice driving into the place are the rows upon rows of shortly and very evenly-cropped hedges of tea plants.  This is because the choice leaves are cut from branches grown past a certain height by a custom-designed harvester they call the Green Giant (which is in the above pics)...this machine drastically cuts down on the labor formerly needed to tend and harvest the plants.  We parked and went inside, just in time to go on their trolley tour around the farm, with the driver and a recorded tour guide giving out probably more information about tea farming history and its cultivation than I needed to know.  When we got back to the main gift shop area we sampled some of their teas, browsed around, and then went into the back on a walking tour of the facility's tea processing machines.  I hadn't been aware that different kinds of tea didn't necessarily grow on different types of tea plants, but were rather the products of different stages in processing.   At the end, we naturally bought some of their teas and left with a sense of tranquility from our visit...everyone there was friendly and obviously enjoyed their work.  During the tour it was claimed that this is the only substantial tea farm in the continental U.S. and that the site was selected because of the soil quality here as well as the location in a wet lowland area at this latitude.  Bigelow Tea Company now owns it...I enjoyed the experience but most definitely would have enjoyed it more if it were instead about my preferred drink, coffee...