Teas and Trees

We spent a couple of days being tourists in the Charleston area. We did not go into Charleston as we had been there once before and so we focused on the area south of town.

First we went out to the Charleston Tea Plantation. This is the only tea plantation in North America and is home to American Classic Teas – grown, processed, and packaged here in the US!

We started with a brief tour of the processing area. Tea is harvested from April through November. That means that this is off season and the processing area was shut down for the winter months.

After a quick look at the factory, we boarded this small bus for a tour of the plantation.

The driver was very informative. Here are a few of the facts I remember:

Black, oolong, and green tea all start from the same tea plant. They are only different in how long they are processed, or dried.

Tea (ounce for ounce) has more caffeine than coffee. However, you don’t use as much tea when you make a cup of tea and therefore you drink less caffeine with a cup of tea. Black, oolong, and green all contain the same amount of caffeine.

This is the only tea plantation in the US and the owner (Bill Hall) is the only certified tea master in the US. He studied for 4 years in England to earn his master certificate.

80% of the tea we drink in the US comes from Argentina.

Per person the Irish drink more tea than anyone else in the world!

I bought two teas from the gift shop. A can of peach tea leaves that smells wonderful and a box of black tea with mint. The box contains tea bags. The tea was grown and processed here at the plantation and then sent north (Massachusetts?) to be put into tea bags! Its cheaper to send it north and then back again than it is to build a bagging factory!

So if you want All-American tea, look for American Classic Tea!

After the tea plantation we made a short detour down a dirt road to see the Angel Tree:

This is the largest Live Oak tree east of the Mississippi. It is estimated to be between 300 and 400 years old.The tree’s height is only 65 feet, but it shades over 17,000 square feet. The name ‘Angel’ could be from the aura that the canopy gives – an Angel’s wings spread over you. The one limb seen below (coming toward you and close to the ground) is 107 feet long and has a 12 foot circumference.  The tree was amazing.

Next we plan to visit one of the many plantations of the Charleston area.

Hope you had a great day.