All the Tea in Charleston

Did you know black tea and green tea comes from the same plant? And that a tea plant can produce for hundreds of years?

Last week, my friend Melissa and I took a road trip to the Carolinas, and one of our favorite stops was the Charleston Tea Garden. Located near the coast, where the weather is wet and muggy, the Charleston Tea Garden is the only large-scale tea growing operation in America.

Ever since I lived in Ireland, I’ve had a fondness for tea, especially black tea. So learning about how tea grows and is processed was absolutely fascinating.

The tea bushes, which reminded me of hedges in an Irish village, grow in rows. At the Garden, you can walk around the fields, but most of the bushes were tastefully roped off, so we didn’t actually walk into the field.

The Tea Garden offers a free factory tour with a video explaining tea harvesting and drying. All black, oolong, and green tea is from the same plant, the Camellia sinensis, which grows well in hot climates that get a lot of rain.

Tea bushes can grow for hundreds of years, but tea has only been raised at this location since 1963, so I doubt any of the bushes are that old.

As new tea leaves pop out, this one-of-a-kind tea harvester rolls along to harvest the tea.

Inside the factory, visitors can view the production area from large glass windows. First, the tea leaves are placed on a slow-moving belt to wither the leaves and remove 15% of the liquid in about eighteen hours.

Next, the leaves are shredded into small bits. After this, the oxidization, or fermentation takes place, and this makes all the difference between black, oolong, and green tea. The air oxidizes the juices in the leaves, turns the leaves from green to brown, and gives the tea its flavor. Black tea is oxidized for fifty minutes, oolong tea is oxidized for fifteen minutes, and green tea isn’t oxidized at all.

Finally the tea is dried and sifted to removed any bits of stalks or fiber. And then it’s ready for the tea cup!

Following the tour, we went to the gift shop, where, of course, we had to buy some tea. (I’m sipping some as I write this post.)

After that, it was on to Charlestown to do some more sightseeing and then eat supper. I ordered jambalaya and, of course, sweet iced tea.