Charleston Tea Garden sweet tea, Lowcountry tea punches and tea rooms

Tea grows on 127 acres of Wadmalaw Island, south of Charleston, at the Charleston Tea Garden. The garden calls itself the oldest large-scale tea garden in North America, and its American Classic Tea was the first tea made entirely from leaves grown in the United States. Brewed strong, sweetened while hot and poured over ice, it makes Southern sweet tea from a Lowcountry island. The garden's sweet tea recipe is here in full, with the old Charleston and Savannah tea punches, the tea rooms, and the tea, honey and glassware sold by local shops in the Lowcountry Magazine store.

Charleston Tea Garden

Every tea plant in the garden's fields descends from the bushes Dr. Charles Shepard grew at the Pinehurst Tea Plantation in Summerville from 1888. In the 1960s Lipton moved those plants to a research farm on Wadmalaw Island. Bill Hall, a third-generation tea taster trained in London, turned the farm into a working tea garden in 1987, and the Bigelow family bought it in 2003.

The bushes are pruned into low, dense rows so a mechanical harvester can take the young leaves, and the first harvest of the year, the First Flush, comes in spring. The free factory tour starts every 15 minutes from the top of the stairs in the gift shop and walks a glassed-in gallery above the factory floor. The trolley tour runs 35 to 40 minutes through the fields with a stop at the greenhouse: $16 for ages 12 and up and $8.50 for ages 4 to 11 when booked a day ahead, $18 and $9.50 inside 24 hours, and free for children 3 and under. The garden is at 6617 Maybank Highway and opens 10am to 4pm Monday to Saturday and noon to 4pm on Sunday.

American Classic Tea is sold in the gift shop and on the garden's website, as a box of 12 pyramid tea bags for $9.95 or a pouch of loose tea for $11.95. Charleston Breakfast, Earl Grey, Island Green, Peachy Peach, Rockville Raspberry and Cinnamon Spice come from the same fields.

Sweet Tea

Southern Sweet Tea, Charleston Tea Garden

The garden's own recipe, made with American Classic Tea. The sugar goes in while the tea is still hot so it dissolves completely, and the tea is brewed strong enough to hold up to a full glass of ice.

Ingredients

• 4 American Classic Tea bags, or another Charleston Tea Garden black tea
• 8 cups water, divided
• 1 to 1½ cups granulated sugar
• Ice
• A pinch of baking soda, optional
• Fresh mint, lemon wedges or orange slices, to serve

Method

1. Bring 4 cups of the water to a rolling boil, then take the pan off the heat.
2. Add the tea bags, cover the pan and steep for 10 to 15 minutes. A pinch of baking soda in the water softens the tannins and keeps the tea from clouding. Past 15 minutes the tea turns bitter.
3. Lift out the tea bags, pressing them gently against the side of the pan, and stir in the sugar while the tea is steaming. One cup gives a classic sweetness; 1½ cups is sweet tea the way a Lowcountry diner counter pours it.
4. Pour the tea into a heat-safe pitcher, add the remaining 4 cups of water and stir. Let it cool to room temperature before it goes in the refrigerator.
5. Serve over ice with lemon, orange or mint. A splash of bourbon makes it a cocktail.

Sweet tea tastes best made a day ahead and keeps for three to four days in a covered pitcher in the refrigerator. One box of American Classic pyramid bags makes three pitchers. The recipe library's classic Southern sweet tea is the same method in a two-quart batch. A hand-blown glass pitcher by Hayden Wilson from Southern Crafted in Savannah holds it, and it pours into a No. 12 highball glass, hand-blown by Terrane in Spruce Pine, North Carolina.

Iced Tea by the Gallon, Charleston Tea Garden

The garden's method for a full gallon, brewed hot and stretched with water and ice. Sweetener goes in as a syrup.

Ingredients

• 9 Charleston Tea Garden pyramid tea bags
• Fresh, cold tap water
• Ice
• Sugar dissolved in water, optional

Method

1. Put the tea bags in a heat-safe container.
2. Bring fresh, cold water to a rolling boil and pour it straight over the bags.
3. Steep for 6 minutes, then take out the bags.
4. Add water and ice to make a gallon. To sweeten it, dissolve the sugar in a little water first and stir the syrup in.

A gallon keeps for a day and a half. Steep Me Tea Apothecary on King Street sells a sweet tea kit for a gallon made cold: one bag of Ceylon black tea and the shop's own sugar blend, left in a pitcher of cold water in the refrigerator overnight. It comes as Northern Sweet, with 3 ounces of sugar, or Southern Sweet, with 6.

Hot Tea

A Pot of Tea, Charleston Tea Garden

The garden's rule for hot tea, for a cup or a pot.

Ingredients

• 1 rounded teaspoon of loose tea, or 1 tea bag, per cup
• Fresh, cold water

Method

1. Bring the water to a rolling boil.
2. Put the tea in the pot or cup and pour the boiling water over it. The tea always goes in first.
3. Brew for 2 to 6 minutes, to taste.

Savannah Bee Company makes Honey For Your Tea, a mild honey for stirring into a cup, and an afternoon tea gift set with a tin of English Breakfast from Oliver Pluff & Co., two honeys, a dipper and a mug. An antique Staffordshire teacup and saucer is at Courtyard Lifestyle in Savannah, and Silver Vault of Charleston has an English sterling tea caddy scoop from 1914 for measuring loose tea. For the plate beside it, the recipe library has Charleston benne wafers, and Essentially Charleston sells Charleston's Own Lemon Snaps.

Tea Punches

St. Cecilia Punch, Charleston Receipts

The St. Cecilia Society, founded in Charleston in 1766 as a concert society, gives its name to this punch of green tea, brandy, peach brandy, rum and champagne, steeped over lemons and pineapple. The recipe was published in 1950 in Charleston Receipts, the Junior League of Charleston's cookbook. It serves 80 to 90.

Ingredients

• 6 lemons
• 1 quart brandy
• 1 pineapple
• 1½ lb sugar
• 1 quart green tea
• 1 pint heavy rum
• 1 quart peach brandy
• 4 quarts champagne
• 2 quarts carbonated water

Method

1. Slice the lemons thinly, cover them with the brandy and leave them to steep for 24 hours.
2. Several hours before serving, slice the pineapple into the bowl with the lemons, then add the sugar, green tea, rum and peach brandy, and stir well.
3. When it is time to serve, add the champagne and carbonated water. The cookbook's note says to pour the punch over a block of ice and serve it very cold.

Chatham Artillery Punch, the Chatham Artillery of Savannah

The Chatham Artillery, a Savannah militia unit founded in 1786, has served its punch at functions for well over a century. This is the version the Field Artillery Journal printed in 1977: green tea steeped overnight, four spirits and a pink Catawba wine, aged in bottles for a week or two and finished with champagne. It serves 40.

Ingredients

• 1 lb green tea, steeped overnight in 2 gallons of cold water, then strained
• 3 gallons pink Catawba wine
• 1 gallon rum
• 1 gallon brandy
• 1 gallon rye whiskey
• 1 gallon gin
• 5 lb brown sugar
• 2 quarts cherries
• Juice of 3 dozen lemons
• 12 quarts champagne, to serve

Method

1. Combine everything except the champagne.
2. Pour the stock into glass bottles and let it sit for a week or two.
3. To serve, pour it over a block of ice in a large punch bowl and add the champagne.

Tea Rooms and Tea Shops

Oliver Pluff & Co., Charleston

Oliver Pluff & Co. hand-blends and packages its teas in Charleston, recreating the blends of early American tea history, including the teas thrown into Boston Harbor at the Tea Party. Its tea shop at 49 John Street, near Marion Square, runs tea classes; the cold brew London Fog in the video was made with lavender syrup left over from one on matcha. The Cinnamon Orange Spice tin holds 20 pyramid bags of black tea with orange peel and cinnamon.

Gryphon, Savannah

Gryphon serves lunch and afternoon tea under stained-glass windows and carved mahogany bookcases in the restored 1926 Scottish Rite building on Madison Square, at 337 Bull Street. SCAD runs it, and reservations are recommended.

The Cottage Cafe, Bakery & Tea Room, Bluffton

The Cottage serves afternoon tea and Southern breakfasts and lunches in a restored 1868 cottage on Calhoun Street in Old Town Bluffton.

Loose Tea Shops

Steep Me Tea Apothecary on King Street in Charleston sells its own blends of Earl Grey and chai, and ceremonial-grade matcha. The Spice & Tea Exchange sells loose teas in Savannah, Beaufort and Hilton Head.

Tea, Honey and Glassware

Cinnamon Orange Spice Tea Tin, Oliver Pluff & Co. at Essentially Charleston

Spiced black tea with orange peel and cinnamon chips, in 20 biodegradable pyramid bags, hand-blended and packed in Charleston.

$16.50 · Tea tin in the store

Afternoon Tea Gift Set, Savannah Bee Company

A tin of 20 English Breakfast tea bags from Oliver Pluff & Co., a jar of Honey for Tea, a jar of acacia honey, a large honey dipper and a Save the Bees diner mug.

$63 · Gift set in the store

Honey For Your Tea, Savannah Bee Company

A mild honey from Uruguay, sold in 3 and 12 ounce jars, for herbal tea, a strong breakfast tea or lemonade.

From $8 · Tea honey in the store

Handblown Glass Pitcher, Southern Crafted

Blown by the glass artist Hayden Wilson, each one slightly different, with a flared spout. It comes in chartreuse, amber, light aqua and dark blue.

$120 · Glass pitcher in the store

No. 12 Handblown Highball Glass, Southern Crafted

A tall, very clear glass hand-blown by Terrane in Spruce Pine, North Carolina, for anything poured over ice.

$48 · Highball glass in the store

Barker & Son Corella Teacup and Saucer, Courtyard Lifestyle

A handleless ironstone teacup and bowl saucer in black transferware, made by W. Barker & Son in Burslem, Staffordshire, in the 1850s, from Chuck Chewning's own collection.

$35 · Teacup and saucer in the store

Sterling Silver Tea Caddy Scoop, Silver Vault of Charleston

An English caddy spoon for measuring loose tea, made by J. Gloster Limited in Birmingham in 1914 and 1915, with a bright-cut engraved handle that has never been monogrammed.

$240 · Caddy scoop in the store

Charleston's Own Lemon Snaps, Essentially Charleston

Crisp lemon cookies baked from a traditional recipe with organic citrus and rolled in powdered sugar, in a 4 ounce bag.

$7.50 · Lemon snaps in the store

Recipe List

More tea, honey and glassware from local shops is in the Lowcountry Magazine store, and more recipes are in the recipe library.