FEATURE - Lone US Tea Farm Infused with Big Dreams
Date: 07-Mar-06
Country: USA
Author: Harriet McLeod
And if all goes as planned, the Charleston Tea Plantation will soon expand and an American tea now available only locally will go national.
The plantation, about 20 miles southeast of Charleston, covers 127 acres, 30 of which are planted in row after row of bright green tea bushes.
"In the world of tea, this is tiny," said David Bigelow, co-chairman of family-managed specialty tea maker R.C. Bigelow Inc., which bought the plantation for $1.28 million at a court auction in 2003.
"That doesn't alter the fact that for Americans coming to see it, it's 'Wow, look at all these beautiful tea plants!' It's a phenomenal facility and really the only one of its kind in North America," he said.
Bigelow plans to double the size of the farm in five years - the time it takes for tea plants to mature.
Plantation manager Bill Hall, a third-generation tea taster, said current sales are limited to local supermarkets and mail order.
"Bigelow could get it in every supermarket in America, but the problem is we have to have enough to provide," Hall said. "We don't want to get into a situation where the supermarkets are saying send us more tea and we say we haven't got it."
Grown in hot, humid climates in 34 countries, tea is one of the world's largest agricultural products and the second-most consumed beverage on the planet, after water, with production in 2004 of a record 3.2 million tons.
The United States bought 99,000 tons of tea in 2004, the Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations reported. Britain, with a population one-fifth that of the US, imports more than 140,000 tons of tea annually, while Ireland claims the highest per capita consumption at five cups of tea per day.
The tea plant, camellia sinensis, was introduced to the United States in the late 1790s by French explorer and botanist Andre Michaux, who planted it as an ornamental shrub near Charleston at Middleton Barony, now known as Middleton Place Plantation.
Two sizable commercial plantings in South Carolina failed in the 19th century before wealthy philanthropist Charles Shepard established Pinehurst Tea Plantation in 1888 in Summerville, near Charleston.
His oolong tea took first prize at the 1904 St. Louis World's Fair, an exposition that also popularized iced tea - the way 85 percent of Americans prefer to drink it today.
After Shepard's death in 1915, the plantation was abandoned until 1960, when the Thomas J. Lipton Co. bought it, transplanted the tea bushes to Wadmalaw Island and ran it as a research station.
In 1987, Bill Hall and horticulturalist Mack Fleming bought the farm, and together began to produce and market American Classic Tea, a black tea brand Bigelow plans to continue.
"Traditionally, around the world, tea is planted on hillsides," said Hall. "We're flat as a pancake, but we have sandy soil and ditches next to each field so the water drains away. The plants have been here in South Carolina for over 100 years and they're happy here."
Harvest season is mid-April through October, said Hall, a Canadian whose father and grandfather were also tea tasters, and the harvest is conducted by a machine that farm workers call The Green Giant.
"Most of the tea around the world is harvested by hand," he said. "A tea-picker in India or Sri Lanka, their average salary could be about $5 a week. We couldn't find anyone in South Carolina who would do that."
American Classic is blended from the 320 varieties of camellia sinensis on the plantation, said Hall. And, even when all the acreage is planted, it will be a specialty tea, and not available in mass quantities.
The owners are committed to taking American Classic national, Hall said, but "to supply America with tea, we would need about five islands the size of Wadmalaw completely covered side to side, end to end with tea."
Bigelow said there had been a sea change in people's taste in tea. Black tea now amounts to less
