The NATC visits Charleston Tea Garden

The 2025 North American Tea Conference kicked off on September 3^rd with a tour of Charleston Tea Garden (the name changed from Charleston Tea Plantation to Charledston Tea Garden in 2020 in recognition of the historical weight of the word “plantation”). The farm, owned by Bigelow Tea, is located on Wadmalaw Island, in South Carolina’s Lowcountry, and a short distance from Charleston, South Carolina (where the NATC is officially taking place). The island was first claimed for England in 1666 and today remains protected from commercial development (the only access to the island is a single bridge). While tea cannot be grown in most of the United States (except for Hawaii), Wadmalaw Island offers sandy soil, a subtropical climate and abundant rainfall, a highly suitable environment for growing Camellia sinensis.

Lipton Tea purchased the farm in the 1960s and used it primarily for research. The original tea plants were transplanted from a shuttered tea farm in nearby Summerville, SC. A third-generation certified tea taster from London, William Barclay ‘Bill’ Hall, purchased the estate in 1987 and transformed it into a commercial operation. Under Halls’ leadership, “American Classic” became the first tea made entirely from US-grown leaves. The Bigelows purchased the farm in 2003, which continued to be managed by Bill Hall until his death.

When Eunice and David Bigelow purchased the farm, their goal was to preserve the estate and celebrate American-grown tea. Covering 127 acres, over 320 varieties of Camellia sinensis have been grown (about 80% black tea and 20% green tea) on 35 acres of the estate. All plants – there are more than 300,000 plants on the farm – are from cuttings, not from seedlings.

The plants typically grow from April to October, but the weather has been so warm the last few years, the season has been stretched to the first week of December. Charleston Tea Garden uses an underground irrigation system that diverts water from the ponds around the farm to the areas that need watering. The tea is mechanically harvested using a harvester that was custom built for farm, there is no manual harvesting. The tea is processed in a factory on the estate but sent to Bigelow’s factory in Fairfield, Connecticut packaging. While other types are sold, the primary tea sold from the tea grown exclusively on the estate remains American Classic.

Production has tripled over the last few years, but the annual production is still small. However, the Charleston Tea Garden does produce enough tea to sell in the gift shop to eager visitors from the daily tea tours and in boutique stores around Charleston.

• Vanessa L Facenda, editor, Tea & Coffee Trade Journal, [email protected]