Charleston Tea Plantation

Island Green tea from Charleston Tea Plantation is an innocent, low-processed green tea. If you like strong, bracing tea, this will taste like grass cuttings. So steep one tea bag per tea cup for at least 5 minutes. It is fresh, clean, light, like a Stephen Foster song about the old South that drifts through the air. It comes in little cloth pouches that resemble ladies’ hosiery. We have things to learn from the Chinese and Indians before the tea will become popular. Apparently the variable climate of South Carolina makes growing the tea a challenge. The plantation is a nice tourist attraction, but I prefer their black tea to this innocent green.

First, let me state that I like peaches. If a peach is just right, I love it.

Ok, I was in South Carolina-home of the only tea garden in the States. South Carolina is also the #1 producer of peaches in the States-sorry, Georgia. So, buying this tea was pretty much a no-brainer.

Loose tea in a car and in hotel rooms was too much a hassle, so I waited until I got home to try it-what a disaster. I opened the tin and was overwhelmed by the most intense, artificial peach aroma I have ever encountered. There was no way anyone was ever drinking this stuff on any plantation. It smelled EXACTLY like a peach soda pop I had had several years ago. They really poured it on. Strong enough to be a car air freshener-and better suited, imho.

The loose leafs? I don’t recall. However, there was not a drop of peach chunks, blossoms-anything-in there. This is a PEACH producing state, please give me some peaches in your peach tea!

The tea? What tea? The liquor was overwhelmed by the peach perfume factory in my cup! The tea had no chance. After several failed attempts to find a brew time and temp that might bring out a little of the tea, I gave up and happily unloaded it on my sister.

I see that the pyramid bag version of this tea has a few decent reviews. Maybe they used some sort of different flavoring at that time. I don’t know, but I have convinced myself to give this a 1.

Bought this while on vacation in South Carolina. It’s a basic, no-frills green tea. Nothing complex, but nothing that your palate needs to adjust to either. Slightly vegetal. Unlikely to offend, but just as unlikely to induce rabid affection. The loose tea was finely chopped? The tin lasted forever. For me, more a reminder of a great vacation than a great tea, but if you want to try a tea grown in the States, it’s not bad.

Today I get to control how this is brewed. Go me! I used a healthy spoon and boiling water for 2 ½ minutes. I thought 3, Ashmanra suggested 2, and so I compromised :) The liquor is nice and dark. It smells much lighter than the dry leaf suggests. One comment on the wet leaf – this is CTC and the wet leaf does plump up nicely but not quite as much as say Twinings.

The taste is interesting. The bergamot is a tad lighter than I prefer in an EG, but tasty. It comes in late in the sip. The first taste is a very smooth bit of malt, emphasis on smooth. There is a drying aftertaste yet this doesn’t seem astringent when sipping. As the cup cools the bergamot becomes more pronounced, which appeals to me. I let the last of the cup get cold and I liked it. This would make a good iced tea. Today, the second cup is not as good as the first but still drinkable.

This is a pleasant cup. I can’t think of anything to compare it to. It is as far removed from Twinings as it is Harney & Sons. Obviously, the American aspect of it appeals to me. It breaks the rules of tradition and it still works. I started to give this a 76 as in ‘spirit of’, but in reality it is a little more interesting than that. If I could buy this locally, I would keep a small tin around for the novelty alone. I was told it was $6 for 2.3 oz (50g).

A co-worker (not the cheesecake guy) came back from vacation having taken the South Carolina tea plantation tour. He didn’t want to go – his wife pushed him into it. He said it actually turned out to be the most interesting thing they did on vacation. He wanted to share what he had learned. It was a bit of a refresher course but I pretended it was all new so as not to squash his excitement. He bought a book, and a video, with me in mind, but forgot them this morning :( but did remember a tin of this tea :)

On to the tea. There are no brewing instructions on the tin. Ingredients are tea and oil of bergamot. It smells great in the tin. The leaf is very small pieces of CTC. I am going to reserve rating this until I get control of the steep. Today I was handed a press with the leaf already brewed once. It did not appear there was enough leaf. This may also prove to be a tea that cannot be steeped twice. It has been so long since I have had a black that could only be steeped once that I almost forgot that is normal. The tea is dark enough but the taste isn’t there. The coworker who drank the first steep compared it to bagged Twinnings Earl Grey. I took a scoop of leaf out of the tin and put it in a plastic bag to try later.

I haven’t had this tea since last semester. This time I only used one teaspoon for my cup. I’m not quite sure how much I was supposed to use, so this is a guess.

The liquid is a nice amber. It smells like damp earth. It isn’t unpleasant to drink. It tastes toasty and roasty. It also tastes a little bit like wood and slightly dries out my mouth. It tastes nice, but I’m not sure if I actually care for it or not. Nothing really jumps out at me. Of course, this could be that she has had this tin of tea for a long period of time and it is still mostly full.

So, it is a nice cup of tea, but not something I would drink most of the time. It is kinda “meh”. The more I sip it, the more it doesn’t really taste like much.

My roommate bought this tea during the summer before our sophmore year of college. She brought it with her this year for us to try.

The liquid was very dark and it smelled earthy. The tea leaves smelled a little bit like damp dirt. The tea itself tasted very woody to me. It was interesting. I never really had a tea that tasted like wood. It wasn’t a bad taste. Just unexpected.

I’m leaving this unrated for now until I try another cup or two. Then I will know how I like it.

Tea bag sipdown day tea number 2! Like most of the other teas I still have in bagged form, this one was also a gift. I suspect after sipping this one, that I have become a true Earl Grey fan. Between this and the ones I’ve tried at David’s Tea, I’ve yet to find one I didn’t like. This one, however, is definitely a favourite. Smooth, light, and a lovely blend of tea and bergamot, I am definitely enjoying this cup. If all bagged teas were like this, I wouldn’t have abandoned them for my looseleaf.

Its been ages since I brewed this one, so this afternoon I had multiple cups. I love this one because while there is definitely a great black base, the peach flavour is there and strong. Peach is one of my favourite fruit flavours and I find it really hard to find done well in a tea, so this tea has a special place in my heart. It’s actually the only bagged tea I keep in stock here on a consistent basis, I love it that much!

I honestly can’t wrap my mind around the low-ish rating on this one. This is my favourite peach tea I have found in my tea tasting history. And that includes loose leaf! This is a true peach, none of those scents like bath and body works or flavours like peach tang. This, when brewed, tastes like someone has dripped juice directly from a peach into your glass. My only sadness is that this is a small brand that was bought out by Bigelow. Which, yay getting the tea to more people, but still, I wish more independent companies were just that, truly independent.

I got a box or two just a month ago from a friend of mine for my birthday. To my surprise, It was AMERICAN and AMERICAN made tea! I knew I just have to try a bag or two and found it to be quite tasty with lots of milk and sugar.

I received my box from Bigelow yesterday! I ordered this tea, the Premium Ceylon and Classic Charleson Breakfast Tea. Firstly, this tea is bagged. There is also a pyramid version as well as loose tea. As with every first-time tea, I varied the steeping time for four bags (one minute intervals on a rising scale). The aroma is pleasant but gets notably deeper and even a little harsh the longer it steeps. Three minutes seems to be the most effective steeping time (for me) as the tannin is more evident and the bitterness tolerable without being overwhelming. A pleasant tea perhaps more suited for Southern-style iced tea. Evidently, American Classic Tea has been the official White House tea since 1987 and is officially designated as the Hospitality Beverage of South Carolina.

Yawn.

I was extremely psyched this weekend when I discovered that the mom and pop peach stand down the road sells Charleston Tea Plantation teas! Now I know how Columbus felt in 1492! I had just learned about these teas during my trip to Charleston last week and I figured I’d have to wait until my next trek to that great city before I could buy more. What made my discovery even sweeter was when I found that I can buy the teas locally for about 25% less than what they cost me in Charleston! So, needless to say, I picked up an additional variety of this wonderful tea.

The Governor Gray tea, like the other selections from this company that I’ve tried so far, has a very smooth and full flavor. The bergamot presence is light, but you know it is there by the citrus undertones that exist in every sip. Perhaps it only seems light to me because I am accustomed to the supercharged double bergamot tea blend produced by Stash. In any case, this is a very nice and tasty tea. I steeped it for four minutes at 212 degrees. This seemed to result in a hint of bitterness, but nothing to detract from my pleasure in drinking this tea. Next time I will lighten up and cut a minute off of the steeping time.

UPDATE: I did diminish the steeping time to three minutes to see if the slight bitterness that I experienced at four minutes would disappear. The results are in. To quote Goldilocks, “This one is just right!”

This is another one of the Charleston Tea Plantation loose leaf teas that I picked up while I was in Charleston, South Carolina, last week. Although I like several strong cups of potent black tea in the morning to get my remaining brain cells chugging, I decided to give this green tea a try today. I am so glad I did! I set the Breville One-Touch Tea Maker for medium-strength green tea, with a brewing time of three minutes at 175 degrees. The flavor of this tea is smooth as silk. The taste of mint is cool and refreshing without overpowering the light but steady essence of the tea. Bitterness is not part of this tea’s vocabulary, even 40 minutes after brewing. I drank three cups this morning and still yearned for more!

Recently, I was given some American Classic Tea. Currently this is the only tea grown in the continental United States. The tea confusingly says Loose Leaf Tea in a Pyramid Bag, which is a direct contradiction. In many ways this is a traditional red tea, dark color, single infusion, and elements of bright citrus, perhaps too bright, as I’m about to explain; with a full mouthfeel. What makes this tea unusual, and I am unsure if this is because of the tea itself or the packaging that it arrives in, is a strange sour/sweet metallic taste in the forefront of the flavor profile. While not immediately bad tasting, it is very strange compared with, well any other tea I’ve tasted, as if the tea were almost completely devoid of tannins.

How I brewed it:

In terms of brewing trials, I brewed the tea two ways, once in a mug, for 3 minutes, and a second time, where I removed the tea from it’s bag, and brewed it in a gaiwan (lidded bowl) for roughly one minute. Because I got the strange metallic flavor in the first trial, I decided to try making in the gaiwan, sans bag, to see if that removed any of the metallic brightness, which it did not.

Overall, due to the almost unpleasant brightness, I’m going to give the tea a fairly low rating, however it did fulfill the other criteria of being a basic red tea, and by no means is it totally undrinkable, however, there are many, many other better bagged teas, with less ostentatious and incorrect marketing, that are far cheaper and less pretentious.

From additional readings, it seems that it really is primarily used to make iced tea, and sweet tea at that, where one really only uses tea as a carrier for syrup, and the ultra-brightness would likely work quite well.

Roundup info:

Origin: Con. US

(Indian + Chinese crossbreed?)

Type: Red (Black)

Packaging: Pyramid Bag, Foil Packet

Plantation/Company: Charleston Tea Plantation, owned by Bigelow

Steeping Info:

Time 2-4 minutes

Temperature: 205-210 F

Having been disappointed with most peach flavored teas, I was pleasantly surprised by this. I picked up one sachet in a gift store in a tourist trap, remembering a friend mentioning liking the Charleston teas. This was a good buy and I’ll definitely be buying more. Very strong peach smell and flavor as well. Nice honest, basic black tea as the base.

I like light-flavored teas and this is my favorite peach tea of all time. I like the delicacy and subtlety of the peach flavor. The peach doesn’t overwhelm the tea and vice versa. I also love the fact that I am supporting a US product.

This tea is a definite favorite of mine. I like how the raspberry flavor is very much present and distinct without overwhelming the tea itself. I find that this tea requires no sweetening whatsoever. I grew up going to my grandparents’ summer home on an island very near Wadmalaw, so the Charleston Tea Plantation teas are really something special to me. I will definitely be buying more.

This is my absolute favorite Earl Gray. Growing up, I spent my summers on an island very near Wadmalaw, so I jumped at the chance to visit the tea plantation and try their teas. My mother and I left with arm loads of boxes in just about every flavor, but I think this and the Rockville Raspberry are my favorites, followed by the peach. You can really taste the care they put into making these teas.

I really like this! It’s really refreshing.

The last bag from the Charleston Tea Plantation. This is such a nice cup of tea. It tastes clean and fresh. It is a very plain tea, so I bet it would be good in almost any tea preparation. I would totally get some of this tea as a safe tea to carry around in areas where you can’t control the water temperature very well. Like a college where you have to pick between a communal tea kettle or the boiled water that is in the cafeteria.

I found the last two teabags from the Charleston Tea Plantation that my friend gave me about a year ago. I thought I had finished them already, so I was pleasantly surprised to find them.

At first, I didn’t think I would like the raspberry. Sure, I like how they taste and it smelled nice, but I remembered the Peach Tea from the plantation. I made it hot and plain. I was a little underwhelmed at first sip. It was light, but it didn’t taste bad. I could barely taste the fruit. It didn’t have the “wow, this is fruity” punch that I was expecting. By the time I reached the end of the cup, I had decided that this would be a good tea to have for tea parties with people you like. A social tea.

I think that the raspberry would have been brought out more with a little honey. I could see this being an interesting iced tea too. But, I don’t think I would drink it again.

Fairly standard – yet a flatter tasting – green – in a bag. Not bad yet not overly memorable either.

Another gift from a friend of mine…so grateful!
I was thinking this one was a green flavored tea but when I opened up the bag and started steeping it I noticed it was black flavored and highly aromatic! The aroma and taste are both lovely! I like most peach flavored teas but this is really good especially for a bagged tea! You have to REALLY like peach tho…lucky for me…I do! :)

YUM!