November 17, 2012 John’s Island, South Carolina

We toured the sights today on the Island.

Angel Oak, is the largest live oak east of the Mississippi. It is 65 feet tall and its circumference is 25.5 feet. It is named after the previous owners of the land, Martha and Justin Angel. It has a park around it now. It is a beautiful tree.

St John’s Parish was built in 1734. Some of the people in the cemetery were born in the 1700’s.

Our next stop was Wadmalaw Island, The Charleston Tea Planation. The only one in the USA. The tea factory where they process the tea was done for the season. They trim the new growth of the top of the plants every two weeks all summer and process it in this factory. Black tea, oolong tea and green tea are all  made from the same plant. Depends on the processing time. Green tea the shortest and black the longest. They can spray flavors like peach or raspberry  oils  to make flavored teas.

Seen in the gift shop- a definition of ‘The South’ and what we all need, tea balls under rubber ducks that you can float your tea leaves in your cup.

John at the tea tasting. The tea fields with the specially made harvester they call the green giant. It trims just the top off the rows. The tea grows up enough to be trimmed every 20 days, so there are 20 fields and they do one  a day, then start over.

The computerized tea green house. They take cuttings from their plants and propagate new ones and they are making more fields. The plant is the Chinese camellia. It is similar to the domestic camellias, but it has caffeine in the leaves. A Chinese camellia bloom and the founder of the tea plantation, William Barclay Hall. He is a certified tea taster, as was his father and grand father. You have to go to 4 years of school to learn how to grow, care for and taste tea to be certified. He is now a partner with Bigalow tea company.

 

After the tea we went to Live oak Vineyard. They make their wines from the native muscadine grapes. Here are the vines and the wine tasting.

They also have Firefly distillery on their property. They make vodka, rum and liqueurs. Most are flavored with tea from the tea plantation. The Sweet tea vodka is just like sweet ice tea. It was yummy. We didn’t buy any because John thought it would be too dangerous, it goes down much to easy. A country store in South Carolina.