Some Living Dream of American Tea Production

This is an excerpt from one of my World Tea News articles. To find out more about my freelance writing or to ask me about writing copy for your tea business, please contact me at vee at veetea dot com. Thank you.

Tea sprouts in America

The way William Hall, partner in South Carolina’s Charleston Tea Plantation, tells it, tea plants were grown in South Carolina for decorative purposes as early as 1799. (After all, the sinensis or “Chinese” in Latin, variety is just one of many camellia plants.) A compelling course of events, involving commercial failures, and abandoned fields and research stations, eventually led to Charleston Tea Plantation, self-dubbed “America’s only tea garden.”

However, South Carolina isn’t the only state growing tea. Agricultural consultant John Vendeland said you could “very successfully” grow tea in most of the Southeast and West Coast, just like other camellias. We interviewed growers in Hawaii, Oregon, Washington and Alabama and found that many had origins not unlike Hall’s.

Vendeland got his start in tea in the 1980s while consulting on crop diversification for a big sugar company in Hawaii. The tea project didn’t take root, but now Vendeland has tea ventures in Oregon (with Rob Miller, owner of Mt. Jefferson Farms) and Washington (with Richard Sakuma, co-owner of Sakuma Brothers Farm). Decades after Vendeland left Hawaii, tea growth flourished there, following the publication of USDA horticulturalist Francis Zee’s research.

Likewise, Lipton’s tea research stations, which were set up in North America when the supply chain from China was threatened during the 1960s, later resulted directly in Charleston Tea Plantation and indirectly in Fairhope Tea Plantation in Alabama. Donnie Barrett, owner and processor of Fairhope, started his plantation with three tea plants he salvaged after Hurricane Frederick destroyed a research station.

Despite the dormant periods and even disasters in American tea’s history, sources are optimistic about its future potential for two reasons: value and location.


Soon, you’ll be able to read the remainder of this article on my portfolio site, Copy & Taste.