Sweet Summerville Holiday Gift Guide
December 10, 2020
Make your holidays extra sweet with a gift from The Birthplace of Sweet Tea.
Sweet Summerville Holiday Gift Guide
Make your holidays extra sweet with a gift from The Birthplace of Sweet Tea.
We have rounded up 6 local Sweet Tea Products that will be sure to charm your friends and family.
1-
Cotton Down South
- Sweet Tea & Jesus Candle
2- Simple Treasures
-
Sweet Tea Ganache Candies
3- Main Street Reads
-
Baptised in Sweet Tea
4- Pine and Petal
- Sweet Tea Sticker
5- Four Green Fields
- Tea Hand Cream
6- Hanebrink Jewelers
- Tea Leaf Pendant
#1 Cotton Down South - Hand poured, the Sweet Tea & Jesus candle is a signature scent of Cotton Down South. This scent is available in multiple products. The combination of Jasmine, Bergamot, Mandarin, Lemon, Thyme, Ginger, Sandalwood, Nutmeg, and Patchouli will charm your family and friends.
#2 Simple Treasures – Summerville’s Sweet Shop has taken our signature sweet tea to a new wonderful level. The Sweet Tea Ganache Chocolates are the sweetest gift for everyone on your list.
#3 Main Street Reads – Every small town needs a family-owned book shop and a copy of Baptized in Sweet Tea. This book celebrates life in the South and soothes its readers like Iced tea on a Summerville porch.
#4 Pine and Petal –Azalea Magazine was the first to connect the history of Summerville as the Birthplace of Sweet Tea and since has created Pine and Petal, a shop for sweet tea items. You can order online or stop into Public Works to buy direct.
#5 Hanebrink Jewelers - The tea plant was first brought to Summerville in the late 1700’s by the French Botanist, Andre Micheaux, and thus began our history of the Birthplace of Sweet Tea.
Through a partnership with Charleston Tea Plantation, the Tea Leaf Pendant is an authentic replication. Each piece has been blessed by a Proper Southern Lady and will charm the gals with its rich history.
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Sweet tea is more than just a refreshing beverage - it's a symbol of Southern hospitality and tradition. For many years, this iconic drink has been a staple of Southern cuisine, and nowhere is its history more celebrated than in Summerville, South Carolina, the Birthplace of Sweet Tea. The History of Tea Tea has a rich history in America, with its roots dating back to the late 1700s when French explorer and botanist Andre Michaux first planted tea at Middleton Place Plantation, which is in modern-day Summerville. Beginning in 1880, despite two failed attempts to grow tea in South Carolina, the federal government became interested in this new tea experiment. It established an experimental tea farm at the former Newington Plantation, leasing 200 acres from Henry Middleton. In 1888, Dr. Charles Shepard, a philanthropist and professor at the Medical College of SC acquired 600 acres of the Newington Plantation property. He established the Pinehurst Tea Plantation using plants from the government’s farm. He cultivated about 100 acres, built a factory, and began to sell his tea commercially, becoming the first successful commercial tea farm operation in the United States. After Dr. Shepard's passing in 1915, his plantation became deserted and remained so for over four decades until the Lipton Company purchased it in 1960. They salvaged the remaining plants from Pinehurst and utilized them to open a research facility spanning 127 acres on Wadmalaw Island. In 1987, an expert third-generation tea taster trained in London named William B. Hall, purchased the tea farm to establish what is now the Charleston Tea Garden. In 2003, Bigelow Tea Co. purchased the farm and partnered with Hall. The tea from the Charleston Tea Garden, all derivatives of Dr. Shepard's Camellia sinensis, is still growing there today and has earned the honor of the Official White House Tea and the Official Hospitality Beverage of South Carolina. You can also see specimens of the tea plants from the Pinehurst Tea Gardens in the garden of the Summerville Museum .
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