Tea time.

Charleston has one more factor why it is so cool and why you should visit the town. It is the Charleston Tea Plantation, the only tea plantation in USA.

The small trolley takes you to a tour around the plantation.  A good-looking guide / driver in his 60-s with nice voice tells passengers about how the plantation is living, how to grow a tea and etc driving around the plantation.

We stopped to take a look at the greenhouse with the young tea trees.

The seedling plants are waiting for their turn to be planted outside.

I di not know that all these green, black and white teas are made from one tea bush. Different leaves mean different types of tea.

This baby leaf on the tip of the stem uses for the production of the white tea.

The tea plant of course has its own fruits ( I even did not think about it) and they are used for the production of tea oil. The tea oil is used mostly in cosmetics.

   

According to the guide the iced tea is truly american/South Carolina invention being discovered by accident. 

It was a regular hot summer day for a seller of tea who tried to sell his hot drink to passing by people with no success. By accident he dropped some ice into the tea drink and continued to sell it to the passer-byers. It worked! The drink became popular in a moment! It's not my words, not the story made by me, the guide told it to us.