Blog

Are you ready to jingle all the way through Charleston's holiday markets? Get your festive spirit on and join the fun as we explore the best spots to shop, eat,...

Dear Oliver, December is an important month in the history of tea in the “New World” as earlyEuropeans dubbed the lands across the Atlantic. These early settlers were relianton European...

Charleston, 843-722-3842, www.birlant.com.  As far back as 1556, when an unknown European noted that drinking chocolate was the “most wholesome and substantial of any food or beverage in the world,...

    The origin of “who first put leaf to water” is completely unknown to culinary historians. Before the mid-nineteenth century, botanists failed to decipher tea’s formula; however, many tales...

  The South Carolina Gazette reported on the dramatic confrontation between the colonists and British sea captain Samuel Ball, an agent of the British East India Company.Full transcript of the...

The “Bay is a more dangerous Navigation than the open Sea,” wrote the Charles-Town native Henry Laurens on January 21, 1774 in a letter to his son John, of the...

The revenue acts enacted by the British government on the American colonies, namely the Townshend Acts of 1767, did not affect the merchants of Charles-Town equally. Taxes were felt more...

  By the 1770’s, tea trading was a vital industry in colonial America. Parliament’s Townshend Duties tax began to put a strain on the colonists’ use of tea as a...

  On a colonial American tea table, one would find an assortment of the following tea accoutrements—the teapot, tea cosy, tea urn, tea samovar, tea kettle, tea caddies, tea spoons,...

Beginning in the 1690’s, preparing, serving, and drinking tea was a ceremonial act that was woven into the daily life of the more wealthy colonists. For those who could afford...