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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,...

There is plenty of information about the holiday, so here is just a quick overview of the widely celebrated rituals and fun

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...

As the United States prepares to honor its Veterans this November 11, it is interesting to note the role of tea and coffee as traditional staples for troops both stateside...

"If other eyes grow dull and other hands slack, and other hearts cold in the solemn trust, ours shall keep it well as long as the light and warmth of...

  Estimated to be formed around 350 A.D., tea bricks have become a part of Chinese and European culture throughout the ages. Before tea bricks where introduced to Europe, tea...

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...