Philadelphia, Pennsylvania
February 28, 2023
Ben Franklin was also the founding father of Philadelphia’s water infrastructure. He just had to die first.
The Tea Punches of the Low Country
CHARLESTON, SC—The Low Country stretches down the southern coast of South Carolina, out across the many islands, and into Northern Coastal Georgia. The region is united by a shared geography, but also a common cuisine. Dishes like frogmore stew (the boiled mix of shrimp, potatoes, sausage, and corn known to locals as Low Country Boil,) Hoppin’ John (Carolina rice and field peas,) and shrimp and grits bring cohesion to palettes along the coast. More than food, though, the Low Country is awash with similar beverages. Tea punches, for hundreds of years, have been a common tipple in South Carolina and Georgia.
Long before there was sweet tea, Southerners from Charleston to Savannah were mixing black and green tea with rum, brandy, whiskey, wine, fruits, and sugars. So ingrained is the tradition of the Low Country Tea Punch, that it predates the birth of the United States all together. These tea punches were born out of both military camaraderie and aristocratic society and came to represent Southern hospitality and refinement. Now, the punches have a deep legacy and some can be enjoyed in the Low Country’s finest cocktail bars.
The Martial Mixers
In both Charleston, South Carolina and Savannah, Georgia, early military groups became known for making spirituous punches that included tea. It seems the archetype for all of the Low Country Tea Punches came from Savannah in the storied Chatham Artillery Punch.
The Chatham Artillery stood as the oldest military organization on record in Georgia. They were mustered in Savannah for the Revolutionary War and greeted George Washington in 1791, where the president gave the 13th and last toast. Perhaps His Excellency gave his toast with the notoriously strong punch in his glass.
Chatham Artillery Punch emerged around the turn of the 19th century. The commonly given recipe for the tea punch includes wine, rum, whiskey, brandy, gin, Benedictine, and a case of champagne, in addition to the flavorings of tea, sugar, and fruit. Thanks to its generous mixing of liquors, some have dubbed it the mixological predecessor of the Long Island Iced Tea.
While we cannot say that George Washington drank the Chatham Artillery Punch, other important men would come face to face with the stuff. One example is that of the hangover of President Chester A Arthur. Public memory recalled, “President Arthur after a Savannah banquet also was laid up for three days, but the old Chatham Artillery would never admit that a single glass of the punch was as powerful as all that.” (The Sun, 05 Nov. 1909)
In 1909, heavy-weight William Howard Taft was to visit Georgia. One headline framed it, “Famous Artillery Concoction to be Tried on President [Taft] while in Georgia.” The article continued, “Presidents, statesmen, governors and naval officers have attacked Artillery Punch and all have been worsted. It is the regular John L Sullivan of drinks,” referring to the champion boxer out of Boston. (The San Francisco Call, 25 Oct. 1909) Taft, however, was a tee-totaler, and Georgia was a dry state at the time. He did not get in the ring with the punch.
Today, the historically-minded drinker can visit Savoy Society in Savannah where they serve a modern take on the city’s Artillery Punch. They have served the punch since 2019, but instead of normal black tea, the bar uses the native caffeinated leaf of the yaupon holly plant. The punch is served in a champagne flute with tiny black specs of yaupon holly bobbing up and down as passengers on wild champagne bubbles. The sweet rum and spicy whiskey come together beneath a dark herbal tone and the glue of citrus. Yes, it is strong–but far more complex than a Long Island Iced Tea.
To the north, one of Charleston’s famous tea punches also spawned from a military unit, the Charleston Light Dragoons. An 1888 newspaper explains the history of the group, “The ‘Charleston Horse Guards’ were in existence in 1733, and the Charleston Horse Guards of 1733 were the ancestors of the Charleston Light Dragoons of 1861-65.” (The Morning News, 25 Sept 1888)
The 1930 text, 200 Years of Charleston Cooking, states that the Dragoon punch recipe predates the Civil War when it was used to fete cotton buyers visiting the port city of Charleston from France, England, and North Carolina. While it does not seem to be the first Tea Punch in Charleston, it was the city’s most popular punch during the 1800s and much of the 1900s.
Similar to the Artillery Punch of Savannah, the Dragoon Punch had brandy, rum, sugar, and black tea as well as some fruit. But, instead of dumping in a case of champagne, the Charlestonian defenders chose carbonated water for a more sober effervescence.
The Bar at Husk on Queen Street in Downtown Charleston serves up a modern rendition of the Dragoon’s Punch. The busy tourist bar fills up right at opening, but the drink can be enjoyed on the patio outside. It is tea colored with an ombre gradient and a lemon twist. The punch is prepared with a pre-made mix to infuse the brandy with tea. It tastes strongly of peach from the brandy with a cool bitterness from black tea. It is not dissimilar from sweet peach tea, with virtually no taste of alcohol.
The Chatham Artillery may not predate the Dragoons, but Savannah’s Punch came first. It may be a form of regional mimicry that the soldiers of Charleston came up with a tea punch recipe where their southern neighbors already had. But the drinker of Artillery Punch must be a bit more brave. If the Charleston Light Dragoons had ever come face to face with the Chatham Artillery, they may have found their opponents too soused to fight.
Steeped in Society
Aside from the highly acclaimed recipes that came out of the ranks of the Low Country’s fierce defenders, tea punches appeared behind closed doors in elite and aristocratic organizations in the South. Among these secretive sauces were St. Cecilia Punch, Charleston Club Punch, Otranto Club Punch, and Cotillion Club Punch. The common denominator for each of these is that they include tea–some black, some green.
A review of South Carolina’s civilian (if old Southern aristocracy can be considered such) tea punches runs into some problems of historical precedence. That is, it is hard to tell exactly which one came first.
For starters, Charleston Receipts, collected by The Junior League of Charleston in 1950, gives a recipe for Regent’s Punch that they allege came out of Lewisfield Plantation of Berkeley County, South Carolina, in 1783. If this date is to be believed, Regent’s Punch would even predate Chatham Artillery Punch. This recipe contained rock candy, Hot Hyson (green) tea, champagne, sherry, brandy, and lemon. The inclusion of Hyson tea, popular in the pre-Revolutionary years, lends credence to the 18th century date.
Muddying the picture, there is St. Cecilia Punch. The St. Cecilia Society was founded as early as 1737, but the recipe does not seem to have escaped the tight-lipped members of the society until one of the Board Managers of the Society divulged the brandy, pineapple, sugar, tea, rum, brandy, champagne, and carbonated water recipe to Helen Woodward around 1930.
The St. Cecilia Society was originally established as a musical society that gave concerts, but, over the centuries, evolved into a high-society group that threw lavish and traditional balls in the Hibernian Hall. The annual ball would become Charleston’s most important social event and members of the society can often trace their lineage back to the founding families of the city.
The society has long been noted for avoiding any and all publicity, but in 1964, when a New York Times writer attended their yearly ball, the famous St. Cecelia Punch seemed to be missing. The article notes, “Despite the rules—no cutting‐in, no smoking on the dance floor and no drinking except sherry or coffee‐flavored punch — everyone seemed to be having a good time.”
Regardless of the 1930 date of public recipe divulgence, it seems likely that the old society had used the recipe for a long time, considering other prominent Charleston clubs had their own tea punches during the 19th century.
Charleston Receipts gives a recipe for Charleston Club Punch “As mixed by Mr. Edward H. Sparkmen c. 1884.” It is a concoction of whiskey, rum, curacao, brandy, water, green tea, sugar, lemon juice, and carbonated water. There is also Otranto Club Punch, which was extant around the 1930s, and included sugar, green tea, lemons, carbonated water, brandy, rum, and whiskey. Finally, there is the Cotillion Club Punch, a cocktail of gunpowder tea, cherries, lemons, carbonated water, whiskey, rum, sugar, and Hays’ Fruit Juice. The inclusion of Hays’ Five Fruit Juice Syrup would put this recipe after the brand’s 1900 founding in Portland, Maine.
St. Cecilia’s Society, as the paragon of Charleston aristocracy, must have set the tone for the other clubs and societies that followed. Because they had an identifying tea punch, others must have followed suit. These drinks and recipes became part of a club’s identity–aspirational that they were as high society as they wanted to be.
A Low Country Culture
Today, punches can still be found in civil society spaces around the Low Country. The Timrod Library of Summerville keeps large, ornate punch bowls for events and serves up a more 1960s punch of canned orange, pineapple, and apple juice mixed with frozen lemonade and ginger ale. Some folks in Savannah celebrate the city’s raucous St. Patrick’s Day parade with a communal punch.
It is a novelty that the tea punch became synonymous with proudly defined communities in both Charleston and Savannah, whether in military or civilian settings. While tea punches are not exclusively from the Low Country, the region has over 200 years of heritage mixing liquors with tea amongst friends.
Read some of the Tea Punch Recipes below:
Charleston Light Dragoons’ Punch
4 quarts brandy
4 quarts black tea
1 quart jamaican rum
1 quart carbonated water
4 cups granulated sugar
1 cup peach brandy
Juice of 24 lemons
Peels of 6 lemons cut into shivers.
St. Cecelia Punch
6 lemons
1 quart brandy
1 pineapple
1.5 pounds sugar
1 quart green tea
1 pint heavy rum
1 quart peach brandy
4 quarts champagne
2 quarts carbonated water
Chatham Artillery Punch
1.5 gallons strong tea
1.5 gallons catawba wine
0.5 gallons St. Croix rum
1.5 quarts rye whiskey
1 quart brandy
1 quart gordon gin
0.5 pint benedictine
2.5 pounds brown sugar
1 bottle maraschino cherries
Juice from 18 oranges
Juice from 18 lemons
Case of champagne
All as presented in The Food, Folklore, and Art of Lowcountry Cooking
Charleston Club Punch
6 quarts whiskey
3 ½ gills Jamaica Rum
2 gills Curacao cordial
1 ⅓ gills peach brandy
3 quarts water
1 ½ gills green tea leaves
2 tablespoons white sugar
6 tablespoons strained lemon juice
6 bottles sparkling water
(1 ½ gills Madeira or Tokay wine, if desired.)
Otranto Club Punch
1 pound loaf sugar
1 quart strong green tea
Juice of 12 lemons, strained Apollinaris water
1 pint peach brandy
1 quart Jamaica rum
2 quarts brandy or rye whiskey.
Cotillion Club Punch
¼ lb gunpowder tea (makes 5 quarts)
1 quart cherries
2 dozen lemons (juice)
1 pint Hays’ Fruit Juice
12 quarts sparkling water
6 or 8 quarts rye whiskey
½ pint rum
Regent’s Punch
¼ pound rock candy
Hot Hyson (green) tea
1 bottle champagne
½ bottle sherry
1 tumbler brandy
All from Charleston Receipts Collected by The Junior League of Charleston
Sources Cited:
Dabney, Joseph E. The Food, Folklore, and Art of Lowcountry Cooking. Cumberland House, Naperville IL, 2010.
Hryharrow, Dee and Hoogenboom, Isabel M. The Beaufort Cook Book: A Treasury of Carolina Recipes. Beaufort Book Shop Inc, Beaufort, SC, 1965.
Rhett, Blanche S. 200 Years of Charleston Cooking: Recipes Gathered by Blanche S. Rhett, Edited by Lettie Gay. Random House, New York, 1930.
The Junior League of Charleston. Charleston Receipts. Walker Evans & Cogswell Co., 1950, Charleston, SC.
The morning news. [volume] (Savannah, Ga.), 25 Sept. 1888. Chronicling America: Historic American Newspapers. Lib. of Congress. <https://chroniclingamerica.loc.gov/lccn/sn86063034/1888-09-25/ed-1/seq-2/>
The San Francisco call. [volume] (San Francisco [Calif.]), 25 Oct. 1909. Chronicling America: Historic American Newspapers. Lib. of Congress. <https://chroniclingamerica.loc.gov/lccn/sn85066387/1909-10-25/ed-1/seq-1/>
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