The story of Gentleman Jake’s Charleston Gold Rice

Terroir is not just for wine

Tasting the rice that we produced at White House Plantation in Georgetown, SC for the first time, I thought immediately of wine. That might seem strange, so let me explain.

The most important aspect of a wine’s quality is its terroir. Terroir is defined as the complete natural environment in which a wine is produced, including factors such as the soil, topography, and climate, and the characteristic taste and flavor imparted to a wine by the environment in which it is produced.

What could this possibly have to do with rice grown in South Carolina’s old tidal rice fields? Going back to that first taste, I knew that this soil, this terroir, was unique. And fabulous. The nuttiness, the aromas, the taste was sublime and unlike anything we had ever had before.

The reborn heirloom rice varieties are amazing. But when planted in the right soil, they go to another level entirely.

White House Plantation is the last piece of high ground on the Pee Dee river before it joins the Black River flowing towards Winyah Bay. The rice fields border both the Pee Dee and the Black. It is a small property of only 300 acres, of which 240 are rice fields. The property dates to 1735, which means that this is the fourth century that rice has been grown here.

One of the owners of the property was Joel Poinsett, Secretary of War under Martin Van Buren. He was a renowned naturalist for whom the poinsettia was named.

A later owner was John Julius Pringle, who married the daughter of Governor Robert Allston, Elizabeth. Mr. Pringle only lived a few years after their marriage, and Elizabeth Allston Pringle carried on maintaining White House and her family’s property Chicora Wood. Her story as a widow in the period after the Civil War is chronicled in her book A Woman Rice Planter (USC Press). For an historical context, in real life she was born the same year as the fictional Scarlett O’Hara, 1845. She was able to continue to grow rice during the difficult period of Reconstruction until the early 1900s.

Several years of hurricanes around the start of the 1900s damaged the dikes to an extent she could not afford to repair them. At age 75, in 1920, she sold White House to a group of duck hunters and it has been just that, a duck hunting property, ever since.

When we purchased White House Plantation in 2011, we started thinking of the possibilities of again growing the crop that made South Carolina famous. In collaboration with Greg and Betsy Johnsman of Geechie Boy Mill we have been able to realize this dream. Where the rice is stored a wonderful scent fills the room. This only intensifies when it is cooking. That aroma, and then the first taste was when we were sure that terroir is not just for wine.

Don and Hayden Quattlebaum – Georgetown, SC