It’s called “the table wine of the South.” Sweet iced tea: Southerners rave about it. Rockers rhapsodize on it. And restaurants all over Dixie serve it up in big plastic pitchers.
Virtually unavailable outside the South, sweet iced tea is nothing more than iced tea that has been brewed with sugar or a sugar syrup so that it is, for lack of a better word, sweet. How sweet? North Carolina writer Fred Thompson says, “The rule of thumb is that it has to make your teeth hurt.”
This undeniable super-sweetness, which most Northerners would find cloying, is exactly what inflames the passions of those raised on sweet iced tea.
“It’s the nectar of the gods,” says Margo McCoy, a Charlotte, N.C., native now living in Winnetka. “It’s so good and soothing, but people up here just don’t get it.”
Recent Southern transplant Liebe Wesley agrees. “I don’t drink dark sodas, so when I go into a restaurant and they don’t have sweet tea … . Well, it’s like a nightmare.”
With all due respect to Cravin’ Melon, the South Carolina rock band that sang, “On the eighth day, God made sweet tea,” the origins of the drink are less clear. Even though hot tea has been enjoyed for thousands of years, iced tea was never popular–or practical–until electricity provided the means to make and store ice. Sweet iced tea is even younger.
The birthplace of iced tea is commonly (if inaccurately) believed to be St. Louis. The story goes that during the 1904 World’s Fair, tea merchant Richard Blechynden found that the scorching St. Louis summer drove fairgoers straight past his hot beverage booth. The enterprising Blechynden grabbed some ice, cooled down his tea, and handed out samples. Sweltering passersby gratefully downed the newly invented, refreshing drink, and iced tea was born.
Although this provides a handy mythology, and although it may very well be that the heat wave of 1904 helped popularize iced tea, the fact is that people were drinking it at least as early as the late 19th Century.
Agricultural historian Lyndon Irwin of Southwest Missouri State University in Springfield cites a story in the Sept. 28, 1890, edition of the Nevada (Mo.) Noticer about a reunion of 15,000 Confederate soldiers. The article lists the huge amount of food served, including 880 gallons of iced tea.
“There can be no doubt that iced tea was not `invented’ at the St. Louis World’s Fair,” Irwin says. He goes on to point out that the very fact that the article mentions “iced tea” with no explanation indicates that people must have known what it was before 1890.
It seems unlikely that those early brews were sweetened. Thompson, author of “Iced Tea” (Harvard Common Press, $10.95), believes that the tradition of sweet tea originated in barbecue houses and fish camps.
“I’ve talked to a lot of people who run barbecue restaurants, and they’ve said that back in the middle of the 20th Century, sugar was cheaper than tea, so they started adding it to the tea in order to stretch it.”
Sweet tea soon became the drink of choice all over the South, and its brewing became an art. Marty Kushner, consultant to the Tea Council and past president of the Southern Tea Co. (now owned by Tetley), reports, “There are restaurants all over the South that pride themselves, not on their steak, but on the preparation of their tea. It’s like a mystique.”
North Carolinian Frank Allston and his Virginia-born wife, Barbara, drink iced tea 365 days a year. Living in Naperville for more than 30 years, Allston says, “My proudest accomplishment was teaching local restaurants how to brew tea. When we first got here, they’d use a mix or powdered tea in a glass, or some would make sun tea, but it’s just not the same.”
Unlike many Southerners, though, the Allstons prefer to brew their tea unsweetened and then stir sugar into the individual glass. “I just don’t like sweet iced tea, and neither does Barbara,” Allston says. “Of course, we don’t like NASCAR either.”
In America, the land of freedom of choice, it makes a certain amount of sense to follow the Allstons’ method of preparing the tea plain and then allowing each person to sweeten it to his or her own liking.
The problem is that sugar doesn’t readily dissolve in a cold liquid. Instead, like the interior of a snow globe, it cascades to the bottom of the glass where it sits undissolved. The tea near the top is not sweetened at all while the last few sips are little more than sugary slush.
For a perfect glass of tea that is uniformly sweet, then, the only thing to do is to sweeten it during the brewing process. Sweet tea proponents appear to fall into two distinct camps: the sugar camp and the simple syrup camp, both of which brew their tea with tea bags. McCoy makes her tea with a simple syrup, dissolving a cup of sugar into two cups of water before adding it to four cups of brewed, extra-strong tea.
“I brought a pitcher of it to a party the other night, and the Yankees loved it. I just didn’t tell them how much sugar was in it.”
Thompson advocates simply brewing extra-strong tea, adding sugar, then diluting it with water. “The key is in the steeping,” he says. “Whereas the box says to steep for only three to five minutes, you have to steep it for 12 to 15 minutes. And don’t press the tea out of the bags when you pull them out; it adds a tannic bitterness.”
Both methods make delicious Southern style tea, and in a city where it’s hard to come by, it’s a welcome addition to the refrigerator.
“People die for iced tea in the South,” says Kushner. “To go into a restaurant and have them not have it, it’s like they’re taking their gloves off and slapping you in the face.”
Sweet home, Chicago? No.
Traditional Southern-style sweet iced tea is almost nonexistent in Chicago. In a survey of about 30 establishments we found only two that serve it, and, although it is often very good, it’s not the startlingly sweet variety the accompanying recipes produce. Dixie Kitchen & Bait Shop, 825 Church St., Evanston; 847-733-9030
Wishbone (two locations): 1001 W. Washington Blvd., 312-850-2663; and 3300 N. Lincoln Ave., 773-549-2663
Brother Joey’s Kitchen, 3660 N. Clark St., 773-755-4444
— J.D.
Simple syrup iced tea
Preparation time: 15 minutes
Yield: 4 servings
This is how Margo McCoy of Winnetka prepares her Southern-style iced tea.
5 cups water
1/2 cup sugar
6 to 7 tea bags
1. Heat water to boiling. For the simple syrup, pour 1 cup of water into glass measure; stir in sugar until it dissolves. Set aside.
2. Pour remaining water into tea pot or glass measure with tea bags; steep 5 minutes, then remove the bags.
3. Stir syrup into the tea. Pour tea into 4 ice-filled glasses.
Nutrition information per serving:
95 calories, 0% calories from fat, 0 g fat, 0 g saturated fat, 0 mg cholesterol, 9 mg sodium, 25 g carbohydrate, 0 g protein, 0 g fiber
Southern-style iced tea
Preparation time: 15 minutes
Steeping time: 12 minutes
Yield: 8 servings
Adapted from “Iced Tea,” by Fred Thompson. Some people believe the baking soda removes some of the tannic bitterness, but Thompson thinks it may just be an old cooks’ tale.
6 tea bags
1/8 teaspoon baking soda, optional
2 cups boiling water
6 cups cold water
1 to 1 1/2 cups sugar
1. Place tea bags and baking soda in a glass measure or a tea pot. Pour boiling water over the bags. Cover; let steep 12-15 minutes.
2. Remove the tea bags from the tea without squeezing them. Stir in sugar until it dissolves. Combine the tea concentrate with the cold water in a 2-quart pitcher. Pour into ice-filled glasses.
Nutrition information per serving:
95 calories, 0% calories from fat, 0 g fat, 0 g saturated fat, 0 mg cholesterol, 65 mg sodium, 25 g carbohydrate, 0 g protein, 0 g fiber
