It’s cool and refreshing, has a hot history and if you’re drinking it in the South, it’s probably very, very sweet. Iced tea is one of the country’s most popular year-round drinks. Look outside though - summer is fast approaching, which means long, hot days and steamy nights. It’s tea-sippin’ season – iced tea sippin’ season, to be exact. But how did iced tea come to be? You’re about to find out - so pour yourself a glass and take some time to learn how the drink in your hand traveled from a tea cup to a tall glass.
Iced tea’s beginnings were a combination of innovation and necessity. If you poke around on the Internet or the bookstore for a bit, you’ll find that many sources trace iced tea’s roots to a particularly steamy summer in St. Louis in 1904. The World’s Fair was taking place, and Richard Blechynden, the manager at the Indian Tea Pavilion, is supposed to have whipped up a brand new beverage when he poured his hot tea over ice and passed it out to overheated patrons. Voila! - Iced Tea was born. It’s an easy-listening piece of history, but unfortunately, completely untrue. The fact is, by 1904, iced tea was familiar enough to have shown up in cookbook recipes, some of which date back to the early 1800s! Sorry, Mr. Blechynden.
Indeed, iced tea was an established beverage by the middle of the 19th century - but how did this actually happen? Historians who’ve taken a close look at both English and American cookbooks have discovered that iced tea started out as a very grown-up beverage. It was called punch, and it was tea with a definite kick. In the early 1800s, green tea was usually served instead of black, and it was often served cold with a healthy splash of champagne or brandy. Gradually, recipes for cold green tea sans alcohol began to appear at the end of the 19th century, and the first one seems to have appeared in 1879. Back then, the recipes in cookbooks were much more like historical records than they are today; by the time recipes made their way into cookbooks in the 19th century, they were already being widely used. This is a bit different from today’s cookbooks, which include new, “variations on a theme” recipes.
Antique shop buffs familiar with the history of tea can attest to the fact that around 1900, “iced tea” sets were being sold, which came with tall glasses and stirring spoons. This suggest that by about 1900, then, iced tea was being served on a fairly regular basis, especially in the South, where summer temperatures and humidity quickly popularized the cool beverage. Which brings us to iced tea’s most noticeable ingredient – ice! It’s difficult to imagine today, but ice cubes weren’t always readily available to the public. It wasn’t until the middle of the 19th century that refrigeration was developed on a commercial level and pure ice could be sold to the public. By the early 1900s, ice was much easier to get a hold of, and iced tea was much easier to make!
And then came Prohibition, which was bad for booze but great for iced tea. From about 1920-1933, Americans weren’t allowed to buy, sell or manufacture alcohol. What to serve with dinner then? The answer for many was – you guessed it – iced tea. It was cheap, easy to prepare and could be served with much less chance of jail time. After 1920, iced tea recipes began appearing on a very regular basis in cookbooks, and black tea had by now almost completely replaced green tea, which had become more expensive to import. In the South, iced tea was being served very sweet, with lots of added sugar. “Sweet Tea,” one of the South’s most popular drinks today, began as heavily sweetened iced tea, though the cold punches served in the early 1800s were also sweetened. If you simply order “tea” anywhere in the South today, two things are assumed: you want “icetea” and you want it sweet. Otherwise, you’ll have to speak up.
Today, Americans put back about 1.75 billion gallons of iced tea every year, which works out to about 6.5 gallons per person per year. It’s safe to say that iced tea is here to stay. So the next time you’re watching the condensation slide down your tall, cool glass of iced tea, be thankful for the ice inside.
Jenny Bengen is a freelance writer and editor based out of Atlanta, Georgia. A recent transplant from San Diego, California, she's an avid traveler whose goal is to visit 100 countries in her lifetime.