Iced Tea History

Maybe it's not my place to do so, but I'm going to go out on a limb here and announce the opening of iced tea season. Now, if you were sitting there in front of your computer wondering how iced tea came to be in the first place you're in luck. You've also got too much time for idle musing, but enough about that.

Here are a few articles that attempt to impart the history of iced tea. At Upton Tea Imports there's a piece called Tracing the Origin of Iced Tea. What's Cooking America weighs in on the issue and also takes a look at sweet tea in an article called History of Iced Tea and Sweet Tea.

Then there's Iced Tea: The Distinctively American Beverage, co-written by Tazo Tea founder Steven Smith and posted at the Tea Association of the USA's Web site. Last, but not least, is Lyndon Irwin's article, 1904 St. Louis Worlds Fair: The Iced Tea Question.

This was the point where I was going to throw in a recipe or three, but I decided against it. Quite frankly, a simple Internet search will net about a zillion of these, so go knock yourself out.

Instead I'll give you a link to this photo, which "illustrates how crystallites of the cocktail long island iced tea appear under a polarized light microscope".

Because I knew you were wondering.

tea, food, food and drink, iced tea, tea history, Long Island Iced Tea