The Gospel of Sweet Tea

We who are from the Southern U.S. become familiar with iced tea, and particularly sweet tea, from the time that we begin drinking anything besides mother's milk. Sweet tea is just a natural part of life in the South, and it flows like water across every strata of society, class, race, and generation. If there is anything that Southerners can agree on, I think that it is sweet tea. Now, how to barbecue a piece of meat (and which kind and cut of meat to barbecue) is in dispute in every Southern state, and sometimes within regions of the same state. Not every Southerner even agrees on what constitutes “the South,” an argument I do not plan to even approach in this treatise. But sweet tea is sweet tea just about anywhere, from Kentucky to Louisiana and from South Carolina to Mississippi and everywhere in between. A Georgian can go into a diner in Tennessee and order tea and know that it is going to be 1) served with plenty of ice and 2) sweet. Very sweet, usually.

I have always loved iced tea. I remember when I was about eight years old, my oldest brother, R, taught me how to make it. At that time, R was the primary tea-preparer in our home. He had learned how to do it from Mom, and he passed the knowledge on to the rest of us as soon as we were allowed to boil water in a pan on the stove. He showed me how much water to boil, how many tea bags to use (depending on the size pitcher he was going to use), and—the really key part—how much sugar to add to the boiling hot water. And then he added what made our house tea better than my friends' teas at home. We would have already gone out to the back yard and cut a couple of sprigs of spearmint that mom had planted in the shade right up against the wall of the house. He would stir these mint sprigs into the hot water, where they would add just a light minty flavor to the tea, and that would give our tea that extra boost of refreshment on a hot Southern summer day. (By the way, you take the mint out before you serve the tea. No one wants limp black mint leaves in their tea.)

I learned two basic lessons about food preparation from my brother and my dad. My dad taught me that there is never, ever any reason to use anything other than real potatoes when serving potatoes for dinner. Dad thought that instant mashed potatoes were an abomination on the earth and a possible sign of the Apocalypse. Dad preached that there is never any time in our lives when we cannot take the little bit of extra time to peel (optional), boil, and mash real potatoes to make any kind of potato dish. My dad never had an instant potato or anything made from potato flakes in his life. Similarly, my brother R taught me that there is never, never, never, never, ever any reason why a person would choose to make instant iced tea over brewed iced tea. To R, making tea was almost as simple as getting water from the kitchen faucet, or as easy as dad's real mashed potatoes. It didn't take very long at all to whip up a big, sparkling pitcher of fresh iced tea. Why would anyone ever drink that awful instant tea mix? It doesn't even taste like tea. Instant tea is to real tea what orange Koolaid is to orange juice. There's just no comparison.

So, during my time in Boston, I was determined to do what I could to spread the gospel of iced tea. I knew right away that I had my work cut out for me when, on my first day, I was served “iced tea” in a large pitcher. I could tell from the color that it was instant, not brewed. Even worse, these Northerners think that just because a drink was made with cold water or has been in the refrigerator, you can call it “iced” and dispense with serving it in a glass heaped with ice cubes. So, my first week or so in Boston, I had to try to drink cold instant tea. It just made me miss home all the more.

I and a fellow Tennessean decided to set things straight, and we started making our own sweet tea. It went over fairly well; people seemed to enjoy drinking it, but it was hard to keep enough made to serve a large group of people who were drinking tea all day long. By the time that lunch or dinner came, we'd be out of tea again. But the idea had begun to take hold. Some of the Northerners' eyes had been opened to the epiphany that real, brewed tea is a whole 'nother animal from instant. They started requesting it. Then, some people started making it on their own. They—being Northern adults—could not be indoctrinated into the cult of Sweet Tea as Southern children are, so they made some mistakes in the beginning. When we were low on tea bags, they suggested that we could use green tea. (Blecchhh!!) Yes, I know that some drink makers are producing bottled green tea to be served cold. Some people even claim to like it. But I've tried it, and it's really awful stuff. One has to think of it as something completely different from real iced tea to even get it down. Another person, who liked the idea of “natural” sweetener over processed white sugar, started sweetening her iced tea with honey. She also reduced the amount to tone down the “sweet” part of sweet tea. Well, that might float in Boston, but it'd get you run out of town on a rail down South. We like our processed white sugar, and we like copious amounts of it in our iced tea.

I will not be in Boston much longer. I may not have accomplished much while I was here, but if I did even a little to spread the gospel of the joys of real sweet tea in the Northern regions, then I feel some satisfaction in a job well done. Since I've been here, I've been to a couple of restaurants that served unsweet iced tea, which is a step in the right direction. I like to think that I might come back in a few years and find that every restaurant in Boston will know what you mean when you say that you would like sweet tea.