June 10th is National Iced Tea Day to celebrate one of the world’s favorite refreshing drinks.
Whether you prefer sweetened or unsweetened, with or without lemon, it’s usually always a good idea to pour yourself a glass and relax.
#NationalIcedTeaDay
Iced tea is the second most popular beverage in the world, following water.
The oldest tea remains dated to around 453BC. Archaeologists from Shandong University and the University of Science and Technology found 2,400 year old tea remains in a royal tomb in the Shandong province.
In 1904, the iced tea was introduced at the World’s Fair in St. Louis by a tea merchant who planned to serve hot tea.
However, a sudden heat wave prompted fair-goers to become uninterested in the beverage. To save himself, the merchant decided to add ice to the already brewed tea. This led to a frenzy of people lining up to taste the wonderful new drink.
Pat Villmer, a former member of the St. Louis World’s Fair Society, even conjectured the tea was likely “cool” and not “cold.” She wrote iced tea “wasn’t ‘invented’ at the World’s Fair.
The good people of the South were serving iced tea in their homes long before the Fair. It was just popularized at the Fair. It was called ‘sweet tea served cool, not hot’ in the summer in the South. Ice, when available, was used. Remember, ice was the premium in the early days before refrigeration, not tea.”
The practice of making cool or cold tea likely began as much as 40 years before the fair.
● In 2010, Chick-fil-A in Tulsa, Okla., claimed to have created the World’s Largest Sweet Iced Tea in a 9-foot-high cup that held 1,140 gallons, a feat certified by the World Record Academy.
● In 2015, Guinness World Records certified a 12.5 foot pitcher of iced tea holding 2,204 gallons and served up by Lipton.
● In 2016, however, the town of Summerville, S.C., created an even larger container of sweet tea (2,524 gallons in a 15-foot-tall jar named “Mason”), a record certified by Guinness World Records.
Today, the U.S. consumes nearly 50 billion glasses of tea per year!
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Interesting tea facts! Ginger is my favorite-hot in the winter because I’m freezing and hot in the summer because I’m freezing in the air conditioning. 🙂
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This is great history! I may be a dyed-in-the-wool Northern girl, but I was taught to make good Southern Ice Tea by a lady from North Carolina. Nothing like Northern tea.
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On my grandfather’s farm the workers used to take a jug of cold tea out to the fields with them at harvest time. No ice!
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Interesting. At 15, I baled hay. We were only given cold tee. Boss said iced tea would make us give out too soon in this heat. I thought it was because he was so cheap. With your comment it makes me wonder if he was just looking out for us.
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There was no ice available back then on that Scottish farm…but I remember that, even when ice makers came in, iced drinks were said to be harmful in hot weather.
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