Memories steeped in sweet tea

The State ^ | Jan. 30, 2002 | Jay C. Grelen

[aomagrat]

Sweet tea, as one of the characters in the movie ''Steel Magnolias'' noted, is the house wine of the South.

It is what we drank when we cooled our houses with attic fans. As a teen-age hay hauler, I'd drink a jug a day.

When I sit around telling stories, that's what I drink, winter or summer.

I am the uncaped crusader for the preservation of the tradition, which is in trouble. Young people don't know how to make tea, and bottled liquid they call tea is sprouting like kudzu in stores.

Here is my tea pedigree:

I have consumed sweet tea at Mrs. Wilkes Boarding House in Savannah, Ga., and at Crooks Corner in Chapel Hill, N.C., where you sweeten your tea with a concoction of mint and sugar water. I have drunk sweet tea with George Wallace.

My sweet-tea crusade developed in a roundabout way in 1993 after I spent a day picking Silver Queen corn in south Alabama. I, sweaty and dirty, went to a catfish joint and ordered a glass of tea to go. The cashier brought a full pitcher and set me in a rocking chair on the porch. I felt obliged to drink the entire pitcher.

I wrote about that woman's kind heart and proposed that sweet tea is much more than a drink. It's the memories of our grandmothers and Sunday lunch. It's a symbol of our hospitality. I invited readers to share a sweet tea memory. Readers rhapsodized.

We learned the importance of tea. My bosses at the Mobile, Ala., newspaper allowed me to sponsor a contest in which a panel selected the best sweet tea. The New York Times published a story about my crusade, which was followed by a story in Saveur, a fancy New York magazine. Then, Southern Living published a small story in which the writer proclaimed me a ``sweet-tea evangelist.''

In 1999, I took the crusade to Oklahoma. The battle there has been lost. To put Oklahomans in perspective, one day I was in a cafe in Hobart. After determining that sweet tea wasn't on the menu, I was happy to find that pinto beans were.

''You have any rice to put under those beans?'' I asked the waitress. She looked at me like I'd ordered a scoop of topsoil.

I have learned that the sugar you use matters. (You can't beat Dixie Crystals.) I use tea from a company in Mobile, which perfected a blend that is as clear after a night in the refrigerator as it is the moment you make it.

[aomagrat]

No southern dinner table is complete without a big pitcher of iced sweet tea sitting in the middle. (I wonder if this thread will cause a big a ruckus as the BBQ thread?)

[AppyPappy]

I don't drink sweet tea but Silver Queen corn sure makes me smile.

[ravingnutter]

Yuk...sweet tea is nasty...I get really p.o.ed when waitresses bring me tea with sugar when I ask for tea...and they can keep the fruit too!

[Onelifetogive]

I love my Sweet Tea!!!

I travel all over the country for business. I miss my sweet tea the most. The waitresses alway try to be helpful by telling me that there is sugar on the table and I can make sweet tea. It just ain't the same. I must be sweetened hot.

Thanks for the post!

[blackdog]

Moved to Wisconsin from South Carolina. We really miss Sweet Tea. For what it is worth yankees, it is not called Iced Tea! I started my mint patch last year. We were told in much the same controversy as the BBQ sauce thread, that sweet tea should not have lemon or mint in it. My grandmother used to make it it buckets, letting what seemed to be a bushel of mint steep in each bucket. She would then ring it out. Mint does tend to cloud the tea though.

[LibertyGirl77]

I *love* sweet tea. I am not orginially from the South (I live in Virginia now, though), but I have a friend from Louisiana who introduced it to me last summer. Now I absolutely crave it.

[blackdog]

Yankee! :)

[blackdog]

There is a place near the Bay Bridge Tunnel thingy on the way to Norfolk from the north side, that serves sweet potatoe bisquits and sweet tea with each meal. I have tried over and over to duplicate those bisquits, but to no avail. They will not share the recepie. Planning to go there again this summer and bribe someone into the recepie.

[thatsnotnice]

Yuk...sweet tea is nasty...I get really p.o.ed when waitresses bring me tea with sugar when I ask for tea...and they can keep the fruit too!

I've had it both ways. Some was good and some was a supersaturated sugar/tea syrup that was undrinkable. It belonged on pancakes or something.

When in doubt just get it unsweetened and make your own at the table.

[Deguello]

A few years ago my boss sent me on a mission in Massachusetts (tell them it's not Mass). On a side trip to Newport, Rhode Island I stopped at a seafood place for a lunch and asked for Iced Teas with my meal.

My server sternly told me that they do not serve Iced Tea 'till summer.

"Miss" I said, "the Forth of July is next week, just when in the hell does summer begin around here?"

[Alkhin]

ICED TEA WITH LOTS OF LEMON!!! Lemons are MUST in my house and I drink it by the gallons...

tea has components in it that are good for the heart...green tea is the best, but nothing beats a crystal clear pitcher of iced down Lipton, lots of lemon and sugar!!!

I used to work for a British company and it was always funny to see the reaction they would have over the fact that we drank our tea iced down...but after a few days in Houston's summer heat, you didn't hear them complain anymore!!!

[Alkhin]

I'm sorry but I consider iced tea with lemon to be JUST as Southern as tea with mint.

[Alkhin]

I'm sorry but I consider iced tea with lemon to be JUST as Southern as tea with mint.

[Prodigal Son]

So much of the culture of the South comes from the heat and humidity. My wife (German) is always remarking on how slow I walk if I'm not pressed for time. You learn to be a little leisurely if you come from a place where you can't even roll out of bed in the morning without breaking a sweat.

Sweet ice tea is one thing I sorely miss living here in Europe. In Georgia, that was the only way I knew to beat the heat from my earliest recollections. A big glass of tea with condensation dripping off it, a shade tree and an old swing that creaked when you got it going. (Maybe on Sunday we'd make homemade ice cream with fresh peaches.)

And I know, you'll say I could make tea here but it just don't taste the same. Besides, a gallon jug don't fit in the dinky little refrigerators they have here (if you can even find a gallon jug).

[Tennessee_Bob]

People drink unsweetened tea? That's disgusting!!!!

[riley1992]

I don't think there is a single day of the year that I don't have at least one glass of iced tea and I cannot for the life of me fathom why people think there is only a certain time of the year you should drink it. However, I do not like it sweetened.

[Junior]

When I was a kid, we didn't call it "sweet tea" we simply called it "iced tea." It's only been since the huge influx of Yankees and their unsweetened ice tea that we've been forced to differentiate our version.

[Johnny Gage]

People drink unsweetened tea?
Yes!
I drink Iced Tea with a slice of lemon. No sugar, nothing. I could drink it by the gallon all year round.
It is my drink of choice at any restaurant.

I just don't care for sugar in my tea. Now the "sweet tea" sounds good though because is has mint in it too.

[NovemberCharlie]

I love iced tea. It's uniformly served unsweetened and with lemon here in Texas, but at Bill Miller's BBQ in San Antonio, they'll give it to you sweetened. Also, in Tennessee, they serve the sugar in a pitcher of supersaturated water. That seems to work better, to me, anyway.

[GodBlessRonaldReagan]

Can't live without it!