Iced Tea
If Thomas De Quincey was right and tea “will always be the favourite beverage of the intellectual,” then surely iced tea must be the favorite beverage of the laid back. The question we must face…and, for those of us who tend to think of the American South as home, it’s a serious question…is this: is this ordinary, mundane, run-of-the-mill iced tea or is it that delightfully refreshing and invigorating concoction sometimes called ‘sweet tea?’
Utata, of course, does not take an editorial stance on the controversy between delectable sweet tea and its dull, lifeless counterpart. However, we note for the sake of history that in De Quincey’s era chilled unsweetened tea was merely an ingredient in some forms of punch and had to be liberally laced with alcohol to make it drinkable. That practice still continues in guise of Long Island Iced Tea (the recipe for which, mercifully, omits the unsweetened tea).
In this case, the iced tea pleases the palate of the eye rather than that of the tongue. If by some chance this is unsweetened tea, it wouldn’t matter; the eye completes it by adding its own sugar and we are well refreshed.
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