Iced and Sweet Tea

Sweet tea deserves something more than a baggy collection of facts about its early manifestations. It merits a myth of origin at the very least. So here is one—Trajan Brisket invented iced tea, though he didn’t realize it, in 1832. He grew up a flash bachelor in Charleston. He was a punch drinker. He particularly loved those punches that included as many drugs in one bowl as possible: alcohol, sugar, caffeine, spice. Artillery Punch, St. Cecilia’s Punch: the ones with a lot of green tea in them, a lot of rum, and a modest splash of brandy. Sad to say he imbibed the bowls too frequently and too deeply. One evening he found himself lying miserably in a Charleston gutter, asking, “what have I done with myself?” The Washingtonians (the hard-edged temperance evangelists) got to him and turned him into a teetotaler. The punch bowl, however, had marked his soul deeply. He couldn’t give it up entirely. So, he compromised. He left out the booze, and drank the sugared lemony tea with the stray cinnamon stick left in the mix. The vessel still contained enough drugs to send a charge through his bloodstream. He didn’t call it sweet tea. He called it sobriety punch.