**Cultural Variations:**
– **China:**
– Iced tea gained popularity in the late 1980s.
– Various teas, including green tea, are available canned or bottled.
– Families make iced tea by chilling strong hot tea or refrigerating hot tea.
– Common types include black, green, oolong, and herbal varieties.
– Iced herbal teas are popular in hot summers.
– **South Africa:**
– Iced tea is widely available in cafes and retail outlets.
– Popular brands include Nestea, Lipton, Manhattan, and Fuze Tea.
– BOS, a local brand, uses rooibos from the Western Cape.
– **Switzerland:**
– Bischofszell Food Ltd. was the first to produce bottled iced tea on an industrial scale.
– Employees Ruedi Bärlocher and Martin Sprenger introduced ready-made iced tea in bottles in 1983.
– **Turkey:**
– Iced tea became popular in Turkey in the 2000s.
– Lipton introduced iced tea, later replaced by Coca-Cola’s Fuse Tea.
– Çaykur’s iced tea brand Didi is in the market.
– **United Kingdom:**
– Iced tea gained popularity in the UK in the 2000s.
– Lipton, Nestea, and Twinings offer non-carbonated iced teas.
**United States:**
– Iced tea makes up 85% of all tea consumed in the U.S.
– Sweet Tea is popular in southern states.
– In New England, iced tea is moderately sweetened and may include mint.
**History:**
– Marguerite Countess of Blessington mentioned sipping iced tea in Naples in 1823.
– The oldest printed recipes for iced tea date back to the 1870s.
– Iced tea started to appear in the U.S. during the 1860s and became widespread in the 1870s.
– Richard Blechynden introduced iced tea at the 1904 Worlds Fair in St. Louis.
**Varieties:**
– **Sun and refrigerator tea:**
– Sun tea is brewed by placing tea in water in the sun for hours.
– Refrigerator tea is brewed in the fridge overnight, preventing bacterial growth.
– **Fountain iced tea:**
– Coliform bacteria were found in dispensers in some restaurants in 1996.
– Coca-Cola and Pepsi marketed tea concentrate dispensed like fountain drinks.
– **Half-and-half:**
– Arnold Palmer popularized a mix of iced tea and lemonade in the late 1960s.
– The drink is often called an Arnold Palmer and marketed by various brands.
**Related Topics:**
– Drink portal
– Lipton Iced Tea
– Long Island Iced Tea
– Sweet tea
This article needs additional citations for verification. (May 2014) |
Iced tea (or ice tea) is a form of cold tea. Though it is usually served in a glass with ice, it can refer to any tea that has been chilled or cooled. It may be sweetened with sugar or syrup. Iced tea is also a popular packaged drink that can be mixed with flavored syrup such as lemon, raspberry, lime, passion fruit, peach, orange, strawberry, and cherry.
![](http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/e/ef/Iced_Tea_from_flickr.jpg/220px-Iced_Tea_from_flickr.jpg)
While most iced teas get their flavor from tea leaves (Camellia sinensis), herbal teas are sometimes served cold and referred to as iced tea. Iced tea is sometimes made by a particularly long steeping of tea leaves at a lower temperature (one hour in the sun versus five minutes at 80 to 100 °C (176 to 212 °F), which is known as sun tea.