**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.
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.