Articles & Essays

Back in the U.S., Ol' Joe is living in Disneyland - caramel-coated, chocolate syruped and candy sprinkled. These drinks bear as much resemblance to real coffee as the theme park's teacup ride does to tea partiers.

I fear that the same fate may befall my beloved Southern iced tea.

I stopped at a local coffee spot recently and on the menu was an iced concoction of spiced green tea and milk, topped with optional "chai-spiced whipped cream." It was such a fascinating train wreck of a description that I sampled the fully equipped version. Don't worry, I'm a food writer; the calories are tax deductible.

The drink, topped with about an inch and a half of whipped cream, was a foggy white-green color and had little tea flavor. It was really sweet. Not in a good way, but in a coat-the-mouth way that made me want a drink after my drink.

With that beverage, it begins. Iced tea has been frappu-fied.

It used to be that nobody farther north than Virginia knew what sweet Southern iced tea was. I liked it that way.

People from Chicago or Milwaukee would come down here and spend their visits in an amusing state of beverage bafflement. I could see the mental contortions on their faces: "It's tea, but it's cold, but it's already sweet, and it's January. Huh?"

The Yankees couldn't deal with iced tea on their home turf, either. After a whale-watching trip off Cape Cod, my husband and I were simply parched. When we arrived at a restaurant for dinner, we needed iced tea.

The result seemed to be simply unsweetened hot tea poured over ice. When we asked for more, they brought a new glass instead of a big pitcher for refills. At the end of the meal, we discovered why: Refills were not free. The bill for the iced tea was larger than that for our food.

The experience reminded us that although everyone up there was real nice, we were in enemy territory.

Just because some nutritionist says drinking tea might be healthy, people now think "sodas bad, tea good." Beverage manufacturers have jumped on that idea like white on rice.

Bottles and jugs of iced tea impersonators are everywhere. The tea is spiked with ginseng or "naturally sweetened" with some herb or cactus plant. It's flavored with quince or mango and promises long life. There are cartoon grannies or pictures of peaceful tea fields on the labels.

One brand of bottled tea boasts that "filtered water, tea leaves, and vitamin C are its only ingredients." So make your own and put a slice of lemon in it (or three or four slices, like my husband, who prefers a little tea with his lemon).

I'm not even going to talk about the alleged iced tea that spews from fast-food drink dispensers. I will only say that I've seen other liquids that color, and none of them were iced tea.

It's pitiful to consider that people all over the country are drinking this stuff and thinking they are experiencing the joys of Southern iced tea. The teas from spouts and bottles are no more like the beverage of my heritage than the Cold Duck I guzzled in college is like Veuve Cliquot.

Here's what Southern iced tea is not:

Green. That goes with moo goo gai pan, not fried chicken.

Flavored with anything that rightfully belongs in potpourri.

An aid to Zen contemplation. We drink it because we're thirsty, and because it goes nicely with barbecue.

And I do not want to hear anything about how sweet Southern iced tea is - that it makes your teeth hurt or whatever. Especially if you're holding one of those Cinderella's Castles of coffee drinks.