The House Wine of the South

Great article in Slate about good old Sweet Tea. It says something about the demographic of Slates readers that this article made it as a featured story on the Thursday homepage. One of the things that the Northern section of our country doesn't get is sweet tea. There is only one restaurant I have been to in NYC that has passable sweet tea.

Some of my native northern friends think that this passes as sweet tea! But anyone who has grown up around sweet tea knows that these products fall woefully short of real sweet tea (although Sweet Leaf Tea comes close to the real thing). Here are some of my favorite quotes from the article:

"Sugar worship might account for much of sweet tea's popularity, but I think its appeal lies in the ice. Southerners seem to have a particular fascination with ice."

"Offering up a glass of sweet tea on a hot day in the South is as welcoming a gesture as passing the doobie at a Phish show. It's so ingrained in the Southern DNA—Marion Cabell Tyree included the recipe in a cookbook called Housekeeping in Old Virginia as early as 1879—that people now post videos online of their infants sampling the stuff."

"Even on the rare occasion I can find someplace that has it on the menu, it's often slightly off. Maybe it isn't sweet enough. Maybe it's the lack of free refills. Whatever it is, it chills me."

I think I'll make me some sweet tea right now!