My good friend Cat, bon vivant, beer connoisseur, and proud Southerner, sent me a link to this article about sweet tea. (That’s sweet iced tea to y’all north of the Mason-Dixon.) Jeffrey Klineman, the author, waxes poetic about the nectar of the gods — it made me salivate so much I had to get up and pour myself a glass– and also provides a bit of history behind this traditional Southern beverage.

I’ve enjoyed sweet tea in North Carolina, Georgia, Louisiana, Mississippi, Texas, and heck, even a McDonald’s somewhere in Tennessee. Sugar fiend though I am, all of the drinks bordered on too sweet for my taste. I chalked it up to a Southern thing I didn’t understand, but Klineman offers this insight:

One chef I spoke with—Scott Peacock, who spent eight years bunking and writing with the Grand Dame of Southern cooking, the late Edna Lewis—suggested that Dixie’s taste for sweet may have evolved from the use of sugar as a preservative. Peacock’s dad grew up in a small Alabama town where they didn’t have much refined sugar. In towns like that, he said, they grew cane, milled it, and put it in jars. People anticipated the crystallization of the cane sugar with great excitement, eager to stir it into their tea.

The article also discusses the role of ice, which obviously delivers cooling refreshment on a sweltering summer day, but was also a luxury item before the advent of refrigeration. And since tea was consumed mainly by the upper class, it was a real treat indeed if someone offered you an ice-cold glass of sweet tea.

I drink an inordinate amount of iced tea for a Northerner, but it’s probably because I am Taiwanese and grew up drinking tea like my Caucasian friends drank soda. It’s not easy to find real Southern sweet tea in Chicago — iced tea anywhere up North is almost always unsweetened — though Wishbone comes pretty close, and a few years ago a waiter at an Oak Park restaurant brought me a little pitcher of simple syrup for my iced tea, unsolicited. The young man was from North Carolina, and he said it was the least he could do. Now that’s what I call Southern hospitality!

You can make your own sweet tea, but I’m not going to post a recipe for fear that Cat will laugh at me. Seriously though, I think it’s a matter of personal taste in terms of brew strength and sweetness, so here are some of my preferences:

• I use Luzianne teabags instead of the ubiquitous (and flavorless) Lipton. Luzianne is a lot less bitter and has a much nicer tea flavor — better balance and acidity. I used to have a hard time finding it, but now it’s available at Jewel, Dominick’s, and Target.
• If you must get all fancy, you can brew loose leaf tea. I suggest black tea only — green and especially white teas are too delicate to withstand all that sugar, and sweet oolong tea is just weird to me. I realize there are lots of bottled sweet flavored green and white teas on the market enjoyed by many, but then there are also tons of people who consider Taco Bell Mexican food.
• I use raw cane sugar — it imparts a richer, slightly caramelly sweetness.
• Lots of ice = good. If you don’t like dilution, make it extra strong and extra sweet.