Iced-Tea Time - Sipping Notes from KTeas

        Trivia time: Common knowledge holds that Iced Tea came about at the 1904 St. Louis World's Fair when a tea plantation owner and merchant, Richard Blechynden, literally couldn't give away hot tea to fair visitors! He'd planned to give free samples to promote his tea, but the St. Louis summer was too hot for very many people to be interested in a hot beverage. In a moment of inspiration or desperation (both?), Blechynden dumped some ice into his tea and thus created a beverage that was a huge hit at the St. Louis World's Fair!

        Perhaps Mr. Blechynden and the World's Fair visitors were not familiar with the story of the 1890 Confederate reunion in Nevada, Missouri. We had not heard about it, ourselves, until we did some research to remind ourselves of Mr. Blechynden's name and such details, and we stumbled across an article that mentioned a newspaper story appearing in the Nevada Noticer on September 28, 1890, fourteen years earlier than the St. Louis World's Fair.

The Nevada newspaper story described in great detail the magnitude of the event held at the Artesian Park at an encampment called Camp Jackson. The newspaper story listed what was served at the barbecue, such as 11,705 pounds of beef, 60 gallons of pickles, and 880 gallons of iced tea. That would certainly seem to indicate that Iced Tea had been a fairly common beverage somewhere (for someone or several someones to think of preparing 880 gallons of the beverage!) prior to the St. Louis World's Fair. But apparently the beverage was not common knowledge to those in 1904 who thought a delightful new drink had been discovered/invented.

        The online article which taught us of the earlier existence of Iced Tea can be seen at www.lyndonirwin.com/1904%20Tea.html , is by Lyndon N. Irwin, and is part of a Missouri State University Agricultural History Series. The article also quotes one Pat Villmer of the St. Louis World's Fair Society who wrote that tea "wasn't 'invented' at the World's Fair. The good people of the South were serving iced tea in their homes long before the Fair. It was just popularized at the Fair. It was called sweet tea, served cool, not hot, in the summer in the South. Ice, when available, was used. Remember, ice was the premium in the early days before refrigeration, not tea."

        Hmm. We certainly learned our something-new-for-the-day with that one!