History of the Texas Tea Cocktail

When it comes to Texas Tea, bigger really is better. 

Often described as a cousin of the Long Island Iced Tea, a cocktail known for its booze-forward qualities, Texas Tea takes it up a level. Made with a colossal amount of liquor types, along with lemon juice, simple syrup, and cola, what makes this drink particularly Southern is the addition of bourbon, which gives it an almost sweet tea-like quality. Though online recipes abound, the origins of this so-called Texas cocktail are as murky as its Long Island cousin.

Bourbon and sweet tea are classically Southern ingredients. Texas is in the middle of the sweet tea belt, a strip of Southern states that includes Alabama, Arkansas, Virginia, Louisiana, Mississippi, Indiana, Kentucky, North Carolina, South Carolina, Tennessee and Georgia. The oldest known recipe for sweet iced tea was published in 1879 in a cookbook called Housekeeping in Old Virginia by Marion Cabell Tyree, using iced green tea, sugar, and lemon. By the 1900s, black tea became the default for iced tea, and in the 1920s, Prohibition brought along an iced tea boom as people searched for alternative beverages to replace alcohol. (It’s also possible that during this time, iced tea was a convenient way to hide illegal liquor consumption, and Prohibition-era bars would serve liquor in teacups to avoid suspicion.)

Spiked tea punches have also long been popular with the British aristocracy, a habit that was passed on to Southern planters in Virginia. Recipes from the early 1800s featured chilled green tea punches similar to today’s sweet tea, containing a baffling array of wine, liquor, and sugar, such as an 1839 punch recipe from Kentucky combining claret or Champagne with cream, lots of sugar, and green tea in a punch bowl. 

One of the most famous tea punch recipes, an American recipe called Regent’s Punch from 1815, contains brandy, arrack, Champagne, and rum tempered with green tea, sugar, and citrus juice. It was a hit with the British, who named it Regent’s Punch as an ode to their convivial, liquor-loving King George IV. This potent brew of tea and liquor would be considered the closest early progenitor of Texas Tea if the cocktail were to contain actual tea, which it does not. The tea-like coloring comes from the cola and amber-hued bourbon.

It is most likely that Texas Tea was a corporate invention.

According to Vintage American Cocktails, “The Texas Iced Tea was invented by TGI Fridays in 1980 to celebrate the 40th anniversary of its parent company Carlson.” The chain put four variations of the Long Island Iced Tea on its menu: the Long Beach Iced Tea, the Sparkling Iced Tea, the Caribbean Iced Tea, and the Texas Iced Tea. The Texas Iced Tea added an additional ounce of whiskey to the cocktail, and the trend caught on.

TGI Friday’s declined to comment on how they came up with the cocktail.

However, Nico Martini, the Dallas-based author of Texas Cocktails, a seminal guide to cocktail history in the Lone Star state, suggests that the term is probably a branding strategy.

“I have this joke that I tell when people ask me about the [Texas Cocktails] book,” says Martini. “When I started, I researched all of the classic cocktails that came from Texas and I found both of them: Ranch Water and Chilton. I guess you could throw Mexican Martini in there but… gross,” he says.

Martini found a similar association when researching the Texas Fizz, which was actually invented by two London bartenders.

“I always notice when people throw ‘Texas’ in front of something but it’s honestly, always been marketing. Texas is incredibly proud and Texas supports Texas,” says Martini. “I’ve moved hard into whiskey and one of the first things I started to notice was a bunch of whiskey with armadillos and spurs and longhorns on the label claiming Texas whiskey when they were, in fact, simply sourced from Indiana, Kentucky or Tennessee,” he says.

In John Steinbeck’s memoir Travels With Charley: In Search of America, he writes, “I have said that Texas is a state of mind, but I think it is more than that. It is a mystique closely approximating a religion.” 

Perhaps that is a better way of explaining the phenomenon of Texas Tea. The mystique of the state has captured popular imagination enough to draw converts through cocktails.

Whatever the origins, a Texas Tea is a pleasant summer cocktail best made with a robust bourbon or spicier rye to slice through the sizable drink.