Tea has been an American tradition since the British colonials but Sweet Tea has a southern tradition born in the nineteenth century. The oldest sweet tea recipe in print comes from a community cookbook called Housekeeping in Old Virginia , by Marion Cabell Tyree, published in 1879. However, it is known that recipes and traditions preceded this publication by several decades. Sweet Tea grew in popularity with it's public introduction at the 1904 World's Fair. Today Sweet Tea is undoubtedly sill popular wherever it is available. In 1999, Americans drank 50 billion servings of tea, that's about half the population consuming a cup or glass every day. Eighty-five percent of that tea was iced. More →