Long Island Ice Tea by MIXOLOGY Academy

Compared to the 2011 IBA version, this Long Island Ice Tea doesn’t have Tequila as an ingredient not to be confused with the Texas Ice Tea.

The story of the Long Island Ice Tea‘s birth is undoubtedly controversial, it seems like everyone wants to take credit for having invented it, from New York to Texas, from Tennessee to Jones Beach.

Perhaps it was Chris Bendicksen or maybe Robert Butt, professional baristas, who invented the cocktail when they worked at the Oak Beach Inn in Long Island, New York, in the late ’70s.

It is also very popular a legend that wants the Long Island Ice Tea as the cocktail of the American Prohibition because of the feature to resemble tea, ie a soft drink and therefore legal between 1919 and 1933.

This story does not find any support in historical documents nor even in a rational analysis of the situation! Hardly in a police raid the officers have apologized to those who were consuming apparently non-alcoholic cocktails in places where there were secret entrances and bars crammed with bottles of alcohol!