A confession: I love a Long Island Iced Tea. My earliest (very hazy) memory of the drink is of having five at a lesbian bar in Brooklyn in 2006, but I came to truly love the drink after I started bartending at the lofty neo-speakeasy, PDT, a few years later. At first I thought this drink was banned, plus virtually no one asked me for one. But one night as I was perusing the bar’s literal rolodex of drink recipes, I happened across a recipe, and to my surprise and disturbed delight, the resulting drink was actually quite wonderful.
Since then I have made a few riffs, including a slushie version made with Dr. Pepper syrup, but this summery riff made with Japanese melon liqueur and Mountain Dew is my favorite. The key thing that unites a “good” Long Island Iced Tea is to recognize that, even though you’re using almost every major white spirit in existence, you’re only using a small amount of each individually, so added up, you’re not drinking that much more than you would in, say, a standard gin and tonic or Manhattan.
It’s drinks like these that demonstrate the importance of the integrity of your ingredients. Tell someone you’ve got an amazing Long Island Iced Tea variation for them to try, and most will go running for the hills, likely because the last time they had a drink like this it was probably made using the cheapest possible spirits, with cheap tequila being particularly brutal, as well as omitting fresh lime juice in favor of sour mix. Going the extra mile to source great spirits and use fresh citrus can open up worlds of possibility. —John deBary
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