Long Island Iced Tea

While no one would mistake the Long Island Iced Tea for a low-alcohol cocktail, it doesn’t entirely deserve its hard-hitting reputation. Sure, there’s an array of liquors here, including gin, vodka, white rum, and blanco tequila. But, cumulatively, a Long Island Iced Tea contains two total ounces of spirits plus a half-ounce of orange liqueur, which puts it on par with other, less-fearsome drinks like the margarita.

As with many classic cocktails, the history of the Long Island Tea recipe is contested. Some believe it was invented by a Tennessee moonshine distiller during Prohibition. Others say it originated more recently, in the 1970s, and credit it to Robert “Rosebud” Butt, a bartender at the now-shuttered Oak Beach Inn on Jones Beach, Long Island.

To give your Long Island Iced Tea the respect it deserves, choose your ingredients carefully. Ditch the sour mix or lemon-lime soda that can give hastily made versions their saccharine tang, and use homemade simple syrup, freshly squeezed lemon or lime juice, and quality triple sec like Cointreau (for ideas about how to use up the rest of the bottle, check out our list of favorite Cointreau cocktails). You needn’t use top-shelf liquors, but don’t pour anything into your cocktail shaker that makes you wince either.

The cocktail recipe welcomes experimentation. Use blue curaçao instead of triple sec for an aquatic-looking Long Island Iced Tea; swap the cola for cranberry juice to make a variation called the Long Beach Iced Tea; or add ½ oz. of whiskey to turn it into Texas Tea. Whichever version you prefer, serve yours over plenty of ice with a lemon slice or wedge.