National Iced Tea Day starts with the kettle and ends with a full glass of ice. Brew a pitcher in the morning, the way the old recipes tell you to, and leave it in the refrigerator until the afternoon.
No founder, establishing document or first observance has been located for National Iced Tea Day, which does not appear in the Chase's Calendar of Events volumes held by HathiTrust or in the Federal Register. The month it sits inside, National Iced Tea Month, has been listed in Chase's since the 1993 edition and is promoted by the Tea Council of the USA.
A Virginia cookbook copyrighted in 1877 prints a recipe headed simply "Iced Tea." Scald the teapot, it says, pour in a quart of boiling water, and start early: "If wanted for supper, do this at breakfast." The glass is finished with ice, sugar and a squeeze of lemon, which is roughly all National Iced Tea Day asks of anyone now.
That is twenty-seven years before the St. Louis world's fair that still gets the credit for inventing iced tea. And the Virginia book was not on its own. A Minneapolis cookbook copyrighted the same year carries its own version, in the chapter on drinks.
So the day sits on something old. Its own record is the short part.
DEALS & OFFERS
National Iced Tea Day ran on June 10. Here’s who celebrated with offers this year.
Iced tea was not news in America by the time the twentieth century arrived. A phrase search of the California Digital Newspaper Collection returns 948 results for it between 1890 and 1903, the fourteen years before the St. Louis fair opened.
The fair still did something. The Tea Association of the U.S.A.'s own fact sheet says the United States played a significant role in tea's history by "inventing the tea bag and popularizing iced tea in 1904." Popularizing is the industry's own word, and it is doing careful work.
The Minneapolis recipe is written for a kitchen with an ice-chest. Prepare the tea in the morning, it says, "making it stronger and sweeter than usual," then strain it into a clean stone jug or glass bottle and set it aside to cool.
The detail keeps going. Serve the ice broken small, on a platter garnished with well washed grape leaves. Buckeye Cookery's own sample menus put it on the table beside cold chicken, canned peaches and a Queen Vic cake.
In 1897 the federal government took an interest. An act of March 2 made it unlawful to bring in "any merchandise as tea which is inferior in purity, quality, and fitness for consumption" to a standard the government itself would fix.
That standard was set on the recommendation of a board appointed every year, seven members, "each of whom shall be an expert in teas." Duplicate samples went into the customhouses at New York, Chicago and San Francisco, among other ports, for an examiner to hold a shipment against. The arrangement ran until Congress ended it with the Federal Tea Tasters Repeal Act of 1996.
The observance with a paper trail is the month. Chase's Annual Events for 1993 is the earliest volume HathiTrust holds that names National Iced Tea Month, and the Tea Council of the USA was still promoting it in 2011.
June 10 is the harder one. No founder, first observance or establishing document for the day itself turns up in those reference calendars or in the Federal Register, leaving the month around it and a drink much older than either.
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BY THE NUMBERS
GOOD TO KNOW
Buckeye Cookery finishes its iced tea instructions with an order rather than a suggestion: "Drink from goblets without cream."
Housekeeping in Old Virginia calls for two teaspoonfuls of green tea to a quart of boiling water. About 84% of the tea Americans drink now is black.
The Tea Association of the U.S.A.'s fact sheet puts the greatest concentration of tea drinkers in the South and the Northeast, side by side.
That is the trade association's own daily figure, and it covers hot and iced together rather than iced alone.
An importer who disputed an examiner's finding could take the case to the United States Board of Tea Appeals, three federal employees. Members of the board of experts were paid $50 a year.
WHY THIS DAY MATTERS
A museum exhibit exists partly to take the invention stories apart.
The Missouri History Museum's reopened 1904 World's Fair exhibit takes on the invention myths directly, and its public historian Amanda Clark and the food writer Robert Moss were the two sources behind a fact-check of the food stories. Its finding was blunt: "No, the hamburger, hot dog nor iced tea was invented at the Fair."
Food scientists call the haze tea cream, and a 2023 study in Foods defines it as "the spontaneous turbidity and precipitation phenomenon" that affects the appearance and works against the taste and nutritional value of tea drinks. The same paper reports that "a complete eradication of tea cream has not yet been achieved."
A USDA final rule published in May 2026 lists iced tea among the food items that "complement or supplement meals," grouping it with soda pop and sports drinks rather than with staples. The FDA has its own number for it, setting the reference amount for flavored, sweetened tea at 12 fluid ounces.
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Test your knowledge
No. It is an unofficial observance and a normal working day, and the Federal Register carries no document under that name or under National Iced Tea Month.
COLOPHON
Brew a cup of tea and enjoy the aroma! National Tea Day is the perfect day to celebrate your favorite teas, tisanes, and more.
Celebrate International Tea Day with a cup of your favorite tea - enjoy its health benefits and calming effects while sipping away!
Sip into the warmth of National Hot Tea Day - indulge in a comforting mug of your favorite tea and relax with a good book!
