The Competing Origin Stories Behind Long Island Iced Tea

It's easy to imagine that the Long Island iced tea was brought to life as some frat boy's Frankenstein creation. How else could five different kinds of liquor (and a dash of Coke) end up in the same highball glass? Considering its popularity with college drinkers, it makes sense that this monster cocktail would be a monument to a student's hubris. But the truth is that this divisive drink also has a hotly contested origin story.

The official narrative promoted by the tourism advocates of Kingsport, Tennessee, is that one Charlie "Old Man" Bishop crafted the concoction during Prohibition, and that his son developed further iterations of the cocktail decades later. The name, Visit Kingsport argues, refers to the city's own Long Island, located in the Holston River, where all sorts of bootlegging hijinks were going down in the 1920s.

Still, when Americans think of a Long Island iced tea, they're probably imagining the other Long Island — Long Island, New York — and one islander claims he came up with the idea in the 1970s. Robert "Rosebud" Butt told PBS Digital Studios he invented the cocktail as an entry in a contest held by a bar he was working at in the Hamptons. It took off from there, he says: "Five years later, every place you went had Long Island iced tea."

While either story may be true, there are crucial differences between "Old Man" Bishop's purported recipe and what Bob Butt claims he made in the '70s. Butt makes his Long Island iced tea with vodka, gin, rum, tequila, triple sec, sour mix, and Coca-Cola ("to make the color"). What Visit Kingsport claims is the OG has the same clear liquors but has whiskey instead of triple sec, no sour mix, and uses maple syrup for a sweetener. The citrus and Coke is said to have been added by Bishop's son later on.

For what it's worth, the version with triple sec is listed on the cocktail's official International Bartenders Association page, where it's labeled a "contemporary classic." Even if the Kingsport story is true, or if they were both somehow developed independently 50 years apart, Butt's New York mix has become the standard.

In the end, the Long Island iced tea is still, incredibly, five liquors in a glass. Bartenders are sometimes hesitant to mix up a Long Island for their patrons due to it's reputation as a party-starter (or ender), so approach its high alcohol content responsibly.