There are no less than five types of booze in a Long Island Iced Tea. Assuming it’s your standard size, that’s 2.5 oz. of 80proof hard liquor, the equivalent of roughly four or five regular drinks. If your friendly neighborhood bartender prefers a generous pour, it’s more like six, with a possible ABV of over 22% per drink. But it doesn’t look (or taste) anywhere near as nuclear as it is, and that’s what makes it so dangerous. This easysippingyet intenselyboozy drink is a menace to both real and fictional people—the chaos that can ensue when you enjoy too many Long Island Iced Teas has been a plot point on The Big Bang Theory, Sex and The City, The Simpsons and Gilmore Girls.

It’s the seventh most popular cocktail in America, but we’d be remiss if we didn’t point out that this statistic is from a drinker’s perspective, not a mixologist’s. In fact, according to a survey conducted by Alcohol.com and republished by Yahoo, 30 percent of bartenders are strongly antiLong Island Iced Tea. It’s not hard to guess why: the long ingredient list makes for a more involved mixology process, which isn’t ideal for your average drinks pro’s busy Thursday night behind the bar. Also not ideal? Having to toss out difficult patrons who had one too many of these potent cocktails. Considering this drink’s chaotic legacy, you’d think that Long Island would be hesitant to claim it as their own. In fact, it’s the exact opposite—there are actually two Long Islands, and they both want the credit.

The first potential birthplace of this drink: Long Island, New York. In the immortal words of SNL’s Stefan, this place has everything: $50 salads in the Hamptons, a prolific modern serial killer, Billy Joel, no less than three sitcoms about a workingclass ItalianAmerican guy and his irritated wife (Everybody Loves Raymond, the Kevin James syndicated universe), and an iconic, instantly identifiable regional accent. Does the Long Island Iced Tea also belong on this list? Yes, if you believe Bob Butt, a bartender at the OBI East in Hampton Bays in 1972, who entered a contest to create a new drink using triple sec. Determined to establish a legacy that will transcend his embarrassing name, Butt chooses violence: he shakes vodka, rum, gin, tequila, triple sec, sour mix and a splash of Coke and pours it into a tall highball glass. Here’s a quote from the website Butt ran until his passing in 2014: The Long Island Iced Tea, as we know and love it, is truly a product of Long Island, created by a true Long Islander. However, he also equivocated that possibly, similar concoctions were created elsewhere, at another time.

This begrudging aside brings us to the second possible origin story, which takes place in Long Island, Tennessee, a small local community in the larger city of Kingsport. Back in the 1920s, a bootlegger called Charles Old Man Bishop created a very similar drink without the triple sec or sour mix, instead with whiskey and maple syrup. Its pale amber color meant it could pass for regular, nonalcoholic iced tea, a major plus for Prohibitionera drinkers because it allowed them to hide their boozing in plain sight. Two decades later, the drink was further refined by his son Ransom Bishop (a name that is, fittingly, the exact opposite of Bob Butt), who added lemon juice, soda water and/or Coke, bringing the recipe closer to the Long Island Iced Tea we know and love today.

The Butt contingent formally challenged the Bishop hive to a Battle for the Tea in 2018, and the two Long Islands had their official throwdown at a Maryland bar (neutral turf) the following year. The judges voted 32 in Tennessee’s favor, but the New Yorkers, being New Yorkers, insisted the competition was rigged. Despite these (seemingly) conclusive results, the respective tourism boards of both Long Islands continue to boast about being the birthplace of the cocktail, with Kingstown even installing a downtown mural to pay homage to the drink in 2023. For what it’s worth, experts are more dubious of the Tennessee story, largely because vodka wasn’t distilled and sold on U.S. soil until the late 1930s.

But here’s a more pressing question: Is this cocktail even worth feuding over? If you make it right, sure! The ideal Long Island Iced Tea is citrusy, sweet and tangy, a tiny bit fizzy, and very strong, but also smooth, balanced and refreshing. Fresh lemon juice is critical, as well as underdoing it on the Coke—just a little splash to darken and finish the drink. You’ll want to shake this one, not stir it, for maximum integration. In terms of presentation, keep it dead simple tk with a single lemon wedge. You could also try the various twists on this cocktail: the Long Beach Iced Tea, a West Coast fave, uses cranberry juice rather than Coke, while the melonforward Tokyo Iced Tea swaps in Midori for the soda. Then there’s the Adios Motherf*cker, sometimes called the Electric Iced Tea. Instead of triple sec, this cocktail uses blue curaao, a syrupy, bittersweet orange liqueur, a fun, tikiinspired neoncolored variation that’s huge in Vegas, college towns and the American club scene.

No matter what variation of this drink you plan to enjoy, just be mindful of how hard this drink hits. Sip slowly, stay safe, boat responsibly and put aside some bail money. You know, just in case.