Awhile back, I wrote about hearing about Sweet Tea Vodka. Well, a friend of ours brought it over last weekend, and despite the fact that I don't generally drink vodka, I couldn't resist having a wee sip.
Wow.
It actually tasted like sweet tea mixed with vodka. I know, that's a very basic description. But I'm talking southern grandmaw sweet tea here. So, I got curious and went to the website to check it out a little more. Turns out this South Carolina distillery gets their tea leaves from "tea grown on a plantation just five miles from the distillery." Now, as far as I know, there is just one tea plantation in the United States, the one owned by Bigelow. It just happens to be on the same island as the distillery, so there you go. Not only distilled in the US but grown here too. Even the cane sugar used to sweeten the tea comes from Louisiana cane sugar.
Now, that sip I had went down so smooth, I didn't want to mix it with anything, except for that I knew it was a lot stronger than it tasted. So we poured in a little bit of rooibos peach iced tea for me, and a little bit of lemonade for my friend (which we dubbed a naughty Arnold Palmer). Turns out Firefly calls the second a "Spiked Palmer."
Going to Firefly's website was quite eye-opening, more than just about the ingredients. They have quite a comprehensive cocktail list for this lovely vodka, and I found out that they have several other tea vodkas as well: raspberry, peach, mint, and lemon. I think I might be investigating these before too long. I would love to visit this distillery someday!
