Last week, Party and I attended a tasting showcasing winners of this year's San Francisco World Spirits Competition. The high moment of the day occurred when I got a taste of something I've been dying to try: sweet tea-flavored vodka made by South Carolina-based Firefly Distillery. I'm a fiend for Southern cuisine, and that includes sweet tea, a drink so ubiquitous that it's just referred to as "tea." Southerners also love to spike their tea, so it seems natural that someone would come up with tea-flavored vodka. That genius would be Jim Irvin, a distiller based in Wadmalaw Island, SC. Irvin, also a winemaker, distills the vodka four times, imbues it with tea grown from a plantation five miles away, and sweetens the finished product with sugarcane from Louisiana.
We tried one of the distillery's newest vodka flavors, Mint Tea, which won a Double Gold Medal in the competition. It has a natural minty finish that tastes both soothing and refreshing. It was so easy to drink alone that I'm almost certain I could enjoy an entire pitcher before realizing the product's full effects. I can't wait to buy a bottle for myself!
Have you tried Firefly's tea-flavored vodkas? What did you think of them?
Mulberry
Dorothy Perkins
Inspirations
Mmm...I haven't seen the Mint Tea version yet, but their regular Sweet Tea vodka RULES. I like it mixed with Simply Lemonade (1:1 ratio) - one of my fave authors, Joshilyn Jackson, wrote about the combination on her blog and dubbed it the Evil Arnold Palmer, or a Golf Club to the Head. The Simply Lemonade is important, though; most store-bought lemonades have a weird aftertaste that affects the taste of the drink. Simply is the only one I've found that is yummy and doesn't affect the taste. Though I bet homemade lemonade would be even better (I'm just too lazy to make it)...
1It's great with just water too... makes it just like sweet tea!
2Sounds delish! I'm a sucker for marketing, I'd buy it just for the distillery name and cute bottle.
3I love mixing it with water also! Be careful though, it'll sneak up on you!
4I love firefly. It's delicious with some water and a dash of lemon juice. I haven't tried any of the flavored ones though.
5I was out somewhere yesterday and they had samples, I think it was the sweet tea flavor (either that or the lemon). It was okay, but pretty artificial tasting.
6I would drink it straight up as a shot, or in a highball glass with club soda. Yum!
7Then we could call it a "health food" drink???????????
8my best friend lives in philly now and a bunch of her girlfriends came with her to visit me and brought this with them...they had me so excited to try it and i was pretty unimpressed...i really wanted to like it, but with the lemonade, it was just soooo sweet and the plain water seemed to be missing something...(maybe fresh lemon juice and water?)...i agree with whoever said it was artificial tasting...i imagine mint would be worse
9I love this stuff! On the rocks with a wedge of lemon....artificial??- its an all natural product
10I love the sweet tea vodka, I mix it with Snapple lemonade or the country at home kinda that you mix with water. I don't like to drink vodka alone so I'd be interested in finding out what would be good to mix the mint tea vodka with?
11I drank this mixed with lemonade all summer. (I've always heard it called a John Daly.) No matter what it's called, it's delicious.
12I've got to find some of this!
13Firefly is so gooood but kinda dangerous
we just mix it with water, and you end up
drinking more than you would normally drink because it seriously tastes like plain sweet tea. We're actually going to be in Charleston next week and plan on visiting their distillery!
14Anyone heading to Charleston should definitely check out the distillery. You can taste all of the flavors, including a lemonade flavor that isn't on the market yet. I went there in August and it was a great experience!
15i never post online but i'm an avid lover of all the firefly flavored vodkas. i live in NC and my friends and i pretty much consider it an elixir of the gods. the regular and lemon are both great, the peach flavor tastes EXACTLY like peach snapple (great for someone who wants to try it out, but isn't the biggest fan of plain sweet tea) and i've never had the mint but i'd bet it would give an extra bit of southern twang to a traditional julep.
the most interesting thing we've done so far with it is make mojitos, trust me its delicious. just replace the rum with original flavor firefly and instead of soda use tonic. my friends and i like it across the board, those of us who hate mojitos love it, as well as the ones who hate tea.
and as for the firefly lemonade, i have yet to find a bar that does it right. and everyone calls it something else: we just took Arnold Palmer and shortened it to A-Palm...then we called it Napalm...because, the drink is pretty killer if you don't keep count.
whew...long post is long.
16Lilkimbo - we call it a John Daly, too! And here I thought my friends and I were original. It is great with just water and lemon. But veeeeeeeery dangerous.
17I visited the Distillery Yesterday and while I have had All most all of there Tea Vodkas and I am one of the biggest fans I must say the new product that they have now is what really has me ready for Spring of Next year.
I sampled The New LEMONADE Vodka and it is going to give the Sweet Tea Vodka a run for its money,
It is 70 proof and Mixed with water it taste like a lemonade you would get at any County fair or on Grannys front porch
It is only sold on location right now but come spring of next year they said it should start being sent to stores
Look out wold this is going to be the next great Firefly
18Post New Comment
Please share your opinion with our community, but make sure it is on topic and follows our Community Rules. We moderate comments and prohibit personal attacks, threats, spam, lewd images, or the promotion of your personal website.