Ditch your builder’s for something a bit stronger this season.

In Britain, the industrial quantities of sun this summer have been habit-changing. Suits have been discarded in favour of shorts. Sun cream scents the Tube. The small talk is occasionally: “Isn’t it lovely?” To complement the usual: “Isn’t it horrendous?” And I have begun to do the unthinkable, as an Englishman, and take my tea cold. I know. Wild. But hear me out. I’m coming to the conclusion that tea (+ booze) + sun = the perfect summer-long sipper.

I usually drink copious amounts of regular tea (Yorkshire, please), and I’ve tended to look upon the iced alternative as an American aberration, to be filed alongside strawberry frappuccinos and Diet Dr Pepper as a guilty pleasure at best. Iced tea is of course a Southern US staple, but it’s usually sweetened with industrial quantities of sugar and peach flavouring down in the type-2-diabetes belt. Still, while in LA I noticed that the more progressive places, such as Go Get Em Tiger on Larchmont Boulevard, were paying a lot of attention to their teas, usually serving them cold, unsweetened and occasionally fizzy, too. They were quite nice in the heat. Especially black tea over ice with a spritz of lemon and a splurge of honey. Subtle. Fresh. Fragrant. Bitter. The sort of thing you could drink all afternoon. Unlike, say, Diet Dr Pepper.

Soon I was making batches of the stuff, experimenting with different blends and techniques. Darjeeling, Earl Grey, elderberry? Fresh peaches, lemon, mango? Cinnamon, cardamom or fresh mint? All this before the “Eureka!” moment, when I had to placate a large crowd at short notice. I happened to have a large pitcher of iced peach tea grooving in the fridge. With a hefty measure of rum added, it went down a storm.

“Tea does two things to alcohol,” confirms Ms Henrietta Lovell, the adventuress behind the Rare Tea Company (she sources tea for restaurants such as Noma, Eleven Madison Park and Chateau Marmont). “As a lengthener, it’s clean, it’s pure, it adds flavour and it has lots of healthy, antioxidant properties, so it will actually rehydrate you while you’re drinking. But it also has caffeine in it. It’s the thinking person’s vodka Red Bull.” It works particularly well on long summer nights when there’s only so much sugary tonic you can put away – “a clean and sustainable high”, as Ms Lovell has it.

You can make iced tea with any varietal you fancy: oolong, Assam, PG Tips if you must, or any number of herbal infusions, though loose tea leaves are much better than tea bags.

Tea and alcohol have a long and bonhomous history. Tea was the core ingredient of the punches of the 17th century: Planter’s Punch was Jamaican rum, (green) tea, sugar and spices, for example. But alcohol has further affinities with tea, says Mr Gethin Jones, mixologist at the Japanese-inspired Cottonopolis in Manchester, who is highlighting tea cocktails at the city’s forthcoming Cocktails In The City event.

“We like using tea in our recipes as there’s such a wide range of flavours that can be used to complement and accentuate cocktails – from tannic and classic tea profiles to fruity and floral blends,” he says. “Tea infuses really well in spirits and can be used to add subtle notes to a drink or act as the dominant ingredient.” Mr Jones works with the blenders at Quinteassential on his tea-based cocktails, which include the tiki-inspired Tomorrow’s Winds Will Blow Tomorrow, which blends four types of rum with grilled mango and tea, and The Fruit Of The Tree Falls To Its Root, which infuses green tea with a rose and graviola mirin.

It’s one bit of mixological jiggery-pokery that is incredibly easy to replicate at home too. Simply leave a teabag or even better, real tea leaves – Earl Grey works well – to steep in gin for around three minutes, prodding it now and then. In not much longer than it takes to make a decent cup of tea, you will have a richer, darker base spirit to play with.

(For all of these recipes, it’s a good idea to have lots of ice to hand, ideally cut into as large blocks as possible. Simply freeze water in large plastic containers, then carefully hack into the ’bergs on a chopping board with a short, stubby knife.)

Serves four Ingredients:

2 peaches 1 lemon 4 spoonfuls loose black tea 300ml boiling water 200ml golden rum Golden sugar syrup, to taste Dash Angostura bitters Dash absinthe Sprig fresh mint Nutmeg

Method:

Fill a large glass jug to the brim with ice cut into as large cubes as possible. Slice up one of the peaches and half the lemon and add to a tea pot along with the tea. Pour over boiling water and let it steep for no more than three minutes. Pour this into the ice-filled jug. Add the rum, a squeeze of lemon and sugar syrup to taste, as well as the classic Don the Beachcomber accent of bitters and absinthe. Garnish with slices from the second peach, plus fresh mint and a grating of nutmeg, and serve in tea cups.

Ingredients:

100ml cold-brewed tea 50ml gin 1 lemon

Method:

Make the cold brew by leaving loose tea to infuse in fresh water: a light, fragrant tea (silver tip, jasmine, sencha) is good here. You want about 1 tsp tea (or 1 teabag) per 200ml water. You can add a little cucumber, lemon slices, rose petals, mint, whatever you fancy too. It will keep in the fridge for a week or so. To serve, simply mix with gin over ice and garnish with a lemon zest twist.

Ingredients:

50ml Earl Grey-infused gin 15ml egg white (optional) 15ml lemon juice 15ml marmalade (about 1 dsp)

Method:

Steep the gin in Earl Grey tea for a couple of minutes and discard the bag/leaves. If you are using egg white, shake all the ingredients hard without ice, and then again with the ice, before double-straining into a cocktail glass.

**From The Spirits: A Guide to Modern Cocktailing (Vintage) by Mr Richard Godwin **