“Bonac Tonic” is the nickname for Hampton Dairy lemon-flavored iced tea. Originally made by Schwenk’s Dairy in East Hampton, Bonac Tonic has become an icon for Springs, the area around Accabonac Harbor where family names like Miller, Lester and Bennet ruled.
Kevin Miller claims to have been the first to coin the phrase “Bonac Tonic,” and there is no reason not to believe him. He is certainly the tea’s biggest fan.
Miller, one of the last remaining baymen in East Hampton, is never seen without a large cooler in the back of his pickup truck. His blue and white Igloo is filled to the top with fresh ice and pintsize cartons of iced tea daily.
Miller is so attached to the drink, he uses the cartons as his calling card. If the person he visits is not home, he will leave an empty container on their doorstep or driveway. Luckily they are biodegradable.
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When asked why he liked the tea so much, Miller says, “It’s the best iced tea in Bonac.”
When asked how long he’s been drinking it, he says, “Forever.”
When asked when they started making the iced tea, he says, “In the beginning.”
Bonac Tonic began as Schwenk’s Dairy lemon-flavored iced tea and was made at their plant located on Route 114 and Cove Hollow Road, where Riverhead Building Supply is now.
John Schroeder of Sag Harbor followed his father to work at Schwenk’s Dairy in 1976 as one of the younger men at the dairy. “I could give you names but they’re all dead or they don’t remember,” he says of the people who might know the exact year Bonac Tonic was born. “After working in the plant for about a year or so, I actually started to make it.”
The tea wasn’t quite brewed. It was purchased as an instant tea already flavored with lemon in 10-pound boxes. “It had no sweetener at all,” Schroeder says, so Schwenk added pure cane sugar that came in 50 pound bags to the tea in stainless steel vats. It was pasteurized and then cooled and packaged. “There was a formula,” he says.
As years went by, sugar got more expensive and some of the workers got too old to lift the bags, the company switched from cane sugar to what Schroeder called “liquid sugar.” It took “the guys on the inside” and many taste tests to get the new formula to match the old formula. That formula stands today.
The iconic green and yellow paper carton with a picture of a glass of iced tea with lemon slices on the side is sold throughout Long Island and comes in two sizes; half gallon and pint. A onecup serving is 80 calories.
“We couldn’t make it fast enough. We sold it by the millions,” Schroeder says jokingly.
In the early 1980s, Calverton-based Terrace Dairy acquired the East End part of Schwenk’s Dairy. When asked why the tea was so popular, a man who answered the phone at Terrace, which today makes Hampton Dairy lemon-flavored iced tea in a plant in Lehigh, Pennsylvania, says, “People tell me all the time, ‘It’s a great tasting tea. We love it. It’s refreshing and not too sweet.’”
The cult of Bonac Tonic reaches beyond the baymen of Springs. It’s the namesake of an art collective with a record of successful art shows at Ashawagh Hall in Springs.
And the drink has its own Facebook page with 600 friends. Long Island college student Madison unknowingly summed it up best on her “Miss Face” blog. “I’m not sure if it’s a local brand because it’s made on the eastern end of Long Island but either way—so good,” she wrote under a picture of herself holding up a pint carton. “Best tea of life. Called Hampton Dairy—lemon flavored.”
