The previous paragraph established the antecedent as “sweet iced tea”, in opposition to “iced sweet tea”. Those were the beverages the post was about, and once that distinction was established, I used shortened versions. I would hope that it’s obvious that if you want unsweetened iced tea, you would not add sweetener to it.
My regards to your lady, and should some future Doper gathering lead you both to my doorstep, I promise to prepare two separate (and clearly labeled) pitchers of tea. 
Dilmah is my thrice-daily drink, but almost totally unknown in the US. (I am Australian but live in California). I buy mine on Amazon.
Re: OP, yes, it must contain actual tea, or it’s a tisane. I’ve picked this nit with enough American cow-orkers over the years to be thoroughly incorrigible about it.
You have to understand that Chronos also thinks beans are an essential ingredient in chili. So we are obviously dealing with a [del]deranged mind[/del] [del]total sicko[/del] different mindset.
For a while, McDonald’s was serving something that they claimed was Southern sweet tea, but it was even more vile than the genuine article.
The biggest problem with sweet tea is that it’s overbrewed. Tea leaves contain all sorts of good flavors, but they also contain tannin, and too much tannin will make the resulting beverage undrinkable. Fortunately, the good flavors dissolve out of the tea more quickly than the tannin does. So if you know when to take the leaves out of the water, you can get most of the good flavors, but very little of the tannin. Now, of course, different people have different tastes for how strong they like their tea, but the solution here is to change the amount of tea leaves: If you want a stronger brew, you use more tea. Southern sweet tea, however, instead achieves its strength by brewing longer, and so gets the same amount of good flavor, but much more of the unpalatable tannins.
I’m not a sweet tea aficionado, but I have had it a few times down in my journeys, but I’d say the tannin works as a counterpoint to the sweetness. (Although I suspect it’s more that sugar was added to counterpoint the tannins, originally.) Then again, I like tannins.
And white barbecue sauce is great!
here’s while? They still have it around here.
This thread is some weak tea.
tea
gossip or personal information belonging to someone else; the scoop; news
Spill the tea about what happened at the club.
I heard that was ‘T’, as in ‘trash’. ‘What’s the T?’
Well…McDonald’s. That’s really all that needs to be said.
I addressed tannins in my wall of text. From the standpoint of the sweet tea drinker, the tannin content is generally a feature, not a bug. Red wine has a high tannin content as well–do you tell wine drinkers that red wines are an abomination, and that they should only drink white wines?
Tea - a drink made by boiling leaves in water, or a drink made to resemble such concoctions.
I agree that the default is Camellia sinensis. I would even go further as to say that the default is fully oxidized C. sinensis. Depending on the region, the default may be hot or cold. And it may even have some extra ingredients. And I would be sure to specify if I were doing something other than the local default.
But I wouldn’t consider that part of the definition. AT most, it would just be “usually made from…”
It is specifically the bitterness of the tannins that I miss in having to use non-caffeinated teas. I actually have wondered if there are bittering herbs I could use to fix that.
If you like bitter, look for wormwood, quassia, or gentian. Around here, I could at least find wormwood tea in Eastern European shops. I have a feeling it will overpower, though. Shit’s strong, as are the others. You can also buy tannin powder in home brew shops, too, though I have never tasted it straight. I have some somewhere around the house, but I’m not quite sure where, else I’d taste it and report back,
It’s not just the bitterness; it’s also astringency. Tannins bind with certain proteins in saliva, changing its viscosity and reducing its lubricating effects. Ever noticed that your tongue, or the roof of your mouth, feels rougher after drinking tea or red wine? That’s an effect of the tannins; the astringency produces a kind of clean feeling and may even help clear food particles.
Ask for “tea” round these parts, and the question “ordinary*, or rooibos?” will come back. So from the cradle I’ve been conditioned to accept a non-C. sinesis drink as included in the “tea” set, and as pedantic as I can be about a great many things, this one has never bothered me.
*bog-standard black ceylon is meant here. If you want Earl Grey or other, you’ll have to specify.
FWIW, I had a house guest that left some tea behind. There was a store-brand super-pak, a well knowsn national brand, and a pretentious designer label… I was once inspired to do a test, and made a cup of each one, identical process. I couldn’t detect any difference.
Depending on the three specific brands, I’m not surprised. The absolute cheapest tea you can get anywhere is Benner, from Aldi, and it’s actually a pretty good tea, better than Lipton and about as good as Bigelow (probably the two best-known brands in the US). There are some brands I like better, and you might be calling them “pretentious designer labels”, but as always with pretentious designer labels, there are also some that just aren’t very good at all.