I grew up in the deep south. Now I live in Japan, where tea is serious business. I will spend the rest of my life never understanding how I guzzled iced tea as a kid.
If you do it right, you end up with sugar in supersaturation...
and with diabetes.
Tea is mostly pointless pigeon sweat though, so using it to add the faintest hint of color and flavor to make sugar water into caramel water is fine by me.