In Montana’s Garden City, Missoula-based tea enthusiast Sherri Lee began blending tea on May Day, 1972 as Montana Tea & Spice Trading LLC. The company has since grown, developing herbal tea blends that range from fruity to floral, spicy to sweet and beyond. According to the modest website’s expansive catalog, MTST believes that “teas could be emotive, mingling perceptions both old and new, familiar yet delightfully strange, exciting with a promise of promise; teas tasting complex as good wine, yet as simple as a day in May.” The Five Valleys Chai is a decaffeinated blend, based on rooibos tea and blended with cinnamon, black pepper, cloves, coriander, star anise, ginger and cardamom—all of which are showcased, from the nose to the palate. Warming and piquant with sweetness and complex texture, this is Montana Chai.
