21 Nov The Warmth of a Cuppa

If there were ever a flavor that could define a place, Missoula, Montana might be best captured in a cup of tea — specifically, a cup of Evening in Missoula. Add hot water to the herbal blend from Montana Tea & Spice Trading, and the essence of the city comes to life through a medley of aromatic herbs. Chamomile, rosehips, raspberry leaf, peppermint, lemongrass, star anise, lavender, wild cherry bark, red clover, wintergreen, and other fragrant flora create the company’s longtime best-selling tea — slightly sweet, soothing, wild, and unmistakably Montana.

A cup of tea for two awaits in the cozy atmosphere of the Lake Missoula Tea Company tea bar in Missoula, Montana.

The story of this iconic blend begins in 1972, when 11 twenty-somethings opened Butterfly Herbs, a tea and whole-bean coffee shop located downtown on Higgins Avenue. Among these idealistic entrepreneurs was Bruce Lee, a University of Montana graduate with a natural gift for creating imaginative flavor profiles.

Evening in Missoula is Montana Tea & Spice Trading’s iconic blend, the story behind which dates back to 1972.

Bruce, according to his wife and business partner, Sherri Lee, had a talent for tea blending that was both intuitive and inventive. She recalls watching him work like a mad scientist, adding dashes of this and pinches of that to rich bases of green, black, or white tea. Sometimes, he would develop an entire line of teas in a single afternoon. “Bruce would get an idea in his head and just start mixing,” Sherri says. “He would tweak things here and there, but the concept usually came fully formed. That was true for Evening in Missoula.”

Sherri Lee is the owner of Montana Tea & Spice Trading, a venture she began with her late husband, Bruce.

His iconic blend quickly gained popularity and was distributed nationwide. Sherri believes much of the tea’s enduring appeal lies in its layered complexity — and the nostalgia it evokes for people who first encountered it while living or studying in Missoula. “With the name, I think there’s some sentimentality about it,” she adds.

Montana Tea & Spice Trading’s colorful labels are hard to miss.

After a fire in Butterfly Herbs’ basement in the early 1980s, Bruce sold the retail business. But in response to customer demand, the couple moved the wholesale operation to the back of their home before eventually relocating to a larger space on West Broadway. Though Bruce passed away in 2004, Sherri continues to run Montana Tea & Spice Trading in his honor, leading a team of 11 employees who are “like family” and shipping teas across the country, with wholesale accounting for about 90 percent of the business. She hasn’t counted the total number of tea blends in years, “but there are hundreds” and Evening in Missoula remains the company’s top seller, followed by Montana Gold, a rooibos herbal tea blended with cinnamon, orange peel, and cloves.

These barrels house the components of Montana Tea & Spice Trading’s many blends.

All of Montana Tea & Spice’s products are individually packed by one of Sherri’s small team of 11 employees.

“I just want to keep this going. And I want to keep it going primarily because of Bruce,” Sherri says.

For many Montanans, the tea at Butterfly Herbs was their introduction to specialty tea, a warm drink outside of Lipton or coffee.

“I remember drinking tea there as a kid,” says Heather Kreilick, cofounder of Lake Missoula Tea Company. “Back in the ’70s, they really brought awareness to tea in Missoula, and across Montana.”

Montana Tea & Spice Trading wholesale orders can be shipped anywhere across the country.

In 2012, Heather and her husband, Jake, founded Lake Missoula Tea Company inside the historic Beaux-Arts style Masonic Temple. Their tea bar offers more than 150 blends, while a separate facility handles wholesale and small-batch production. The Kreilicks also prioritize ethical sourcing and working with small-scale tea farmers.

Heather explains that they may work on developing a tea blend for many years before releasing it. Customer favorites include their Earl Grey Blue — a luxurious London Fog with vanilla, bergamot, and woody notes — and their best-selling green tea, Afternoon in Paris, a refreshing spicy ginger with fruity berries. They also offer an array of seasonal teas, such as Glacial Mango Tango, “with a kiss of coconut,” in the summer and Willy Wonka Chocolate Cardamom, which features a “butterscotch undercurrent,” during the winter.

A fresh cup of loose-leaf tea is ready to be steeped.

For Heather, one of the most rewarding aspects of running a tea company in Montana is connecting with the people who make her blends part of their daily routine. “People are drawn to specific flavors and will be loyal to one type of tea,” she says. “Over time, I start to associate certain people with the tea they love.”

While Montana Tea & Spice Trading helped lay the foundation for Montana’s tea culture in the 1970s, since then others have built on that legacy. Today, tea is enjoying a quiet renaissance with small shops and wholesale businesses popping up across the state.

Lake Missoula Tea Company’s tea bar is located in the heart of the bustling downtown Missoula corridor.

Along with Lake Missoula Tea Company and Montana Tea & Spice Trading in Missoula, there are tea-related businesses in Bozeman, Big Timber, Helena, Great Falls, and Lewistown. Tumblewood Teas, which was founded in 2009 in Big Timber, is a women-owned business committed to sourcing locally and supporting Montana producers when possible, and otherwise importing directly from tea growers across the globe. And on Bozeman’s Main Street, Steep Mountain Tea House — which opened as Townshend’s Teahouse in 2014 and changed ownership, rebranding as Steep Mountain in 2021 — offers a diverse menu of boba, chai, lattes, and more than 100 globally sourced loose-leaf teas.

The tea bar offers a warm, welcoming atmosphere for enjoying a cup of tea or purchasing any of their numerous varieties.

Sherri notes that the interest in tea continues to grow, particularly among those seeking health-conscious alternatives to sugary drinks or high-caffeine coffees. And there are more people turning to it for its anti-inflammatory,
restorative qualities, adds Heather, noting that Chinese medicine initially used tea for its therapeutic and medicinal properties.

Heather and Jake Kreilick founded Lake Missoula Tea Company in 2012, inside the historic Beaux-Arts style Masonic Temple in Missoula, Montana.

Perhaps it’s the long winters — when temperatures plunge below zero and darkness falls by 4:30 p.m. — that make a cup of tea so comforting to many living in the Treasure State. In a climate where winter might stretch for six months, the act of making a warm drink becomes a seasonal ritual.

For Sherri, the warmth that tea has brought runs deep. She laughs when reflecting on just how ingrained Evening in Missoula has become for her. “I don’t know if it’s even the flavor so much as its history with me,” she says. “It’s so much a part of my life that just drinking it — every part of it — is muscle memory.”

Matcha, a finely ground green tea, is one of Lake Missoula Tea Company’s many popular offerings.

That sentiment is shared by many Montanans who have personal histories tied to the blend established all those years ago. Whether brewed alone at dawn or shared after a snowy ski day, tea, in its many forms, offers a moment of connection — with flavor, place, and one another.

A Lake Missoula Tea Company employee works in their production facility, which handles wholesale and small-batch production.

Freelance writer Christine Rogel is an elementary art teacher in Gallup, New Mexico; christinerogel.com. 

Nick VanHorn left the hustle and bustle of Fort Collins, Colorado after college in search of wide-open spaces. Since landing in Montana, VanHorn has worn a variety of hats, from ski patroller to bike mechanic to broadcast television professional. Whatever the task, VanHorn can be found with a camera in-hand to document the journey.