Sangamon Sunset Red has beautiful long leaves, and delivers sweet undertones of honey and sour apricot. Hold off on milk or honey - the flavor is divine. Additionally, this tea received the North American Tea Buyer's Black Tea Award. We are proud to carry this award winning tea in Missoula, Montana.
Handpicked from the ancient tea trees by the Dai people for millennia, Sangamon Sunset Red comes from Jingmai Mountain in Yunnan. This particular tea is picked after cicada-like bugs feast on the edges of the leaf. The chemistry of the leaf changes due to a reaction to the cicadas agitating the leaf. Because the ancient tea trees grow in a natural, rainforest environment, the leaf provides a unique combination of rich antioxidants, nutrients, and minerals.
Tea name background: As you probably know, Lake Missoula Tea Company refers to glacial Lake Missoula, which existed in the Pleistocene Epoch. This name plays with geologic terms, and Sangamon refers to the last interglacial period when glaciers receded (approximately 80,000 years ago), and just before the development of Glacial Lake Missoula. This was a period of relative calm, allowing mega-fauna to thrive, including the woolly mammoth and saber tooth cat. "Red" is the term Chinese use to refer to black tea, because loose leaf black tea is actually red in color, not black!
China
Grown on farms we know by name, then blended in small batches at our tea bar in Missoula, Montana.