Be Smart

For the past year, Mr. Wiseman has explored his ideas about social practice as art by staging color-themed tea parties in vacant lots, parks and public buses in Portland. “My favorite was the midnight party on Burnside Bridge,” says one habitué, tonight wearing a Granny Smith green leisure suit and fuzzy white fedora. “The theme was black, white and shades of gray.

Building on the success of established Portland tea businesses like Tazo Tea, Stash and Oregon Chai, the city is host to one of the most distinctive tea scenes in the country. Locally owned tea spots have sprouted throughout the city, supported by an epicurean population that travels miles for the perfect cup. From mushroom tea to tea paired with sake, these citizens of the Pacific Rim are thinking way beyond tea and crumpets. And no tea bags allowed.

Portlanders demand the best brew, wherever it's served. They usually visit the Barefoot Sage on scruffy, bustling Hawthorne Boulevard to get foot massage and fabulous tea in the same breath. Full-length curtains drape the glass storefront from inside, but the place still looks suspiciously like a hardware store. Inside is a hushed and shimmering world where clients sipping tea blends like “jasmine harmony” recline on enormous plum-velvet sofas, toes soaking in terra cotta basins filled with hot water and rose petals.

Most mainstream tea drinkers haven't heard of kombucha, a tea-based fermented beverage erroneously known as mushroom tea. A local legend, Steve Lee (a co-founder of both Stash and Tazo Tea), had begun a new venture aimed at bringing this ancient health-boosting brew to grocery stores. The homebrewed kombucha can be find at Tea Chai Té, (that's “tea” in three different languages). The owner, Dominic Valdes, who carries a wide selection of tea (including medicinal teas and herbs), plays Bob Marley on the stereo and stocks bottles of sparkling homebrewed oolong kombucha in the fridge.

“We're trying to take the doily out of the tea experience,” Mr. Valdes said. we can down the twinkling elixir in a few gulps — wispy culture and all. According to the Tea Chai Té brochure, the drink provides 14 distinct health benefits, all packed with a probiotic punch.

Matt Thomas, Mr. Valdes's former partner, struck out on his own, opening Townshend's Alberta Street Teahouse along artsy NE Alberta Street. Mr. Thomas says the area has attracted creative people fleeing the gentrification of the downtown Pearl district over the last few years. His lounge shows a revolving exhibit of work by local artists. Customers relax to mellow energy sounds from the British '70s folk musician Nick Drake to the New Jersey indie rockers Yo La Tengo.

“I don't want this to be a place where people feel like they have to whisper,” Mr. Thomas says as he whipped up a spicy homemade chai latte.

This accepting, experimental atmosphere is echoed at the TeaZone, in Portland's increasingly tony Pearl district. During the day, the TeaZone is a haven for tea aficionados.

On a Friday night, in the TeaZone's speakeasy-like back room, doing just that, a brand consultant from Virginia, Mr. Mattox is a recent but enthusiastic convert to fine tea in all its forms, and an excellent guide to the wacky selection of tea cocktails like the Genghis Kowboy (“an antioxidant workhorse of extra strength green tea and whisky served on the rocks”).

PORTLAND is also a magnet for those seeking serious knowledge about Asian teas and traditions. In the summer, local Japanese tea association members demonstrate the “way of tea” in the Japanese Garden in Portland. Every month, the Portland Wakai Tea Association is host to guests in an authentic Japanese teahouse on the wooded grounds of a private residence. Throughout the year, the Tower of Cosmic Reflections teahouse, in Portland's Classical Chinese Garden, provides a tranquil Ming Dynasty-style sanctuary where tea lovers from all over the United States come to channel the Middle Kingdom's venerable tea traditions.

At the Tao of Tea tasting room on SE Belmont Street, it's easy to feel as if you're in a traditional Parisian wine shop except that the sommelier is Veerinder Chawla, the founder and a respected tea merchant. And instead of dusty bottles, shelves groan under 100 metal canisters of rare leaf teas. The air smells sweet, not corky, and resonates with soothing, chanting monastic music.

Next door, Mr. Chawla has opened an Asian-style teahouse restaurant. Handsome in a homemade way, the space was created from reclaimed materials and bamboo. Here you can relax over a pot of ayurvedic holy basil tea and a plate of chewy, ginger-spiked green-tea tofu.

“Tea is the way I connect with people,” says a former Tao of Tea employee, Paul Rosenberg, who has recently left to start his own tea business. Sometimes Mr Rosenberg invite his guests to taste a costly 1970 pu-erh tea made of leaves culled from century-old wild tea trees in Yunnan Province in southwest China. The sparkling brown infusion tastes nourishing, like the scent of earth after a summer downpour. “This tea has serious chi,” Mr. Rosenberg says, using the Chinese word for life force.

VISITOR INFORMATION

The Barefoot Sage (tea and foot massage), 1844 SE Hawthorne Boulevard, (503) 239-7116; www.thebarefootsage.com. Forty-five-minute foot bath and “royal massage” combo, $75.

Tea Chai Té, 734 NW 23rd Avenue, (503) 228-0900; www.teachaite.com. Bottle of kombucha, $3.75.

Townshend's Alberta Street Teahouse, 2223 NE Alberta Street, (503) 445-6699. Medium cup of chai, $3.35.

TeaZone and Camellia Lounge, 510 NW 11th Avenue, (503) 221-2130; www.teazone.com. Cocktails range from $6 to $8.

Tower of Cosmic Reflections Chinese Teahouse, 239 NW Everett Street (inside Portland Classical Chinese Garden), (503) 224-8455; www.portlandchinesegarden.com. Pot of oolong gong fu style tea, $8.

Tao of Tea tasting room and teahouse, 3430 SE Belmont Street, (503) 736-0119; www.taooftea.com. Shanti ayurvedic tea is $4 a pot.

Wakai Urasenke Tea Association holds monthly Japanese tea ceremonies in English; www.teaandzen.com/presentations.htm.

Private tea and sake tastings, Paul Rosenberg, (503) 230-0953; www.heavenstea.com. Call or send an e-mail message for information.