Adrian Chang and Chris Lewis, the proprietors of Two Trees Tea House in Occidental, need you to know: their establishment is not a tea shop.

Where a tea shop requires turnover, a tea house encourages rest.

“The point of tea houses is for it to be a gathering space for community, to have connection, to have good conversation, to have a laugh, to have a cry, etc., with your community over tea,” Chang said.

And here, Chang insists you can taste the wisdom pulled from the earth in the delicate tea leaves made from trees thousands of years old.

Two Trees Tea House opens March 1 and sells 10 types of single-origin black, red, white and green teas in various sized tins. Soon, they will introduce a curated selection of “pre-loved” items such as teapots and cups, all lovingly restored by Lewis.

They chose to center pre-loved tea accoutrements in an effort to keep the shop low-to-no-waste.

Two Trees Tea House is the culmination of their journey, and of their partnership with Indigenous and decolonial tea gardeners across Asia.

Husband-and-husband team Lewis and Chang met over 15 years ago.

Lewis, from the United Kingdom with roots in Scotland, Wales and England, was working as the creative director of the U.K. department store giant, Harrods, helping expand the company’s reach into Asia. He was in Japan at the time.

Chang, of Chinese descent and originally from San Francisco, was also in Japan and looking to leave the fashion industry.

The two met on a dating app and an instant connection was followed by a multiyear sojourn across Asia, then marriage and several business partnerships including MoriHouse, a pop-up and dumpling class in Occidental.

A space to match their mission

At the end of Bohemian Highway in downtown Occidental the tea house is barely visible from the road. A towering redwood nearly obscures the door of the small blue structure. A plant stand opposite the redwood and a huge laurel tree surrounded by ferns further give the impression of walking through a fairy door or the entrance to a Hobbit home.

The light inside is warm and filled with older wooden furnishings.

Plants are found in several corners of the space, bringing west county nature indoors. A small aquarium and resident cray-fish create a pleasant bubbling sound, not unlike the boil of the kettle behind the tasting counter at the back.

The space inside feels cozy, but not small.

Though they had hosted pop-ups in the past, offering food they had prepared together, they didn’t want to become restaurateurs. The duo wanted a space, but for the better part of four years, had trouble finding and securing a location that suited their needs. Then came Idexa Stern.

Stern, an award-winning tattoo artist, offered the front of her shop to Lewis and Chang, believing in their mission and sharing in the work of fostering community, especially among LGBTQ+ folks.

A sliding-scale model

Chang and Lewis plan to operate on a sliding scale and pay-it-forward model for tea tastings, especially considering the economy and the philosophy behind tea as a healing and community building practice, and not simply a product.

The sale of tea tins, plus donations from people who want to ensure the tea house can continue offering a “pay-what-you-can” experience, will help keep the lights on.

“There are plenty of unhoused folks in our community, and students, and we want to continue to serve them,” Chang said.

Tins of tea in matte black and muted gold sit behind bespoke labels in slightly recessed shelves along the walls and placards feature hand-drawn illustrations of Camellia sinensis sinensis or Camellia sinensis assamica, the two varieties of tea plant for which Two Trees Tea House is named.

Below their origins and varieties, the tea tin labels describe what Lewis and Chang call “sense memories.” These are the sensory memories the teas evoke. The duo also encourages steeping the tea in a traditional Chinese gaiwan, and sipped from delicate porcelain cups to explore sense memories.

To Chang and Lewis, tea is not a product, but a relationship; a practice of harmony that was hard-won over thousands of years of learning and listening to nature.

They chose their teas not for their flavor or how fast they could be produced, but for the “audacity of these young radical tea farmers who are hell-bent on erasing the colonial structures of how the tea business is being run in their countries,” Chang said.

In addition to partnering with radically anti-colonial and Indigenous-owned tea gardens, Two Trees Tea House also partners with businesses that are women-owned and queer-positive, including a partnership in Nepal with Siddha Devi tea estate, which takes in women, children and members of the transgender or Hijra community.