You would expect the basement of a century old building to smell of mildew and wood, but there is one that smells of tea and herbs.
The tasting room of Revival Tea Company can be found below a historically old three story brick building located along Main avenue across from Auntie’s Bookstore. When entering underneath the hanging sign, customers will find themselves looking down a flight of stairs that will bring them to what appears to be a sort of rustic speakeasy with a bar and lounge. However, behind the bar, where bottles would be, are jars full of different varieties of tea. It is here a guest can choose from an expanding list of 67 different craft teas, tea mocktails, and hopped teas, to enjoy in a unique setting.
“We blend all of our own tea,” said owner and co-founder of Revival Tea Company, Drew Henry. “We have 300 ingredients we import from over 25 countries. What we do is take those ingredients and then turn them into unique blends. Out of those 67, there’s about 15 that are just single varietal teas or herbs. But the rest of them are different blends that we’ve come up with.”
To add to that, they have recently added a boba bar to the first floor that offers even more varieties of drinks.
The basement itself was in fact originally used as a speakeasy during a period of prohibition in Washington.
“The three story building housed the saloon of the Inland Empire’s leading liquor dealer… Jimmy Durkin,” said an article by the Spokane City/County Historic Preservation Office. “Durkin’s saloon operated into the advent of Prohibition in Washington State, 1916, survived and plodded on after its repeal in 1933.”
Along with blending, selling, and serving tea in different forms, Revival also works to educate people about the different factors involved in tea and the process of making it. They do this on location through their “teaologists,” on their Youtube channel, and eventually plan to give tours.
“Some people don’t know that you’re supposed to steep different teas at different times and temperatures,” said J’Lee Schneider, tasting room manager. “You can actually burn the tea.”
When first starting in 2018, Revival Tea Company only sold one kind of tea.
“We were very product focused,” said Henry. “We thought that if we had what we thought would be the best product on the market, that the rest would fall into place. So we started with one tea, which was our freshly crafted spiced chai. We did a Kickstarter, opened up a website, and in the first 60 days we shipped that tea to 24 countries and every state.”
They never had any intention of opening a physical location to serve and sell tea.
“That 1000% came just from realizing that there was a want for it here in Spokane,” said Henry.
They now have around 2,500 wholesale partners and are planning on opening new locations all along the west coast over the next decade. For these reasons Revival Tea has been called one of the fastest growing tea companies in the U.S.
“Tea had just become so boring,” said Henry “And we’ve seen this movement happen in beer, whiskey and coffee, where there was more of a craft focus and those products started to be held to a higher standard just in terms of flavor and ingredients. As a tea drinker myself, we really wanted to start this craft movement in tea, where we blend in small batches, we make a super bold flavor, use fresh ingredients and yeah, we’ve had a really good reaction to that idea.”