If the pleasant, warm aroma of over 100 tea flavors doesn’t draw your attention, then maybe you really are a coffee drinker. When taking that first step into Portal Tea Company, warm hues of color are displayed in every corner. From the dozens of plants sprawled across every table to the cozy couches and chairs by the windows, you can enjoy your drink in an inviting atmosphere.

Portal Tea Company, founded in Portland in 2003 by co-owners Dominic and Angela Valdes, opened its Eugene location in March 2021 as an expansion from the previous two. The woman-run company prides itself on affordable, warm drinks and a space for creativity to grow. Front and center on their small-font menu says, “Decades of great tea and chill vibes,” something both seen and felt when you step inside.

The Portal Tea Company, referred to by employees as the tea house, began as a place for a tight-knit group of artists involved in Eugene’s local art scene. The current six staff members who run the Eugene location embody a healthy work environment. “The community starts with employees, and that shows to the rest of the customers,” Oksana Kotok, who has been working with the Portal Tea Company for close to three years, said. 

Becoming what Portal Tea Company workers consider a “Tea Tender” takes months of practice to learn the mixtures and timing to bring out the various flavors on their menu. To be a Tea Tender, “you tend to the team and the needs of the customer as far as their tea needs go,” Indyanna Andres, a Portal Tea employee since June, said. 

Not all spots serve tea in the same fashion. The beauty of tea is that each leaf type offers its own unique qualities that accompany its taste. Each leaf has a different steep time, during which tea leaves are immersed in hot water to extract the desired flavor and compounds. It becomes a science, filled with calculations and numbers, where if you steep a leaf for too long, you have now disrupted the flavors which, for a skilled tea tender, would be a hard no. 

“The practice of tea involves its own rituals, and people in the tea house community support that magic,” Andres said.

There is an eclectic mix of creativity that makes up what you see at the tea house. Most people working at the tea house are artists — from painters to singers — and those various backgrounds are reflected in the ambiance and energy. Dispersed around the store are little notebooks filled with customers’ scribbles, from romantic poems to drawings of a cat in a suit drinking tea. “There is a lot of importance around the creativity of others and ourselves,” Andres said. 

Along with customer sketches, artwork by rotating artists is displayed on the walls each month. Jenna St. Sauver, who moved to work as a manager at one of the Portland locations, curated art at the Eugene tea house. Soon, local artists were asked to display their colorful creations, which led to the “Artist of the Month” award. The concept has become quite popular, now a lasting tradition of almost three years. By the end of the year, the Artist of the Month becomes a mixture of employees’ work, where the tea house’s personality proudly hangs. 

Portal Tea House has always been intertwined with the community through promoting events like craft day, downtown trick-or-treating and the Friday Art Walk. The environment is open to different groups as a space where people can coexist.