Photos by Adam DeTour

Ordering a fancy coffee drink for the first time might feel like a kind of initiation ritual to any young person. But Ren Wheeler’s first peppermint mocha truly was a meaningful moment for them.

“It’s, like, a rite of passage for someone post-Mormon to go to Starbucks for the first time,” says Wheeler, who lived that experience in their early 20s when they left the church in which they grew up. Mormonism is known for conservative rules governing the lives of its followers, including total abstinence from tea, coffee and alcohol. Soon after Wheeler made the choice to renounce that faith, they discovered a whole new world.

Rite Tea & Espresso Bar is now Wheeler’s congregation. The cozy café at Brighton’s Charles River Speedway is a place devoted to all they have learned—and continue to learn—about libations they were once taught are wicked. Born from a tea pop-up called the Wicked Thrawl (another reference to their past, for sure) that Wheeler launched in 2022 while working at Rite’s neighboring sake bar, the Koji Club, the café presents tea in a way that no other does in Boston. But it also serves a full espresso program five days a week, and has plans this spring to introduce a narrowly directed menu of Scottish whisky on Friday nights.

With sake and Scotch, “there are only certain ingredients you can use” in production, Wheeler explains. “And with tea, it’s just one plant. The spectrum of flavors that you get from that—and the nuance, I think—is fascinating.”

Despite the laser-focus on tea and proper brewing technique that they pioneered with the Wicked Thrawl pop-up, Wheeler’s brick-and-mortar was always going to feature coffee. “I do think tea drinking is on the rise,” they say, noting the retail selection available at Somerville’s Mushroom Shop, as well as two current Boston-area pop-ups, Broken Cup Teahouse and Matcha Boy. But Rite aims to become part of its neighbors’ daily routines—and coffee still rules. “I mean, I drink a cappuccino every day,” Wheeler says.

After leaving Brigham Young University, Wheeler got a job managing a café-bakery in Utah before returning to New England. They grew up in Maine, but their first role back on the East Coast was as farmer-chef at a Heifer International educational farm in Rutland, MA. They spent two days per week cultivating fields, raising bees, tapping maple trees or doing whatever the season called for; then three days per week cooking for other laborers and visitors using only farm-grown ingredients.

“I’ve always been trying to get back to what it felt like working there: just constant learning,” Wheeler says.

After a few “rustic” pastry jobs in Maine, love brought Wheeler to the Boston area (their now-husband works in biotech), where they trained baristas at Somerville’s Revival Café, among other roles. While working as food and beverage manager of the now-closed co-working space The Wing, Wheeler met Koji Club founder Alyssa DiPasquale, who helped them envision opening their own place. During the pandemic shutdown, Wheeler leaned into their insatiable desire for learning and earned numerous professional certificates in the worlds of sake, Scotch and tea.

The tea program at Rite is “full spectrum,” Wheeler says, not focused on any specific region. “Particularly because there are so many people who can do that better and who have a cultural reason for wanting to, which we do not,” they say. (Though, they add, their fascination with Scotch relates to their Scottish heritage.) But also, Wheeler has learned much about the role colonization has played in global tea production. “Sharing tea from everywhere is a really good way to talk about it,” they say.

Occasionally guests will be awed by the tea at Rite, claiming that all others they’ve had before were “too bitter. But it’s not necessarily because of the tea,” Wheeler will tell them. “It’s because of how it was brewed,” they say. “What I’m trying to bring to the tea community is how to make the best tea cup that you can.”

Drinking brewed beverages is a daily rite, Wheeler knows. Their wee café in Brighton comes at it with intention.

charlesriverspeedway.com/community/rite-tea-espresso

This story appeared in the Spring 2024 issue.