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What smells a bit like compost, promises to restore your digestion, liver function, and cell integrity, and is all the rage this summer among the city’s holistic elite? Kombucha. The organic, bottled Chinese tea (pronounced kom-BOO-cha) is cultured for 30 days to produce its “active enzymes” and “antioxidants.” It’s also got authentic—albeit grody-looking—green strands floating in it. In Hollywood, it’s already so popular—see Kirsten Dunst lounging with a bottle of it in Us Weekly!—that it’s become a sort of inside joke. On a recent episode of Entourage, a director was house-sitting for his girlfriend’s parents in a mansion they bought with a Kombucha fortune. G.T. Dave’s Kombucha brand is probably the trendiest: He started bottling it after watching his mother drink it during her battle with breast cancer. Dave says his company ships cases directly to Paramount studios and CAA. “Andy Dick drinks it every day,” he boasts, adding that he doesn’t have a mansion. In April, Dave, 26, finally got East Coast distribution. “It’s flying off the shelves,” says Paul Weiner, Fairway’s natural-foods coordinator.

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• Archive: “People”
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• Table of Contents: August 21, 2006 issue of New York | Subscribe!