Donald Wallis?

Post Reply
User avatar
mbanu
Posts: 962
Joined: Fri May 03, 2019 3:45 pm

Thu Dec 23, 2021 7:37 am

Not sure if this was the correct place, but is Donald R. Wallis still involved in tea?

In 1994 he was one of the co-founders, along with Roy Fong, of the American Tea Masters Association, which eventually (I think) morphed into the International Tea Masters Association in 2007 under Chas Kroll. Unlike Roy Fong, Mr. Wallis seems to have disappeared. I believe he used to run the Jadebrook Teahouse in San Francisco, but I think that shut down. Maybe he retired?

One puzzler is that I've never been able to find any information on how exactly he became involved in tea in the first place, other than a brief mention that he met Roy Fong as an early customer at the Imperial Tea Court. He showed up in a lot of news articles in the 90s and a few book dedications in the 2000s (where I heard of him), but otherwise is a bit of a mystery... I'm not even quite sure that the ATMA under Chas Kroll was the same ATMA, as in their current ITMA history they make no mention of Roy Fong, Donald Wallis, or the 1990s at all, saying that the organization was founded in 2007. (Were there two American Tea Masters Associations operating at once?)

Does anyone know anything about Mr. Wallis?
Post Reply