Tea Is in Their Blood

“I never knew the man,” says Elliot Johnson, owner of Mark T. Wendell Tea Company for more than four decades. “I can only go by whatever history we’ve managed to glean from some of Wendell’s papers that were just shoved away in boxes in that original office [in Boston, Massachusetts].”

By all accounts, Mark T. Wendell was a Harvard-educated, born-and-bred Boston blueblood, as were most of the clients of the importing business he inherited from his uncle in 1904 and subsequently named for himself. In addition to tea, Mark sold sherry, snuff, and olive oil. Tea, however, became his company’s sole focus by the 1930s.

“The original tea that he