Mariage Frère [If you go, time your visit to be there after Noon so you get to try their fancy tea-based drinks and/or food, that I missed out on]

This tea shop has been a Paris institution since 1854 and I know that several of our customers have purchased tea from them – either in person or online. When I discovered they had opened a shop in London’s Covent Garden area I knew I had to add it to my visiting list.

It did not occur to me to take photos inside the shop until too late – this installment documentary was an idea that arose after I started to put my thoughts and tea experience in writing

The shop is huge, and opulent and everything is very accessible. Every tea has a 100gm tin that can be opened and sniffed. They have looseleaf and teabag versions of nearly every tea, though some newer or special flavors seem to only be in teabag format. Where to start? We have a fraction of their volume and new customers can be overwhelmed coming into our shop!

I explained to the gentleman who greeted me that I have a tea shop in America and I wanted to bring back something special for my customers. He steered me directly to Marco Polo as a blend that is popular with Americans. I had certainly heard of it before.

Described on their website as:

Wonderfully fruity & flowery fragrant black tea

And: Our overwhelming success is a mysterious blend that will take you to distant lands and unforeseen territories.

Fragrances evoking Chinese and Tibetan flowers lend it a uniquely velvety taste.

Its extraordinary bouquet makes Marco Polo the most legendary of flavoured teas. 

And that is It.

No ingredient list – I had asked him about ingredients before I left and he assured me I could find them on the website. If you have more experience with this please let me know, but I looked high and low and with every search term I could think of, with no success. Are allergies not a big deal in Paris?

The best I could find, on every tea item I viewed:

For better or worse, this is the only tea I purchased. I did bring back about 20 ounces of both the black and green tea versions of the blend and they are Now available for purchase in shop & on the website in 1oz and 2oz packages only, plus a handful of trial sizes. The only decaf version they had was rooibos based. They had no other decaf blends that were not rooibos based. [To my dedicated decaf customers, I’m sorry, I tried]. I haven’t yet tried the green tea version but both are quite fragrant, and the black version is quite tasty!

Next installment – Tea Stop #3