Mariage Frères

The Mariage family traded tea from the seventeenth century — ancestors negotiated for the French East India Company — and brothers Henri and Édouard founded their wholesale house in Paris in 1854. Its transformation came in the 1980s, when the firm opened to the public and effectively invented French tea culture as a luxury category: hundreds of teas from every producing country, the black-clad tea sommeliers, the colonial-comptoir interiors of dark wood and brass scales, and blends — Marco Polo above all — whose perfumed opulence became reference points worldwide. The black canisters are as recognizable in their category as any luxury packaging in France. The Faubourg Saint-Honoré boutique concentrates the range; the historic Marais house adds a tea salon and museum. Marco Polo is the canonical first tin; the single-estate Darjeelings show the sommelier side of the house.

Smell before buying — the counters open any canister on request — and take Marco Polo home in the black tin; loose leaf, never the compromise of bags.