I’ve got a confession to make. My wife and I have been operating an international smuggling ring for years now.
It all started in 2009, when the woman who would one day marry me was wandering the streets of Paris, and stumbled into the famous tea house, Mariage Frères.
She sampled the delights and never looked back. Nearly a decade later, she would introduce me to the signature blend, Marco Polo, which she had somehow imported to our Burnside flat. I didn’t ask questions. I was in love.
I have written before of my tea dependency and abuse. This is certainly one of those cases.
My brother-in-law lives in London, where there is a Mariage Frères store. Whenever he sends a package of any sort we beg him, beg, to include a little baggie of Marco Polo. I don’t want to sound ungrateful or anything but the only package he’s sent this year included some MF teas that were Decidedly Not Marco Polo. Victor. Please. I beg you.
We went ourselves, once. In the heady days of 2019, before Covid, we took an overseas trip which included a stop in Paris. It wasn’t explicitly to visit Mariage Frères, but it wasn’t not. We sardined those bags and tins in our suitcase. Is there a limit on how much tea you can shuffle through NZ Customs? I have to assume we looked this up and complied, but I couldn’t swear to it. A mortgage and a child later, I now feel like that was my first and last ever visit to Paris.
The cupboard is dry. It has been devoid of this French tea with an Italian name for far too long! Not enough is not enough!
We have friends, though. Some with the kind of disposable income that includes stopovers in London or weekends in Paris. And as already stated, I’m not above begging.
So I must thank our dear friend Alex. Godmother to our child. Attendee of overseas conferences. Bringer of tea. One hundred beautiful grams. For my wife and me, that’s one long wild night on the couch with the XL teapot. Which is about all you can ask for, post-child.
Oh how I missed that aroma! And once you’re in the room with it, it’s unmissable. It’s floral, but not overpowering. Fruity, but in a refined, black tea kind of way. Earthy, in a way that hits that tea-craving nerve centre. And it tastes almost exactly like it smells, but juicy. Can a tea be juicy? It somehow invokes the flavour profile of the colour blue. Don’t ask, just believe me. You’re in love now.
Do not tell me you have let a drop of milk touch your Marco Polo. This must be enjoyed in its pure form. It is, though, very robust. You can steep it for five minutes or 20, and it never seems to go wrong.
I would caution against underdosing. I’ve been down that road – wanting to thin it out, spread it out over a few more hits, make it last just a little longer. Don’t do it! I beg you, it’s a waste of some of the best tea you’ll ever taste. Just dose it up, enjoy it how it’s meant to be enjoyed, for however long it lasts.
Nerd notes
I don’t know where this tea is from. It’s blended in Paris, and they describe it as having “Chinese and Tibetan” fragrances, but I can’t find any reputable reference to the actual origin of the tea leaves. It also seems to be artificially fragranced tea, but goddamn they do a good job of it.
A little beg
I’d like to sign this off by saying, if you are coming from Europe to Christchurch, I want you to carry a little package for me. Nothing untoward, I swear. Just a few bricks of the good stuff.
