In 1854 the brothers Henri and Édouard Mariage founded their tea house in Paris; the family had already traded tea and spices for generations. For a long time Mariage Frères supplied only hotels and fine-food houses — it opened to the public only in the 1980s, with tea salons and the black-and-gold tins still known today. Hundreds of teas, composed by hand in the French manner, led by the legendary Marco Polo with its scent of fruit and flowers. Tea as culture, not a teabag.
