Marco Polo

I had this for the first time this morning. It’s wonderful! I went lightly on the steeping time as I don’t add milk or sweetener. It smells like black tea with strawberries and cream. It’s heavenly!

Brewed with the Breville at 200 degrees for 2 minutes.

Once made, it still smells wonderfully! It’s fruity and creamy. The taste is nice. Slightly bitter, but not outrageously so. The strawberries are pleasant tasting and not overly sweet. It tastes creamy, but doesn’t feel heavy. It does have a slight drying effect in my mouth afterward. I really like this tea and had been looking forward to trying it. I’m so glad I found it yesterday! It didn’t let me down.

I was not sure what I wanted to start the day off with or what I ws looking for when I went to my tea cupboard. I finally decided to try this tea (excellent choice)!
This rich tea has a strawberry flavor that does remind me of strawberry life savors I ate as a child.
A warm muffin and this tea is a great start to my day.

I am a huge ‘skeptic’ on flavoured teas, not a purist, but I just tend to stir away from them, especially after some flavored teas didn’t play nice with my taste buds. Some like Black Currant (Enjoying Tea.com), White Peach (Adagio Teas), Mango Black (Zhi Tea; makes a good iced tea though), California Fields (Mighty Leaf Tea,) and some things like that dreaded Earl Grey Bravo (Adagio Teas), and even some overly flowery Jasmines.

So I hear about the “legend of the flavoured teas”: Mariage Brother’s famous Marco Polo Blend. So popular to a fact that when I went to Williams & Sonoma to pick up a tin, they told me they were sold out the very day they restocked. It’s reputation proceeds itself. I consider myself lucky to pick a tin up at Gumps the same day. However, I think I may be overstating this tea.

Now lets dedicate a short some of this on the moment I open this tin; as I was expecting most flavoured teas to have their odour reek from the tin the moment it’s cracked open. Some flavoured teas are so dank, that their scent permeates outside the tin! (White Peach). The the scent of Marco Polo, was tame. It came to my nose with it’s exciting strawberry-maplelike scent, candylike almost, but very sophisticated. I spent a good three minutes just enjoying the aroma this tea tea. The leaves weren’t surprisingly different than other flavoured blacks, a little more fuller of a OP, with contrast of browns, and some lighter blacks. But I still say this is more than decent quality for a flavoured tea.

I brewed this like most blacks: five minutes at boiling, in my 24 ounce white teapot. The cup yielded a medium amber cup, with a mellowed aroma of the tin. The take was surprising to me. Medium-full body, it was mildly fruity and sweet, the flavouring almost bypassed my tongue in a way… to travel to my nose. Either the flavouring of this tea wasn’t as strong as I thought it was, or the heat of the boil just killed all the flavour. Either way, it finished up medium, and somewhat sharp.

This tea strangely finds a place between enjoyable and tolerable for me as I am not a fan of flavoured teas. I tried my second cup with light agave nectar, which leveled the sharp finish; and the third cup with 2% fat milk, which ‘almost’ makes me say this would make a “damn fine cup of tea”. I will make this again but with WHOLE milk or maybe even half and half.

Good luck trying to find a tin of it. It’s a bit more expensive on the web, and some high end pricey stores like Gumps in SF and Williams & Sonoma have limited stock. I consider my score to be high for a flavoured tea. This tea made me accept flavoured teas a little more, which is what I was looking for. It changed my opinion of flavoured tea, and it reminded me of Strawberry Black (Adagio Teas). If you know people who love flavoured teas serve them this, or buy it to entertain your nose. I couldn’t have this everyday. If you are a sceptic on flavoured teas, try this, and it may change your mind. 


This tea has a very special place in my heart. It’s the first high-quality tea I ever drank. One of my best friend has been drinking it for years and I regularly shared it with her while being student (more than 15 years ago). Each time I go to her place, I still enjoy a few cups with her, like a comforting tradition, even though she also has some other teas. I’ve never bought it, as I really associate it with enjoying a moment with this friend.
Each time, as soon as I smell the steaming cup and start to drink it, I remember why my friend likes it so much and why she has real good taste.

I don’t like this tea. This is my shame. I LOVE Mariage Frères teas. I wanted to love this one, but now I have almost a whole tin of this and don’t know what to do with it. I like Harney & Sons’ Paris tea and thought since people compare them often and Mariage Frères teas have always been the ne plus ultra of any flavor, I couldn’t go wrong. However, this tastes like flowers to me and although lovely to smell and gaze upon I have never ascended to the level of sophistication wherein I enjoy the taste of flowers.

I don’t have a lot to add to what others have said, except that it’s pretty tasty. Good mix of strawberry, and black tea smoothness. I’m sure it would be good with cream/sugar, but it was perfectly enjoyable without.

I don’t have time for a proper tasting note on this one right now, but I will update later. This is SO GOOD!

Mmmmm. A very good cup with a wonderful nose to it. It smells strawberrish mixed with vanilla in the tin and then once it has had time to steep it smells more flowery to me. It is very smooth going down not so much as creamy or silky just that it is not as strong or bitter as some blacks that I have tasted do (I love black teas).
The more it cools off the more flavors I am able to pick up I definently taste berries but not necessarily strawberries more like maybe a black raspberry sorta taste and a very soft floral taste it tastes like the black coffee is going to come out and try to add a bitter taste to it but the berry/floral won’t let the black come out and bite you with it’s bitterness. Almost like the black and the berry/floral are at war but a good war… not that wars are good in any sense but I guess I should say flavor war in my mouth and I am enjoying their war. As I near the end of my cup I get a taste and smell of something familiar yet I can’t quite place it….hmmm I’ll try to figure it out in my next cup! A very nice cup. I can’t wait to try it with some La Madeleine Strawberry Napoleon for dessert YUM.

This is the most wonderful tea I have ever tried. I keep ordering others from Le Mariage Freres but none taste like heaven as much as this delicately perfumed magical tea.

2.25g/6oz water. Eh, to me just your basic slightly sweet black tea. I don’t care for black teas normally but if black teas are your thing, I’m sure you’d give it a 70-100.

I don’t actually own this tea, I only ever drink it if I am in a Mariage Frères teahouse and have the opportunity to drink it at my leisure, when they have brewed it to perfection for me!
This tea is clearly very very popular, so I won’t go and review it again, we all know the blend is awesome and special.
For anyone who likes this tea, I would strongly recommend:
Thé Blanc Marco Polo
Thé Vert Marco Polo
Marco Polo Rouge
And finally, Sablés au Thé, au Saveur du Marco Polo Noir – these are “tea biscuits”, flavoured with the original marco polo tea flavourings, but they aren’t sweet or savory, just somewhere in between – one of these goes perfect with your first cup of Marco Polo of the day! They are available on the Mariage Frères website: http://www.mariagefreres.com/boutique/FR/fa+sables-au-the-marco-polo+E33.html
Voila, enjoy!

2tsp in 500ml at 205 F for 3 min. Nice deep red golden colour typical for a “red” tea. Delightful scent of strawberry and burnt sugar. Dry astringency on the tongue and can still taste the strawberry scent when breathing through the mouth. Second steep at 212 F for 3.5 min and added agave syrup and a few splashes of whole milk. Can still taste the black tea and the fruit/floral scents still detected. Will try for a third steep at 212F for 4 min black with just a touch of sweetener. This is a lovely tea but other than good quality black tea, not sure it’s worth the $22/3.5 oz at Williams-Sonoma.

This was my first experience trying tea from Mariage Frères. I’ve been looking for a good flavoured black tea that is both comforting and uplifting at the same time. I was drinking a lot of oolong tea and straight blacks, but other than that I had basically converted to coffee because I thought that no tea could ever match the boldness of a good cup of coffee. Then Marco Polo sailed into my life and I was blown away. This tea really changed everything I thought I knew about tea. It’s fruity, flowery, creamy, and soft all at once with no bitterness and a pleasant aftertaste.

I start with about 80 mL of half & half cream and two flat teaspoons of sugar, then enough brewed tea to fill my 16 oz travel mug. Cream and sugar complements Marco Polo exquisitely. It tastes like a fruity dessert, like a strawberry spongecake, except in liquid form. It’s velvety over the tongue and extremely smooth. There’s a bit of a floral afterbite the lingers for a moment in between sips. The feeling that I get from drinking this tea is out of this world. I thought no tea could be bold enough to match coffee, but I went through 100 g of Marco Polo in just under two weeks and didn’t even touch my stovetop espresso maker once. I recently ordered more from Mariage Frères and was absolutely amazed that it traveled from Paris to my doorstep in a mere three days! Now I am back in strawberry velvet heaven and never want to leave (pardon the pun).

I can see why this blend has made Mariage Frères famous, or more specifically, their current president Kitti Cha Sangmanee. Certainly, if I came up with something this good, I’d want recognition too. This tea is incredibly versatile. I’ve had it first thing in the morning, I’ve had it between meals, I’ve had it after dinner. In fact I just had it after a bowl of lobster bisque and it went perfectly well. My head felt kind of sludgy this morning, but now I feel sharp as a tack after drinking this tea. You could say that this review for Marco Polo tea is sponsored in part by the tea itself.

This tea is art. Sometimes when I drink it, I can peer into myself and feel something strange. It conjures up thoughts of existentialism and self-reflexive meditation, sometimes only for a few seconds at a time. Then I snap out of it and smile, slightly, because for no explainable reason I instantly feel better about the world. Wow.

I was given a teabag of this by one of my co-workers. It’s pretty good, very floral in flavor and it’s kind of nutty to me. I like it but I don’t think I would buy it for myself.

I’ve had a long relationship with this tea. When we first met, I thought it was the most amazing thing ever. (I’m sure being introduced in a friend’s gorgeous flat in Paris helped.)

This is a perfumed tea. To me, it requires sugar, though I’m not sure milk would work.

As I’ve moved to more natural flavors, I drifted away from Marco Polo. But lately, I’ve returned. Perhaps not as enamored, but still really glad to have it. Would I restock when I’m next at Mariage Freres? Unsure. But I would eagerly gift it to a tea-loving friend.

A sample from JacquelineM – thank you, thank you!

Dry leaves – sniff sniff sniff. Every time he walks by the tin….my hubby is opening it and sniffing. It smells that good.

Steeping – Pouring the water over the leaves releases the strawberry aroma almost immediately. A very long five minutes ensues….

Drinking – First tried it plain, as I like to try all my new teas: very nice, light, and fruity. A genteel cup of tea, not tart at all but nicely berry flavored. I add milk before the sugar this time to see how it affects the cream aspect and don’t note a huge difference, but I only had skim and I know some people like to add real cream to this one. A dash of sugar, and let it cool for a minute and you really release the flavors. Aahhhhhh.

Oh, Marco Polo! Why do I not like you as much as I thought I would? I have read reviews upon reviews saying that this is a delicious, fruity, sweet and beautiful tea. The cashier commented on the tea saying that it was a big seller and that everyone loves it. I steep the tea and take a whiff. It’s definitely fruity and somewhat creamy… but I just don’t like the flavor. I have even tried this with a splash of milk and little bit of sugar and still.. something is just off! Too much black? Too much fruit? I don’t believe I’ve been over/under steeping or scalding the tea at all. I’m very disappointed since I seem to be missing out on a wonderful taste. What am I doing wrong? I’m out $20 on a whole tin of this thing and wish I could doctor it to make it as delicious as everyone says it is! It seemed like it was the ultimate dessert tea… and boy, do I love my dessert teas. Help?

Dark dry leaves smell like strawberry jam, as does the steeped tea. Full-bodied, strawberry-fruit flavored, although not as sweet as I expected. Almost a coffee-like back note that is most pleasant in the morning. I will try steeping longer and adding milk/sugar as others have done for evening dessert!

This has black tea and as far as I can tell strawberries and vanilla. This smells mostly like vanilla. I brewed this up. And you can taste a slightly tannic black tea with vanilla and a hint of strawberry. The strawberry in here in nice while I can not taste I’t alot. The vanilla you can really taste but to me it tastes to artifical this really I’s just ok to me.

My all time favorite along with Les Classique