Paris for Tea Lovers! – Tea shops and Tea Academy

Paris for tea lovers!

Although Paris may be more known for their black coffees, hot chocolates and croissants, they also do have a tea culture. And they have quite a few famous tea brands that have been active for many many years.

It is believed that tea was introduced to the Parisian royals as early as in 1636, which would mean that it arrived here before it arrived in England!

Afternoon tea in England

The French tea brands also see them selves as more focused on finding quality teas, compared to their English neighbours, which some French tea brands claim only are interested in quantity.

Here are some venues and links which might interest you as a fellow tea-lover 🙂

Tea shops in Paris

Mariage Frères
Mariage Frères which translates to the “Mariage brothers” is a gourmet French tea company which has been around since 1854. They have shops in several locations around France and can also be found in London and Japan! They also provide tea to many hotels and restaurants and they offer over 300 different blends!

In addition to selling tea, Mariage Frères also have their own tea houses in some locations, so you can have a cup and rest your feet while you are out shopping. They also have cute tea boxes and boxes of tea collections which could be nice gifts.

Dammann Fréres
Dammann Fréres is another luxury tea brand from France. They have been around since 1825 and they pride them selves with only using “reputable blenders who travel the world in order to find the best quality tea”.

Their official catelog contains around 250 different tea blends but they own over 3000 different recipes for tea. The Dammann Fréres also have tea shops all around Paris, and you often find them in bigger department stores like Galeries Lafayette.

Picture by Dammann Fréres

Palais de Thés
Palais de Thés has 100+ tea shops all around the world. This tea company is much younger than the older gourmet tea brands, but they have over 200 different blends of tea.

This lovely lady helped us to choose tea. As you can see there is a lot to chose from!

We bought a lovely tea container with Japanese Kamon motifs and a couple of different teas that we havn´t had time to try out yet. The Japanese Kamon motifs are symbols of peace, tranquility and splendour, and what more could you ask from a tea!

Learn more about tea in Paris

If you are a bit of a nerd, like me, you probably want to learn more about this old beverage. Like did you know that there is such a thing as BLUE tea? Or that the way you filter your tea actually can affect it´s taste? At least I didn´t until this trip 😀

Many of the larger tea houses offer classes about different aspects of the tea trade. Like fragrances, tea history, how the different types of teas should be prepared to get the best flavor etc.
Here are some places where you can brush up your knowledge of tea:

Láutre Thé
This tea house offers a wide range of tea tasting workshops in different locations of the world.

Mariage Frères
Gourmet tea house Mariage Frères also offers tea tasting workshops. They sort their classes in to different levels, starting with Beginners. They also sell books about the french tea traditions.

Palais de Thés Tea
And Palais de Thés also have their own Tea Academy. Unfortunately theirs is only for french speaking tea lovers.

Tea museum – Mariage Frères
In one of the Mariage Fréres shops in Paris there is a small Tea-museum! In the museum you find different types of tea sets, historical tea containers and examples of how the tea was imported from the far away countries back in the days.

I hope you found some fun places to add to your itinerary!
You might also be interested in this post about cute places where you can drink tea in Paris!

xoxo/Salla V