Tea has always been more than a drink to me. It has been a landscape, a language, a whole world.

I grew up on a tea estate in Assam — and if you have never experienced that life, it is difficult to describe just how full it was. There were the tea bushes, of course: row upon row of that particularlush green that belongs only to Assam, stretching as far as you could see. But beyond the gardens was jungle — real jungle, dense and alive, where wild elephants moved through like slow thunder. We lived in a Chang bungalow, large and full of the echoes of a British colonial era that had shaped this corner of the world in ways you could feel in the architecture, the rhythms of estate life, the customs that had been handed down without anyone quite remembering where they began.

My childhood memories are not of classrooms or city streets. They are of fishing in the river, of cycling through the estate paths in the early morning, of picnics on the riverbank with the jungle pressing close on all sides. Of a life that was simultaneously very small — contained, unhurried, seasonal — and extraordinarily rich. I did not know then how rare it was. You never do, when it is simply home.

My father, Late Arun Indranand Khanna, was a tea planter of considerable repute, known across the industry for his advanced knowledge of both the agricultural and manufacturing sides of the craft. Tea was not a career in our home. It was the air.

It was only natural, then, that I would find my way into the industry. Over the years, I built a career as a tea tasting, sourcing, and distribution professional — the kind of work that takes you deep into the supply chain, from auction floors to estate visits, from cupping tables to distribution networks. I understood tea at every level: in the field, in the tea factory, in the cup. What I didn't yet know was how to make it mine.

What a lockdown gave back

When the world stopped in 2020, many of us found ourselves unexpectedly face to face with the parts of ourselves we had shelved. The pace of ordinary life had always made it easy to defer certain passions — to say "someday" and mean it, even as someday receded further and further. The lockdowns removed that excuse. There was no next week to defer to, no busy schedule to hide behind. There was only now, and whatever you chose to do with it.

For me, what came back was watercolor.

I had always painted, but life and work had gradually pushed it to the margins. In those quiet, strange months of lockdown, I picked up my brushes again. And something unlocked. Botanical-themed works began to flow — flowers rendered in careful washes of color, leaves built up in translucent layers, the kind of slow, patient, meditative work that watercolor demands and rewards. I was painting for the pleasure of it, with no particular plan. And then, gradually, a plan began to form.

The idea that became ArtTeas

What if the two things I knew most deeply — tea and art — could become one thing?

I had spent years watching the premium tea market grow, and I understood its gap. There was extraordinary tea being grown in India, in gardens I knew personally, by people whose craft I respected deeply. And there were beautiful tea brands, with considered packaging and compelling stories. But I hadn't seen the two truly merge — hadn't seen a brand where the art on the label was genuinely, inseparably part of what the brand was. Where the person who sourced the tea was also the person who painted the image on the tin.

That, I realised, was what I could offer. Not just excellent tea — though that was non-negotiable — but a full sensory experience. Tea that tickles not only your palate but your sense of sight. An aesthetic encounter that begins the moment you pick up the tin.

It began with a single product

ArtTeas launched with one tea: Spring Delight, our Darjeeling First Flush Blend. It felt right to begin there — the First Flush is the most poetic of teas, the most fleeting, the most closely tied to a precise and unrepeatable moment in the seasons. It was the perfect starting point for a brand built around beauty and attention.

From that first product, an entire collection has grown. Teas from Assam, Darjeeling, and Nilgiri — the three great growing regions of India — each selected with the care of someone who has spent a career learning how to tell a great tea from a merely good one. Each paired with an original watercolor painting: botanicals of the flowers and flora native to the tea's home region, rendered in the slow, considered style that watercolor demands.

Everything by hand

I created every label myself. Every painting on every packetis an original watercolor, made by me, in the same spirit of slowness and attention that I hope the tea inspires in you. I also designed the packaging, the product photography, and this website — because I wanted ArtTeas to feel like a single, coherent vision, made by one pair of hands, not assembled from parts.

This is not efficiency. It is intentionality. The decision to do things slowly, personally, and with full attention is itself the philosophy of the brand. ArtTeas exists at the intersection of expertise and art, of deep industry knowledge and genuine creative practice. It is, I hope, something you have not quite encountered before.

What I want to share with you

ArtTeas is my invitation to you to experience tea differently — not just as a morning habit or an afternoon ritual, but as something that can genuinely delight every sense. The warmth of the cup. The aroma of the leaf. The clarity of the liquor. And now, the beauty of an original watercolor painting, made with the same care and love as the tea it adorns.

I look forward to sharing this with you. And I look forward to continuing to carefully procure the finest teas from Assam, Darjeeling, and Nilgiri — and to painting something worthy of them.

Welcome to ArtTeas. I'm glad you're here.