Kusmi Tea is a Paris-based luxury tea brand with Russian origins, founded in St Petersburg in 1867 by Pavel Kousmichoff as a tea merchant serving the Russian Imperial Court, relocated to Paris after the Russian Revolution, and revived as a modern luxury brand in the early 2000s — transforming from a near-extinct relic of tsarist tea culture into one of France’s most recognisable contemporary luxury tea brands. The brand is instantly identifiable by its round metal tins — brightly coloured, cylindrical, designed as collectible objects — and by its distinctive blend portfolio, which includes the celebrated St Petersburg blend (a bergamot-citrus-vanilla black tea) and Anastasia, a blend named after the Russian Imperial family that captures the brand’s double identity as both French luxury and Russian heritage. Kusmi’s revival trajectory is one of the most interesting stories in modern luxury tea: a nineteenth-century Russian court tea merchant, largely abandoned after the revolution, resurrected as a French design-led luxury brand, and grown into a multi-country retail presence through the power of exceptionally distinctive packaging and the historical narrative embedded in its product names.

In-Depth Explanation

The Kusmi Tea story is a story about the resurrection of identity as much as the resurrection of a brand. When the Orebi family purchased the rights to the Kusmi name in the early 2000s, they were acquiring not a functioning business but a cultural asset: the name of a tea merchant that had once served the Russian Imperial Court, the recipe archive of Russian-style tea blends, and the extraordinary narrative of a company that had fled the Bolshevik revolution carrying its recipes into Parisian exile. The family used that narrative as the foundation for a luxury brand that would appeal to a modern consumer who valued both historical depth and contemporary design.

Russian Imperial Origins

Pavel Kousmichoff established his tea merchant business in St Petersburg in 1867, serving a clientele that included the Russian Imperial Court — a position of extraordinary prestige in Romanov-era Russia, where tea culture was ceremonially significant and where supplying the court was both a commercial and cultural distinction. The blends Kousmichoff developed reflected Russian tea preferences: aromatic, often flavoured with bergamot, citrus, vanilla, or flowers, and designed for the samovar culture in which tea was kept warm for hours and drunk sweet, strong, and richly scented.

The Russian Revolution of 1917 ended this world. The Kousmichoff family fled Russia with their recipes and re-established as a tea merchant in Paris, where a community of Russian émigrés provided an initial customer base and where the brand’s blend names — St Petersburg, Anastasia, Prince Vladimir, Imperial — carried both nostalgic and historical resonance for displaced Russians.

The Early 2000s Revival

The contemporary Kusmi Tea was effectively recreated in the early 2000s when the Orebi family acquired the brand and rebuilt it from near-obscurity into a luxury retail operation. The key strategic decision was to invest heavily in packaging design: the round metal tin, with its bold colour blocks and clean typography, is an extraordinarily effective retail object — visually distinctive on a shelf, collectible, and associated with quality and design intentionality. In the twenty-first century luxury food market, packaging as design object is a primary marketing tool, and Kusmi’s tins execute that strategy brilliantly.

The blend portfolio retained the Russian historical names (St Petersburg, Anastasia, Prince Vladimir) while expanding to include wellness blends (BB Detox, AquaRosa) and a wider range of tea types that addressed the contemporary specialty market alongside the heritage Russian styles. The historical names function as brand storytelling: each blend name is a piece of Russian Imperial history that invites the customer into a narrative.

St Petersburg and Anastasia: The Signature Blends

St Petersburg — a black tea blended with bergamot, mandarin, and vanilla — is the Kusmi blend most associated with the brand’s Russian heritage and one of the most commonly cited examples of Russian-style flavoured tea in the French luxury market. The combination of bergamot (familiar from Earl Grey) with citrus and vanilla produces a richer, more complex flavoured black tea than a standard Earl Grey.

Anastasia — named after the last Russian Imperial princess — is a black tea with bergamot, orange, and lemon, with a romantic historical association that has made it one of the brand’s most emotionally resonant products. The story of Anastasia as a historical figure and cultural symbol amplifies the blend’s appeal far beyond its flavour profile alone.

History

• 1867: Pavel Kousmichoff founds Kusmi Tea (Kousmichoff tea) in St Petersburg; tea merchant serving the Russian Imperial Court.
• 1917: Russian Revolution; Kousmichoff family flees Russia; business re-established in Paris serving the Russian émigré community.
• 20th century: Brand persists in diminished form; maintains presence in the Parisian Russian émigré community; recipe archive preserved.
• Early 2000s: Orebi family acquires Kusmi Tea; radical relaunch with new round metal tin packaging and bold colour design; brand rebuilt as a contemporary French luxury tea brand.
• Present: Multi-country retail presence; boutique stores in Paris and internationally; signature blends include St Petersburg, Anastasia, Prince Vladimir, BB Detox, AquaRosa; one of the most visually distinctive brands in the global luxury tea market.

Social Media Sentiment

• Gift buyers: Kusmi’s round tins are one of the most photographed and gifted tea products in the luxury market; the packaging generates extensive organic social media content from recipients and purchasers, functioning as its own marketing. The tins are retained and repurposed as desk accessories, jewellery boxes, and collectibles.
• Tea enthusiasts: Divided — specialty tea enthusiasts note that Kusmi’s appeal is as much about the packaging and brand narrative as the tea itself, and some find the flavoured blends less interesting than single-origin options. But the quality of the blends is generally considered good, and the historical identity is genuinely interesting.
• French luxury market: Strong — Kusmi occupies a distinctive tier in the Parisian luxury food gift market alongside Mariage Frères and Hédiard, and its visual language (the tins) is immediately recognisable to French luxury food consumers.
• Russian diaspora: Particular resonance — the brand’s Russian Imperial names and historical narrative have a specific emotional meaning for Russian and Eastern European consumers who recognise the cultural references from a different, more personal angle than the Western luxury consumer.

Last updated: 2026-06

Related Terms

• Mariage Frères
• Earl Grey
• Flavoured Tea
• Russian Tea Culture
• Samovar
• Blended Tea
• Luxury Tea

See Also

• Sakubo – Japanese Study

Research

• Kusmi Tea origins: Pavel Kousmichoff, the St Petersburg founding (1867), and the Russian Imperial Court tea trade.
  Summary: Documents Pavel Kousmichoff’s founding of Kusmi Tea in St Petersburg in 1867, the position of the company as a supplier to the Russian Imperial Court, the distinctive Russian tea blend tradition (bergamot, citrus, vanilla, flower-scented flavoured black teas designed for samovar culture), the flight from Russia after the 1917 Revolution, and the re-establishment of the business in Paris serving the Russian émigré community.

• The early 2000s Kusmi revival: the Orebi family acquisition, the round tin packaging strategy, and the transformation into a French luxury brand.
  Summary: Covers the Orebi family’s acquisition of the Kusmi name and recipe archive in the early 2000s, the decision to rebuild the brand around an exceptional packaging design strategy (the round metal cylindrical tins in bold colour blocks), the expansion of the blend portfolio to include both the historical Russian names (St Petersburg, Anastasia) and contemporary wellness blends (BB Detox, AquaRosa), and the transformation of a near-extinct historical brand into one of the most visually distinctive luxury tea brands in the global market.

• Kusmi Tea signature blends: St Petersburg, Anastasia, and the Russian Imperial naming strategy.
  Summary: Analyses the signature Kusmi blends — St Petersburg (black tea with bergamot, mandarin, vanilla) and Anastasia (black tea with bergamot, orange, lemon) — as both flavour products and brand narrative devices, examining how the Russian Imperial naming strategy turns each blend into a piece of historical storytelling and creates emotional resonance with consumers through the historical identity of the names beyond the taste experience alone.

• Kusmi Tea packaging as luxury design object: the round tin strategy in the modern luxury food gift market.
  Summary: Examines the Kusmi round metal tin as a case study in luxury packaging strategy — how exceptional design turns a container into a collectible object, generates organic social media content, creates gift-market differentiation, and sustains premium pricing in a market where comparable tea products in generic packaging would sell for a fraction of the price. Connects the Kusmi tin strategy to the broader role of packaging design in the twenty-first century luxury food market.