What the forest gives. Nothing else.

Four things. Each one seasonal, each one gathered or made by people who have done it for generations, each one approved by Hema before it gets a number.

Madhu — wild forest honey

The Vedic word for honey. Old enough to appear in the Rigveda.

Gathered from wild colonies in the forests around Dandeli by hereditary honey collectors. Not farmed. No boxes, no sugar feeding, no blending. Each season's flowers decide each batch's taste, which is why every Tola tastes slightly different, and why we print the harvest on the jar like a vintage.

Raw. Unheated. Lab-tested every batch, report on the label.

Season: post-monsoon, roughly October and November. Around 400 jars a Tola.

Amra — Appemidi mango pickle

Appemidi is a wild mango of Uttara Kannada. It grows along the streams here and almost nowhere else on the planet. Small, fierce, absurdly aromatic. It holds a Geographical Indication tag, the same protection given to Darjeeling tea.

For generations, families in the Sirsi belt have turned it into a pickle people beg relatives to courier across the world. We source from those kitchens. We do not modernize the recipe. Nobody should.

Season: the mangoes come once a year, in summer. The pickle is made once, in bulk, and when the year's batch ends, it ends.

Marica — Malnad black pepper

The Sanskrit word for pepper is marica. One letter away from marici, the ray of light. The old language knew these hills held both.

Whole peppercorns from Malnad soil, sun-dried, never ground. Ground pepper is where adulteration hides. Whole corns cannot lie.

Season: winter harvest, available most of the year.

Kokum — the coast's dark ruby

An hour from Dandeli, the Ghats fall to the Konkan coast, and kokum grows in the coastal belt. The dried rind sours curries the way these two coasts have cooked for a thousand years. Ayurveda called the tree vrikshamla.

Sun-dried rinds first. Syrup later, when we trust our bottles as much as our jars.

Season: summer fruit, dried for the year.

Vana — the forest box

Vana. Sanskrit for forest. Everything above, in one box.

Not yet. First we earn your trust one jar at a time. The box comes when the products have proven themselves separately.