The Chai's the Limit

When Nina Isabella had her first taste of chai 20 years ago she knew it was good – but she also knew she could make it better.

“A friend made it for me the traditional way: he added the tea and spices to the pot, brought it to the boil, added milk and let it simmer,” says the founder of Atelier Botanica. “The spices were amazing. I loved the drink but the tea after that process was completely destroyed.”

Back then it was impossible to find a commercial version of the chai travellers tended to discover for the first time on their backpacking adventures in India. The appeal of the warming spices such as cardamom, cinnamon and cloves in a silken, milky warm tea was hard to deny, though - so Nina set out on her own journey, experimenting with her own blends and quantities until she found the perfect recipe. What began as a small cottage industry (“basically I was peddling it in small packets to my girlfriends”) eventually turned into Atelier Botanica and a seven-strong range of all-organic artisan products.

Based in the small town of Glenlyon, near Daylesford, what sets Atelier Botanica apart is the fact it’s a pure, potent chai spice mix without added tea leaves. The most critical part of making chai, she says, is keeping the tea-making and spices separate.

“I see tea in a chai blend as a filler,” she says. “Because the tea is delicate it should be steeped, not boiled. My blends don’t use any leaf-based products. It’s all roots, bark and seed so they’re much more resonant. They’ve just got so much more life and deep oils embedded in that woody material.”

As an added bonus, they pack enough flavour heft to use more than once. An example: Nina likes to brew her liquorice tea in a thermos. “Brew a litre at a time: put the lid on the thermos and don’t touch it for an hour or two. It’s heady, luxurious and syrupy, and you can get two litres of tea from one tablespoon of the spice mix. It’s crazy to use it just once as it has so much more to offer.”

Stocked in shops in central Victoria, Melbourne and the Atelier Botanica online shop, the pure potent chai spice is potent enough to use three times without losing its flavour. The finely-ground chai spice is an excellent go-to for instant chai latte, and it also forms the base for Atelier Botanica’s turmeric latte blend (excellent for things like hay-fever), dark Chocolate.

“I make it for myself as a kind of grownups’ dark chocolate so it’s warm and spicy,” says Nina. “I use couverture organic dark chocolate and organic cocoa as well, plus a teensy bit of coconut sugar and raw sugar so it’s really rich in flavour and light-on with sweetness. You’ve got to trust your own palate.”

Thinking outside the hot tea paradigm, the spices are also adaptable enough to be used in cooking: you can bake with them, or add them to curries and jellies.

“It brings me great joy to serve my chai to someone and on their first sip, see their face light up,” says Nina. “That’s what it’s all about.”

Atelier Botanica atelierbotanica.com.au shop@atelierbotanica.com.au