Chai Wallah Margate – Black Chai
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This is the first tea I’ve had from Kent-based teamongers Chai Wallah Margate and I have to admit that, even before I tasted any of their tea, I was already a bit in love with them. Take their name for a start: The exoticism of “Chai Wallah” and the prosaicness of “Margate” smooshed together like a two word poem.
Chai Wallahs are tea street vendors in India, usually serving up spicy Masala Chai boiled up with milk and sugar. It is not a glamorous job, but it’s an essential and quintessentially Indian one. India’s big cities probably run on Chai Wallah tea. Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi humble-bragged that his first job was selling tea with his Chai Wallah dad at Vadnagar train station.
Margate, on the other hand, is not exotic. Probably not to anyone and certainly not someone like me who lives in in an adjacent county. It is however one of Britain’s major ports – a limb of a Cinque Port, no less – and has doubtless been the landing site of a lot of seaborne tea cargo in its time.
Chai Wallah Margate’s packaging also deserves a mention. They have a whole retro aesthetic going on, which is quirky without being twee. There are actual postage stamps on their hand stamped tea packages! It’s like getting a postal delivery from the past.
But what, you might reasonably ask at this juncture, of the tea itself? Well, happily after my high expectations, Chai Wallah Margate’s Black Chai certainly delivers the goods. These are clearly teamongers who know exactly what they’re doing.
I chose Black Chai as my inaugural Chai Wallah Margate tea, partly to put their Chai Wallah credentials to the test, but mostly because I really like Masala Chai. This tea is a blend of Assam, ginger, cinnamon, cardamom, cloves and chilli. And it’s as sturdy and spicy a brew as any chai-lover could wish for. It’s probably a bit gingerier than other spiced chai blends I’ve tried, and that’s no bad thing at all.
In order to get my tea-grabbing mitts on as many types of Chai Wallah Margate tea as possible, I purchased their tea sample selection of twelve 10g samples. I’m not saying I regret that decision exactly, but a mere ten grams of Chai Wallah Margate Black Chai doesn’t last long at Tea Fancier Towers. I am sipping the very last cup of it as I write.
Happily, the need to stock up on more chai means that another delightfully retro tea parcel will be winging its way to me soon.
Today’s featured book is Flashman and the Mountain of Light by George MacDonald Fraser.
