Chandernagor, the “city of the moon”, was one of the French trading posts in India: a town in West Bengal on a branch of the Ganges, where life overseas blended the art of living brought from mainland France with the trade in cotton fabrics, silks and tea. Mariage Frères pays tribute to it with this chai, a black tea that welcomes a blend of spices the house calls imperial.

The ingredients are tea, pepper, cinnamon, cardamom, ginger and clove; the blend may contain traces of nuts. No flavouring is declared: the spices, in pieces among the leaves, carry the scent alone, and the dry nose is already warm with cardamom and clove.

The cup is warm and spiced, as the house puts it, with a dense, fragrant liquor. The black tea gives the body; the cinnamon rounds it out, the pepper and ginger prickle without burning, the cardamom brings its camphor freshness and the clove a warm length. It is a French-style chai, clean and balanced, much less sweet than those served in India, since neither sugar nor milk is included, unless you add them.

Drink it with or without milk. Plain, it pleases lovers of clarity; infused in hot milk with a little honey, it recovers the Indian ritual. It goes with gingerbread, carrot cake or an oriental pastry, holds its own against a curry, and warms winter afternoons.

Chaï-Chandernagor is sold loose, weighed to order in our shops in Bordeaux and Nice, from the 5 g sample to the kilo; in a 100 g iconic tin, black and crimped, presented in its gift box; and in a box of 30 traditional round cotton muslin tea sachets, making 75 g. Allow 2.5 g or one muslin per 200 ml of water at 95 °C, five minutes’ infusion, and store it apart from plain teas.