As the weather turns colder (yes, even here in LA), I’d like to share one of my favorite kinds of tea: chai. Chai comes from many Indian dialects (according to my dictionary, which I checked before just saying “Hindi”) and simply means “tea”. But in English, it describes the way that tea is traditionally enjoyed in India: mixed with spices and milk.

My sister’s neighbor makes chai with a masala (spice blend) that she gets from a cousin. The ingredients are unknown to me, my sister, and the neighbor, although I have a jar of it. It certainly contains black pepper and ginger. She mixes a teaspoon of it for every cup of tea she makes; she mixes half a cup of tea and half a cup of milk plus two teaspoons of black tea leaves. She boils them until they look done and sweetens them to within an inch of their lives. She pours directly from the pot into American coffee mugs with expert ease, and it tastes like friendship, warmth, and autumn.

Starbucks makes a chai that tastes like warmth and autumn without the friendship. Its major ingredients are ginger and high fructose corn syrup. They make it as a latte, which I think is inspired, and one gets a foam of milk on the top which makes it that much better.

One can make one’s own chai masala if one (a) googles such a recipe and (b) has access to small amounts of numerous spices. But real chai is a taste that must be acquired by an American palate: putting black pepper in one’s tea is not generally considered a sign of sanity. My favorite chai is Republic of Tea’s chai, cut with an additional scoop of tea (usually a darjeeling, sometimes an assam if I’m feeling in need of the hit). I’ve heard good things about Oregon Chai but have never tasted it myself.

The best chai uses a fatty milk product (half half and half and half milk is a good mix, I’ve found, but maybe whole milk is the way to go; it’s never available in my fridge) and is shared with others. When the weather turns chilly on the outside, I turn to chai for my insides. The ginger and pepper go a long way toward warming me up, and when it’s cold outside, I need that; but there’s an additional taste that you can’t find on the spice rack and that warms up more than just your body, and that’s the taste you can only get from sharing it.