Organic Brazilian green maté blended with warming chai spices — the substitution that makes rather a lot of sense once you have tried it.
Chai without the black tea
Masala chai is traditionally built on strong black tea, which brings tannin and astringency along with its caffeine. Maté brings caffeine with a different structure underneath: vegetal and slightly bitter rather than tannic, and it does not turn harsh when it sits.
That second point matters practically. A chai is normally simmered with milk and spice, and black tea stewed that way goes bitter and grippy. Maté tolerates it. If you make chai properly — in a pan rather than a mug — a maté base is genuinely more forgiving.
The spices give the vegetal note underneath something to work against, and the result is warmer and rounder than plain maté without losing what maté is.
What maté is
The leaves of Ilex paraguariensis, a South American holly. Not tea, and not caffeine-free — it contains caffeine, roughly between a cup of tea and a weak coffee per serving. This is green Brazilian maté, dried without smoke rather than cured over wood fire.
Brewing it
80 °C, never boiling, for the plain version — boiling water scalds the leaf into bitterness. A teaspoon to a tablespoon per mug, five minutes, re-infusing up to three times.
For a proper chai, put a heaped tablespoon in a small pan with half water and half milk, bring it barely to a simmer, hold it there for five minutes, and strain. Sweeten a little; chai spices need some sugar or honey to open up.
Worth knowing
Let it cool below about 65 °C before drinking. The concerns around maté relate to drinking it scalding hot rather than to the plant. Contains caffeine; the guidance in pregnancy is under 200 mg a day from all sources.