Winter is upon us, and that means the fancy of many Melbourne cafe-goers turns to chai.
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And the tea-mad patrons at the inaugural Melbourne Tea Festival on Sunday lapped up the teachings of local chai guru Uppma Virdi.
She said 10 years ago chai might be made from powder or syrup at health food shops or markets; these days "every cafe has to have chai on the menu" and customers are demanding that it's authentically brewed.
A corporate solicitor by day, in the past two years, Ms Virdi, 26, has built her chai brand, Chai Walli, (Hindi for 'female chai maker'), from scratch and it now takes up her weekends, before and after work and lunch breaks.
She now sells online and supplies 80 outlets, including cafes as far away as Malaysia, shops and supermarkets. She has a warehouse in Collingwood and employs two people. "I never thought it would go this far," she says.
At the festival, at the Melbourne Convention and Exhibition Centre, Ms Virdi gave a workshop on blending, brewing and pouring.
She said the spices should be crushed, not ground – grinding can make them bitter – then added to a pot of water, and brewed on a stove top for at least three minutes.
Milk is added, and the chai is brewed again for two to three minutes then strained into a cup. Chai should be felt in the throat and stomach, not just the tongue, "like a warming hug".
A 2012 backpacking trip to Europe inspired her to start Chai Walli. She would brew chai at hostels, and found that the aroma drew other travellers to the kitchen. Back in Melbourne, she started selling her family's dry chai blend.
In the Punjabi city of Jalandhar, her grandfather, Pritam Singh Virdi, had been an Ayurvedic doctor, prescribing herbs and spices for customers' ailments.
Ms Virdi sells two types of chai – one with black tea that has caffeine, and one caffeine-free. The mixes have 11 spices, including fennel seeds, cardamom, cinnamon, aniseed and ajwain.
They all have uses. Fennel is thought to prevent gas and helps digestion; cardamom to open up the lungs; and star anise is for coughs and colds.
In winter, she increases the proportion of 'warming' spices such as star anise, cinnamon and cloves, and in summer, she increases fennel and cardamom because they are cooling.
Customer Helen Patrice, 52, of Vermont South, said she drinks chai every day and loves "that nice, spicy, warm flavour, it's the best thing in the world to cuddle up on a cold day on the couch looking out the window at the rain, if you've got a nice warm chai".
