Worst. Chai. Ever.

Having recently fallen in love with Lipton's Chai Latte, I thought I'd expand my range and try a new product on the market: Nescafé Chai Latte.

Worst. Chai. Ever.

Worse even than the toxic brew of ground up aardvark droppings and uranium mine tailings sold by Gloria Jeans as chai.

And I've just discovered why: hidden in the small print on the box is this:

Makes a deliciously frothy coffee with a blend of eastern spices

Coffee?

Chai is tea. Not coffee. Not ground chicory, or chocolate, or dirt, or pieces of lumber, or electric cattle prods. Tea. That's what chai means. Not coffee. I can't stress that enough.

Chai is not coffee. One is made from the leaves of the Camellia sinensis plant, the other from the dried seeds of plants of the Rubiaceae genus. They aren't hard to tell apart. A company as big as Nescafé could surely afford to hire somebody who knows the difference.

And latte is Italian for milk. Not a fancy name for coffee. Chai latte doesn't mean "tea and coffee, together at last, in the same mug", as one local café seems to think. It means chai with milk.

Sheesh.