# Yerba Mate



## iheartflutes

I live in the United States. Many a year ago, I was asked to do a project on Yerba Mate and bring some into class. I did my research, wrote up a report and was ready to find and make some for my classmates. However, it was very difficult to find Yerba Mate anywhere near where I lived. I looked everywhere and was finally able to find it in a health food store. For about a year afterwards, I still kept an eye out for it, but I finally gave up. Recently, yerba mate was starting to come to America in full force and it still is. In a small coffee shop, not too far from where I live, you can not only get the leaf, but also the cool gourds and straws that make the yerba mate experience what it is. Unfortunately, however, when I did my project, I was never able to try it the authentic way and that would have been really cool.

Is this "Yerba Mate Uprising" only recently happening in America and the rest of the world? How truly popular is it (aside from what they say on the websites)? I never really thought that it would really make it in America, but it now seems to be doing fine, as we seem to even have our own producers.

       --flutes


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## cuchuflete

We have had some fascinating discussions
 about yerba mate, including this one:

http://forum.wordreference.com/showthread.php?t=116641

It's pretty much unknown in the State of Maine, outside of my house, where it's consumed from time to time,
both Argentine and Paraguayan (cold) style.


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## Lombard Beige

Yerba maté is another thing that is part of my mixed-up family's way of life, because my father (who was a seaman) lived for about ten years in Buenos Aires in the 1920's. So I regularly drink maté with a metal "bombilla" (I also had a wooden maté cup, but it cracked, so now it is used solely as an ornament), as well as continental coffee and tea ... Maté is sold widely near me (Milan and Bergamo) in Italy, because there is a large Argentinian community (mainly, but not exclusively, Italo-Argentinians). 

regards


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## aleCcowaN

When I saw this thread, I couldn't help to heat a whole teapot, grab my mate bowl and start to write between sips about the virtues of this Paraguayan-Argentinian-Uruguayan-Brasilian(Southern) second nature, quintessence, prosthetics-of-the-healthy-ones, consolation-of-the-poor-or-afflicted, and companion-of-the-lone-souls.

Mate doesn't seem appetizing "at first taste". I recall a chapter of the TV series in which that mature Australian chap travels the World, and he remarked after he was served a hot foammy non-sugared mate that he felt like drinking "a hot liquid carpet".

Mate doesn't belong to the league of those foods and beverages that quicky catch the attention of the customers, like pizza, ice-cream, English muffins, apfel Strudel and chau-fan with prawns do. If it's so, mate have became a worldwide spread drink.

As other products like coffee, tea and beer, you have to overcome your natural rejection to the taste and enjoy the effects of the beverage until you become addicted. Mate is probably the less tasty within this group, but the healthiest one. Alike it happens to many people that a coffee cup without a cigarette is not coffe cup, to many of us a life without mate is not a life.

Like coffee and tea, mate contains small ammount of a caffein-like alcaloid, but in smaller proportions than its more famous relatives. You can take a dozen coffee cups and became excited, nervous of even depressed. You simply can't do so with mate as it has a seventh of coffee strengh. Unlike coffe, you can't get a strong effect drinking mate without being well nourished, as mate contains small ammounts and traces of dozens antioxidants, minerals and vitamins, like vitamin A and C, magnesium, flavonoids and much more, becoming a must in historical gaucho's nutrition, who ate a little ammount of vegetables and fruits in winter. People could get many benefits to their health by drinking mate, without almost posing health risks coming from sharing "bombilla" (bulb shape ended drinking straw).

Maybe you can catch the flu by sharing mate, but you don't share mate with people you don't trust, you do it with people who live or work with you, and you easily may catch the flu from them by other means than mate. No serious illness, like AIDs and hepatitis can be transmited by mate unless both people have bleading wounds inside their mouths at the same time. Sharing "bombilla" is as healthy or unhealthy as kissing passionately. Drinking mate together is an act of social love and integration.

I encourage you to *not* taste and try mate. Firstly, because getting a small ammount of it, bringing it into a classroom and giving it everybody in order to taste it is a monstruosity and an aberration. Doing so is like a bunch of tourists bursting into a cathedral in the middle of the mass, dressed with Hawaian shirts, taking photos with their flashes and joking and shouting disrespectfully. Like Tea Ceremony, you have to be introduced to it and all what sorrounds it. Secondly, because tasting mate might catch you lifelong, and you would become this way a slow-city movement promoter, you would feel a part of mankind and respect your fellow men, and you would feel yourself as a part of Nature. Even worst, you would have to connect with the inner you, as mate has the secret power of giving your eyes a vacant expression as you see both your best and worst in contemplation.

[My teapot is becoming empty now]


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## Lombard Beige

And, together with maté, I inherited from my father a love for the tango: 
la música es tan sensual, pero la letra tan triste ... “ni una mano ni un favor” ... o nostálgica ”volver ...”

And, to remain on topic: Does maté help?  

Chau


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## Bonjules

aleCcowaN said:


> When I saw this thread, I couldn't help to heat a whole teapot, grab my mate bowl and start to write between sips about the virtues of this Paraguayan-Argentinian-Uruguayan-Brasilian(Southern) second nature, quintessence, prosthetics-of-the-healthy-ones, consolation-of-the-poor-or-afflicted, and companion-of-the-lone-souls


 
These posts sure tempt one to want to try it. Or even grow it. It appears to be some kind of tree. Would it grow fast enough or could one harvest some while it is still small? Is there a certain variety one should look for? If you can find some in a health foode store, are there likely some seeds in the mix?
saludos

P.S. This thread also explains to ignorants like myself why a forer@ calls him/herself
mateamargo....


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## cuchuflete

Here's a nice, short, non-technical essay on cultivation and economic history of the plant:
http://www.yerba-mate.com/yerba_mate_history.htm

Cultivation: pH 4.6 to 7.2,  Climate: hot, wet summer, and cool, dry winter.
Some good info in pdf format in this article on growing mate in New Zealand:  
*Yerba Mate*


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## iheartflutes

aleCcowaN said:


> I encourage you to *not* taste and try mate. Firstly, because getting a small ammount of it, bringing it into a classroom and giving it everybody in order to taste it is a monstruosity and an aberration. Doing so is like a bunch of tourists bursting into a cathedral in the middle of the mass, dressed with Hawaian shirts, taking photos with their flashes and joking and shouting disrespectfully.


 
I'm sorry I messed up on such a strong scale. It was back many years ago and I got extra credit for that class. Recently I've been getting into the whole idea of the loose leaf tea and it's brought me back to Yerba Mate.


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## aleCcowaN

Bonjules said:


> These posts sure tempt one to want to try it. Or even grow it. It appears to be some kind of tree. Would it grow fast enough or could one harvest some while it is still small? Is there a certain variety one should look for? If you can find some in a health foode store, are there likely some seeds in the mix?
> saludos
> 
> P.S. This thread also explains to ignorants like myself why a forer@ calls him/herself
> mateamargo....


_Ilex paraguayensis_, the small size tree which leaves and springs become yerba mate, grows naturally in subtropical forests with more than 50 inches of rain a year (subtropical meaning tropical 8 months a year, temperate the remaining 4 months). We can't grow it here in the Pampas, and you have to elaborate the leaves to make yerba mate, a process not too complicated but not something you could do at home.

Yerba mate, like cofee, lose its flavour in few weeks, even well packed and kept. I don't think anybody can get half a pound of quality product unless there is a community of consumers near home (meaning, Argentinian, Uruguayan, Brasilian gaúchos, Paraguayan -New York, Israel, Paris, for instance- or former inmigrants that "catched the vice" and propagate it in their homeland - Galitia, Lebanon, Syria, and many county-size districts around the World).

Like classical music, which you should start cultivating starting with Vivaldi's Four Seasons, and not with a season ticket in Bayreuth hearing a bunch of Nibelungen, you may approach to mate through "mate cocido". Preparing it at home with generous sugar and milk is a good point to start appretiating this exotic tea. If you like it, you may reduce sugar and milk until you feel the need to get a mate bowl and start sucking the bombilla, a mild pleasure that stands between lollipops and cigarettes, but avoiding risks for both your teeth and lungs. But alike martial arts, you would need a sensei and a few mates/comrades.


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## ireney

aleCcowaN6 I have no knowledge of Yerba Mate at all. In fact I first "heard" of it when this thread was opened.

I did a bit of research and saw that it is quite a healthy drink to consume. However I can get all this "goodness" it contains from other sources which leaves me perplexed as to why I would want to go to such extremes to acquire a taste of it. I mean you are making sound as something that needs a lot of getting used to and I just don't see why I shouldn't go to my grocers shop and buy tasty vegetables and fruits 

Mind you, since, as I mentioned, I didn't even know of its existence till very recently, I am not saying it isn't worth it. All I'm asking is what makes it worth the trouble.


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## aleCcowaN

iheartflutes said:


> I'm sorry I messed up on such a strong scale. It was back many years ago and I got extra credit for that class. Recently I've been getting into the whole idea of the loose leaf tea and it's brought me back to Yerba Mate.


Don't worry. I was just illustrating an important point of mate, using that anecdote. Unlike other substances men put into their throats or veins, it's not the effect what we appretiate about mate, it's the atmosphere.

Do you remember your neighbor, the one who, that day, looking a bit stressed, went to the backyard and started to bounce a ball, slowly, rythmlessly? Do you remember him throwing now and then the ball into the basket up on the garage wall, showing no interest about the outcome? Do you remember how the lack of time in the bounces you heard told you the mood of the guy? He was not playing basketball. He didn't intend to sum points or get some exercise. He was playing around while he thought about his worries and dreams. He didn't know, but he was drinking mate. The day he did the same with his son, chating quietly about important things, they didn't know, they were drinking mate again.


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## aleCcowaN

ireney said:


> aleCcowaN6 I have no knowledge of Yerba Mate at all. In fact I first "heard" of it when this thread was opened.
> 
> I did a bit of research and saw that it is quite a healthy drink to consume. However I can get all this "goodness" it contains from other sources which leaves me perplexed as to why I would want to go to such extremes to acquire a taste of it. I mean you are making sound as something that needs a lot of getting used to and I just don't see why I shouldn't go to my grocers shop and buy tasty vegetables and fruits
> 
> Mind you, since, as I mentioned, I didn't even know of its existence till very recently, I am not saying it isn't worth it. All I'm asking is what makes it worth the trouble.


There's nothing extraordinary about mate. If somebody is looking for taste pleasures, better try selected Scotch or Brandy. If somebody is looking for a stimulating infusion, better get a jug of fresh coffee.

Mate has the power of showing us that a humble plant with no particular tasty flavour, inside a humble emptied small cabbage, sucked with a humble drinking straw, can become a culture, and promote human relationships and self contemplation. I assure you that without these elements that surround mate, it is not worth at all. In ancient times, the rich had extremely expensive ornated silver mate bowls made by Peruvian skilled craftmen. The yerba mate inside those bowls was the same quality the one the poor had. This single fact should reveal something what is hidden behind. A strictly cultural issue. No mate is served in five forks restaurants nor one greasy spoon ones. It's not a product to do bussiness. It's not a consumable. It's something that belongs to private life, a private life you may live alone or together.


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## iheartflutes

Since the last time that I posted in this thread, I have decided to go back and try Yerba Mate again. Is it natural to have a turn of the nose when you are first introduced? It seems to have an almost "cigarette-ish" odor/flavor. Is this just something that you get over with time? It seems to be an interesting drink and I am interested in getting into it, but I don't know how to get through this first hump.


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## Elibennet

AlecCowan, your dissertation about mate drinking is just excellent. 
And to those who haven´t witnessed "una mateada"(a mate session), you should know that a good conversation with a friend at home starts with the phrase "poné la pava"(put the kettle on the heater.) Long nights studying for an exam were for sure accompanied by mate all night long. Personally, I don´t drink it because it´s healthy, just because I like it. Anyway, I don´t think you can like it if you haven´t seen  how the "dynamics of mate" works in this culture. It´s an excuse to make a break, to start a conversation, to visit someone. Then there´s a series of unwritten protocols I could tell you about if you´re interested.


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## aleCcowaN

iheartflutes said:


> Since the last time that I posted in this thread, I have decided to go back and try Yerba Mate again. Is it natural to have a turn of the nose when you are first introduced? It seems to have an almost "cigarette-ish" odor/flavor. Is this just something that you get over with time? It seems to be an interesting drink and I am interested in getting into it, but I don't know how to get through this first hump.


I suppose it depends the way of preparing it. Boiling water has the property of spoiling it. Even boiled water later cooled a bit. It seems to be -I'm not sure, it's a popular theory- that boiling water removes oxygen an nitrogen "solved" in water, and they are important to get the flavour through some reactions.

Besides, I remember -or I think I remember- the first time I took a whole coffee cup. It tasted bitter like bile. Later I got used to it and it tastes now not bitter at all.

I recommend you to prepare it as "mate cocido" (infusion) in the old fashion way. Put some 300-400 cubic centimeters water (about one tenth of a gallon, about 12 liquid ounces) in a small pan, heat it up to 20 seconds *before* it would started to boil strongly (forget the microwave oven), then add a tea spoon of yerba mate -you probably see some little foam instantly when you do this-; wait for 10-15 seconds and when boiling is imminent, turn off the heat and immediately add a tea spoon of cold water; wait one minute and filter it directly to your jug using a tea strainer. [Correctly prepared it looks like tea, but green instead of brown. If you see it pale green it's very light. If you put the spoon in the jug and you see it more blurred at the bottom of the jug, it's too concentrated -and bitterer-, add then some hot water]. Add some sugar -the same as you were drinking tea- and if you like white coffee and milk in your tea, add a tea spoon of dried milk. Don't wait it for being cooled, start drinking with little sips, while you eat a few plain salted biscuits, or bread toasts. Don't have the TV on nor use your computer nor have the music playing. Select a place in the garden, balcony, terrace or even the sidewalk, or a good window and start watching and hearing the things you don't look every day: the birds, the strange shape of the trees, the ants, people walking, the strange shape of the clouds, whatever, in silence, sharing your thought only with yourself. If you try to do it with other people, don't start saying "I like this... this is strange ... it tastes odd", just do as you drink it all your life and start chatting about an old anecdote, or just shoot the breeze. This is the quickest approach to mate I can offer to try it yourself alone and get a part of the essence of it. Two or three hours later, remember your experience. Would you feel like you drank a coffee two hours before? a cup of tea? a beer? No, you'll surely feel different, quite calm, focused but not mentally aroused.

Don't repeat the experience many times, specially if you somewhat liked it. You would be caught lifelong.


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## Istaril

Hey everyone, another Argentinian around =)

Yerba Mate is supposed to be served hot, on a recipient called "Mate" (guessed that from the name =P) with a metallic straw with holes on the bottom so no "Yerba" passes through it .. About how to serve the water, it varies from person to person .. my grandma and my mother usually drink it steaming hot, while I'd rather wait a little bit before joining, can't stand much the heat of the full one =) oh and I like it best sweeter so I add a little sugar on it before serving the water, my grandma likes it bitter so the round goes me (sweet), my mum (without adding sugar, middle), grandma (bitter), then me again where I add sugar, the system is perfect people!! =)

Many variations, there are different kinds, with different kind of tastes by the trademark, there are even some who have little pieces of orange skin into it to give it orange flavour, or the so common "Adelgamateeee!" XD where an old gaucho (Argentinian cowboy) appears in the TV promoting a mate that was supposed to make you thinner when you drank it =)

My point is that it is not meant to be drank one way only, take it as tea, just not as widely spread all over the world =P the Mate Cocido is another nice way to have it. My father told me that some japanese people where he works wanted to try some, they offered it to them, the first one didn't want to because he thought it was like pot or other drug so he backed off, and the second blew on the straw instead of drinking, resulting in splatting everyone of mate =P the third one made it though, good for him =)

My point is that if you are in Rome, do as the romans do =) just part of another culture, If I was in Japan I'd like to try sushi or .. dog maybe =P it's always nice to experience things from other parts of the world, specially Mate, give it a go =) It's not addictive, but you do see old mans with the Mate in hand and the "Termo" of hot water in the other wherever they go, I love my country =)


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## ElaineG

Well, having just got back from Argentina, I was curious to try mate, and although I was somewhat sceptical when my British friend who has been living there for a year now was raving about the "bonding" aspect of taking mate with others, I saw that the ceremony and the sharing associated with it (at least among her Argentinian friends) was really lovely.

However, I really didn't like the taste.  I tried a few times, and then decided to stick to Malbec and beer .  I WANTED to like it, but it reminded me of bong water (not that I ever drank bong water, but I used to smell it often enough back in college).

I liked sitting with them as they took it though -- as I said, it was a nice feeling.


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## Etcetera

Mate has become very popular in Russia - along with other "exotic" drinks. 
But most people drink not mate (which is pretty difficult to find), but some dust in saches which is proudly called "mate", but which has nothing to do with mate, I believe.


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## Istaril

Russia ... =P

So far away .. the thing about Mate is that it is, maybe really hard to get outside the frequent countries .. my uncles (who live in the US) have a really hard time getting it and every time they have the chance they bring a lot from here .. in there I think they are selling them on drugstores or latin towns (apparently besides chinatown they have latintown =P big shock for me)
And they are saying that i doesn't taste the same way, and that the one sold here tastes so much better .. as I said before I love my counrty =) and I doubt I'll ever go live somewhere else ..


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## ayaram7700

Hey, in Chile, especially in the South where I come from, and it is cold in winter, we drink lots of mate, too; I like it but they say that that it might be dangerous for blood pressure (makes it higher?).

Saludos,

Ayaram7700


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## Elibennet

Something interesting about Uruguayans: they drink mate everywhere, even when they are walking in the street. They carry the thermos under their right arm, as if they were embracing it, and they hold the mate with the same hand.


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## aleCcowaN

Etcetera said:


> Mate has become very popular in Russia - along with other "exotic" drinks.
> But most people drink not mate (which is pretty difficult to find), but some dust in saches which is proudly called "mate", but which has nothing to do with mate, I believe.


I don't understand what saches are. Maybe mate can be sold worldwide in little paper bags like tea, to prepare "mate cocido" that, no matter what everybody could say, is very good.


lateacher said:


> Hey, don´t forget Uruguayans! kings and queens of mate & thermos!


I'm using these days some PU1 yerba (for Uruguayans, first quality) I got as a present. I like Uruguayan yerba mate. And, yes, they have mastered the mate.


ayaram7700 said:


> Hey, in Chile, especially in the South where I come from, and it is cold in winter, we drink lots of mate, too; I like it but they say that that it might be dangerous for blood pressure (makes it higher?).
> 
> Saludos,
> 
> Ayaram7700


Here the physicians say to you "stop drinking coffee and stick to mate or tea" if you have severe high blood pressure. If coffee was damaging as smoking 15 cigarettes a day, mate was damaging as smoking 2 cigarettes a day -or living in a medium size city within its polluted  air-.


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## Etcetera

aleCcowaN said:


> I don't understand what saches are. Maybe mate can be sold worldwide in little paper bags like tea, to prepare "mate cocido" that, no matter what everybody could say, is very good.


Yes, I meant tea bags. Shame on me, I happened to forget this word.
I agree that tea bags are a good idea, but I haven't seen good mate in paper bags. 



> I like it but they say that that it might be dangerous for blood pressure (makes it higher?).


I've heard the same said about greeen tea, you know. As my blood pressure is quite low, I don't mind tea making it slightly higher.


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## Chaska Ñawi

The time has come to prepare, with great love and attention, a bombillo of mate;  to settle in to admire the scenery and passing clouds;to enjoy a rich conversation with a loved one as we imbibe the fragrant liquid.... and to release this now rather chatty thread on a cloud of aromatic steam to become one with the universe.

saludos


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