Mate (drink)

• 1. Introduction

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  Mate, the caffeine-rich herbal drink of South America's Southern Cone, comes with an unwritten rule about talking too much. In Argentina, young drinkers tell a rambling friend no es un micrófono, which means "it's not a microphone." The joke is aimed at whoever holds the shared cup for too long, as if lecturing a crowd. A drink with its own etiquette and its own humor is more than a drink. Mate is made by steeping dried leaves of the plant Ilex paraguariensis in hot water. Argentina, Paraguay and Uruguay each treat it as a national beverage. So why does a single cup travel around a circle of friends? Who first steeped these leaves, and how did an indigenous habit become a national tradition? And what does the leaf actually contain?

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• 2. Gourd, Straw, Name

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  The silver straw called the bombilla does two jobs at once. It carries the liquid to the mouth, and it filters out the leaves. Its submerged end is flared and pierced with small holes or slots. These let the brew through while blocking the chunky bits of yerba. Traditional bombillas are silver. Modern ones are made of nickel silver, stainless steel or hollow-stemmed cane, and some use a spring sleeve as the strainer.

  The vessel shares its name with the drink. A mate is most often a calabash gourd, known as porongo or cabaça, and in Portuguese the gourd is a cuia. Lapacho and Palo Santo hardwoods, bamboo tubes, ceramic, metal and cattle horn serve as well. The horn version is the guampa in some areas. Gourds are often trimmed with silver in floral or heraldic designs. The most ornate ones, paired with silver bombillas, are sought after by collectors as works of jewelry.

  The English word reached us through French maté and American Spanish mate. Both trace back to the Quechua word mati, meaning the calabash gourd. English spells it both ways. The accent in maté signals two syllables, as in café. Spanish writes no accent, because the stress falls on the first syllable. Written maté with stress on the second syllable, the Spanish word means "I killed."

  Other names tell their own stories. Guaraní speakers say ka'ay, and traditionally prepared mate is chimarrão in Brazil. The Spanish cimarrón means rough, brute or barbarian, though most people understand it as feral. Across Latin America it describes domesticated animals that have gone wild. Colonists around the Río de la Plata borrowed it for the natives' rough, sour drink, taken with nothing to sweeten it. That sour drink depends on a careful arrangement of leaves inside the gourd.

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• 3. Building the Mound

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  Between 70 and 85 degrees Celsius, and never boiling, is the water temperature for mate. The range is so familiar that several national makers of electric kettles label it "mate" on their thermostats. Good preparation starts with filling the gourd between one-half and three-quarters full of yerba. Too much leaf gives a "short" mate, and too little gives a "long" one. Both are considered undesirable.

  In Paraguay, preparers often add extra herbs called yuyo, or jujo in Portuguese. They buy these from a local yuyera, an herbalist, and use the mate as a base for herbal infusions. Next comes the shaking. The preparer covers the opening with the palm and turns the gourd upside down. A vigorous but brief shake, with gradually fading force, sends the finest powdery particles toward the palm.

  Then the gourd is tilted nearly sideways and shaken gently from side to side. The fine particles drift toward the opening, and the leaf settles into a layer along one side. The largest stems form a partition between the empty space and the lopsided pile. Finally the gourd is tilted back onto its base with as little disturbance as possible. The powdery peak should stay flat and level with the rim. The point of all this is a smooth-running mate, with the finest dust kept far from the filtering end of the straw.

  The straw goes in at an angle roughly perpendicular to the slope of the yerba. Its filter ends up near or against the far wall of the gourd. The thumb must seal the top of the straw during insertion, or the air current will pull in unwanted particles. Some preparers first wet the yerba with cool water, which lets them pack the slope with the straw. Others insert the straw into dry leaf for a cleaner entry. The choice is a matter of personal or cultural preference.

  Cool water matters in a second way. Applied before the hot water, it takes two or three minutes to soak in. It protects the leaf from scalding and from the chemical breakdown of some of its nutrients. Hot water is then poured into the empty side of the gourd, keeping the swollen top of the mound dry. The mate can be refilled many times before it turns lavado, meaning washed out. A tired mate can be revived by pushing the mound to the opposite side and pouring along the newly cleared edge. This is called "reformar el mate." Once the water is in, the gourd is ready to be handed to someone.

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• 4. Passing the Round

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  The server is called the cebador in Spanish, and the preparador, cevador or patrão in Portuguese. At a family gathering this is usually the owner of the house. One gourd and one straw serve everyone in the circle, which Portuguese speakers call the roda and Spanish speakers the ronda. The cebador fills the gourd and drinks the first brew completely. This clears away stray particles and tests the quality.

  In some places, handing that first brew to a guest is bad manners, because it may be too cold or too strong. For this reason it is often called mate del zonzo, the fool's mate. If the second filling also seems too cold or bitter, the cebador may drink that one as well. After that, each refill goes to the drinker on the cebador's right. That person drains the gourd, which holds little water because it is mostly packed with yerba. They hand it back without a word of thanks.

  Silence is the polite response. A final gracias or obrigado tells the cebador that this drinker has had enough. The one exception to the order of the circle is a newcomer, who receives the next mate and then slots into the sequence according to where they sit. When the water runs out, the straw makes a loud sucking noise. Nobody considers it rude.

  A round typically continues for about ten fillings or more, depending on the yerba and the skill of the cebador. Well-aged yerba is more potent and supports more refills. Only the cebador may move the bombilla or fiddle with the arrangement. A guest who does so risks offending the cebador and not being offered the gourd again. Not everyone agrees on what belongs in the gourd, and the variations run from sugar to ice water.

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• 5. Roots and Plantations

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  The Goddesses of the Moon and the Cloud, according to a Guaraní legend, once came down to visit the Earth. A yaguareté, or jaguar, was about to attack them, and an old man saved them. As thanks, the goddesses gave him a new plant, from which he could make a "drink of friendship."

  The historical record points to the same people. Mate was first drunk by the Guaraní, in what is now Paraguay, southeastern Brazil, Argentina, Bolivia and Uruguay. The neighboring Tupí drank it too. Later it spread to parts of southern Brazil and northeast Argentina that had belonged to Paraguay before the Paraguayan War. That history is why the scientific name of the plant is Ilex paraguariensis.

  Spanish colonization of Paraguay in the late 16th century brought mate to the settlers. In the 17th century it reached the Río de la Plata, and from there Peru and Chile. Demand turned yerba into Paraguay's main commodity, ahead of tobacco, cotton and beef. At first, indigenous labor harvested wild stands of the plant.

  In the mid-17th century the Jesuits found a way to domesticate the plant. They set up plantations in their Indian reductions in the Argentine province of Misiones. That sparked severe competition with the Paraguayan harvesters of wild stands. After the Jesuits were expelled in the 1770s, the missions and their plantations fell into ruins. The industry stayed vital to Paraguay after independence. But the Paraguayan War of 1864-1870 devastated the country economically and demographically, and development for the benefit of the state halted.

  Brazil then became the largest producer. Brazilian and Argentine projects in the late 19th and early 20th centuries domesticated the plant again and opened the way for plantation systems. In the 1930s, Brazilian entrepreneurs turned their attention to coffee. Argentina, long the prime consumer, took over as the largest producer. This revived the economy of Misiones Province, where the Jesuits had once held most of their plantations. The top spot moved between the two countries for years.

  As of 2018, Argentina produced 56-62 percent of the total, Brazil 34-36 percent and Paraguay 5 percent. Uruguay is the largest consumer per person, at around 19 liters per person per year.

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• 6. Sweet, Bitter, Cold

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  One Paraguayan style of sweet mate begins in a pot, where refined sugar is caramelized and milk is added. The mixture is heated, poured into a thermos, and used in place of plain water. Paraguayan drinkers often add chamomile, called manzanilla in Spanish, and coconut to the yerba in the guampa. The herb ka'á he'é, known as Stevia rebaudiana, is the preferred natural sweetener there. Artificial sweeteners are also common.

  Mate dulce, the sweet form, is widespread in Santiago del Estero province, Córdoba, Cuyo and metropolitan Buenos Aires, as well as rural Chile. The spoonful of sugar or honey should land on the edge of the cavity the straw makes, not across the whole surface. One variation sweetens only the first fill, to cut the bitterness of the first sip and soften those that follow. Many drinkers keep a separate gourd for each style, because sugar is said to ruin the flavor of the bitter version.

  Bitter mate, mate amargo, is preferred in Paraguay, Uruguay, southern Brazil and parts of Argentina and Bolivia. Many people hold that mate should be drunk this way. Purists reject additions such as lemon or orange peel, herbs or even coffee. Southern Brazil leans bitter and hot, and Brazilians elsewhere sometimes add sugar or honey.

  Cold water gives another drink altogether, tereré. It is made from specially cut dry leaves, very cold water and sometimes lemon or other fruit juice. It is very common in Paraguay, northeastern Argentina and the Brazilian state of Mato Grosso do Sul. After the water is poured, it is proper to "wait while the saint has a sip" before the first person drinks. In southern Brazil, tererê is also a put-down for a chimarrão that is not hot enough.

  The yerba itself comes in styles. Con palo mixes stems with ground leaf, and sin palo has little or no stem. Compuesta is blended with plants such as mint, while saborizada is flavored with additives. Barbacuá is toasted. Gourd size varies too. In Uruguay and Brazil the traditional gourd is big with a large opening. In Buenos Aires it is small, with a small hole.

  In Uruguay, people stroll the streets carrying a mate and a thermos of hot water. Some gas stations in Argentina, sponsored by yerba producers, give travelers free hot water for the road.

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• 7. Smoke and Caffeine

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  A figure of 92 milligrams of chlorogenic acid per gram of dry leaf is the average for mate tea. It contains no catechins at all, which gives it a polyphenol profile quite different from other teas. Mate is also a rich source of caffeine. Argentine folk culture, partly promoted by marketers, credits the stimulant to a separate substance called mateína, named after the drink. Chemical analysis shows that mateína is caffeine.

  The traditional processing of the leaves involves smoking them. Smoking leaves them with a high load of polycyclic aromatic hydrocarbons, such as benzo(a)pyrene, which are carcinogenic. It has been suggested that these compounds may explain lung and bladder cancers linked to mate, which the heat of the drink cannot account for. Temperature above 65 degrees Celsius is linked specifically to oesophageal cancer.

  The evidence behind the smoke concern is thin. The findings on these compounds in the leaves and the infusion come from small studies with non-representative sampling. Even so, some have proposed unsmoked mate, with potentially lower levels of the compounds, as a preventive approach.

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• 8. Far From the Pampas

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  Every the 30th of November, Argentina celebrates National Mate Day, a holiday observed since 2015. In Brazil, mate also appears as an iced tea. One source is a sweetened industrial version made by Matte Leão, and another is artisanal producers. In Rio de Janeiro it belongs to the beach culture, sold by vendors, while the hot infusion is uncommon there. The state of Paraná funds a park that teaches sustainable harvesting, aimed at keeping the oldest wild forests of yerba mate in the world healthy.

  Travel narratives such as Maria Graham's Journal of a Residence in Chile record a long history of mate drinking in central Chile. Many rural Chileans still drink it, especially in the southern regions of Magallanes, Aysén and Chiloé. Mate reached Lima in the 17th century and is widespread in rural parts of northern and southern Peru. There it is brewed with coca, or as a sweetened tea with small slices of lemon or orange.

  In Syria and Lebanon the custom came home with Syrians and Lebanese who had moved to South America in the late 19th and early 20th centuries. They adopted the tradition and kept it after returning to Western Asia. Syria is the biggest importer of yerba mate in the world, at 15,000 tons a year. The Druze communities of Syria and Lebanon are the ones who mostly maintain the practice. Mate is also popular in Israel, brought there by immigrants from Argentina.

  Tea bags carry it further. Cabrales from Mar del Plata and Establecimiento Las Marías both make bagged mate for export to Europe. In North America, a major retailer in San Luis Obispo, California, reported that mate had reached about 5 percent of the natural tea market by 2004. Canadian bottlers have introduced a carbonated mate sweetened with cane sugar. One brand, Sol Mate, plays on a pun between English "soul mate" and the Spanish and Portuguese for "sun mate."

  One yerba-based soft drink has a different origin. Materva, a sweet, carbonated drink, was developed in Cuba in 1920. It has been produced in Miami, Florida, since the 1960s and is a staple of Cuban culture there.

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