what is Yerba Mate?

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as such a strong part of the argentine culture, and a habit which i have adopted, i thought it´s worth an entry to talk about the argentine national pastime, drinking mate. yerba mate might be the most popular beverage you´ve never heard of. argentines consume an average of 5kg per person per year, five times their intake of coffee and it´s estimated that 95% of households purchase it regularly.

yerba is the dried chopped leaf of a plant that is a relative of the common holly. mate refers to the gourd used to drink it. discovered from the indians by the jesuit missionaries, they found that it had many beneficial qualities such as increased energy and the assuaging of hunger and thirst. mate contains mateeina, a relative of caffeine and in my experience has a gentler but longer lasting caffeine kick to it.

the way mate is prepared and consumed is pretty unusual. the mate cup - which comes in all shapes and sizes and is made either from a gourd or wood - is filled with the yerba. you then pour hot, not boiling, water into the cup and drink through a filtered metal straw called a bombilla. it´s served in a very social way, which is kind of the point. mate is a shared drink, where the server fills the mate with water and then hands it to someone, who then drinks it all (quickly, bc others are waiting) and hands it back. it is passed clockwise in this fashion and lasts quite a while. it´s very egalatarian, as people from all classes drink mate and you often see very different people sharing it. i also think there´s a nice communication element to it in that you take turns talking and listening.

my host family drinks mate like its going out of style and it didn´t take long for me to pick it up, especially as a non-coffee drinker. i now have a couple mates and a thermos!

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Photos

elida´s (my host mom) mate
made of wood encased in metal

yerba
it comes in bags like sugar, but my family keeps theirs in this tin

mi mate
this mate´s made of wood, the straw has a filter on the end