I have been hooked on my Yerba Mate (pronounced ma-tay) tea since I first bought it from Bellocq Tea Atelier (more on that later) about a week ago – it’s basically green tea from South America.
The yerba mate is a small tree which made it to sub tropical highlands of Uruguay, Paraguay, Brazil and Argentina and the native Guarani Indians of Argentina and Paraguay are the first to drink mate – they made a filtered straw out of bamboo called a bombilla to strain the leaves and consumed it out of a gourd. Legend has it that the Goddesses of the Moon and the Cloud came to the Earth one day to visit it but they instead found a Yaguareté (a jaguar) that was going to attack them. An old man saved them, and, in compensation, the Goddesses gave the old man a new kind of plant, from which he could prepare a “drink of friendship”.
Preparation method —–similar to brewing your typical loose leaves green tea but Michael Shannon from Bellocq (bellocq.com) so kindly tells me that the mate is best brewed with water at 80 degrees celcius for 4.6mins (see label). I suppose the temperature of the water do not have to be exactly 80 degrees but try to aim for a rolling boil because boiling the water for too long will deplete the water of oxygen.
I find the mate has a much more robust flavor than say japanese green tea and a lot of the Argentineans drink it in favor of coffee which was how I first learnt about mate. Yes, write caffeine all over a product and you have my undivided attention – i was born caffeinated. The mate is loaded with three types of stimulants (caffeine like coffee, theophylline like green tea, and theobromine like cocoa) so definitely not for the faint hearted if caffeine is not your cup of tea.
You can drink it pure, like me, without adding anything or you can add honey or sugar to sweeten it like the Argentineans do. At the end of the day, tea makes everything better and a life without tea is too difficult to contemplate so I shall not.
‘Real men drink tea’
—–unknown
Leave a Reply