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"I like pigs. Dogs look up to us. Cats look down on us. Pigs treat us as equals."
Winston Churchill
Yerba Mate is a small evergreen tree or shrub of the Holly family, native to the subtropical highlands of northern Argentina, Paraguay, Uruguay and southern Brazil.
The word yerba is a variant of hierba, the Spanish for ‘herb’, and mate is from a Quecha Indian word mati meaning ‘cup’. Therefore yerba mate is ‘cup of herbs’.
And it also has a few other aliases: South American Holly, Paraguay Tea, Jesuit Tea and St Bartholomew’s Tea.
The Guarani Indians were the first peoples to cultivate the plant, followed by the Jesuit missionaries in the 17th century. The Guaranis drink Yerba Mate to boost immunity, cleanse and detoxify the blood, combat fatigue, control the appetite, reduce stress and eliminate insomnia.
Yerba Mate, brewed from the dried leaves and stemlets, is a healthy alternative to coffee. In fact, mate bars are as popular in South America as coffee bars are in the United States.
Mate Drinking
Although it can be drunk as an infusion (a teabag in a cup – ‘a cocido’), mate is traditionally drunk from a gourd (also called a mate) via a straw called a bombilla. The bombilla is used to stir the brew and also acts like a sieve to keep the leaves in the gourd.
In the mate drinking ritual, the host fills the gourd two-thirds with yerba mate, places the bombilla on the leaves and pours on hot – not boiling – water. The gourd is then passed around, each drinker adding fresh water to top it up.
