Rule 1: Don’t say “Thank you,”
Juan explains as he pours hot water into a hollowed out gourd. It’s filled to the brim with shredded grey-green leaves. A bent metal straw lounges on the lip. Welcome to the social ceremony of Yerba Mate tea.
He hands the cup to me and I bite my lips to prevent the automatic response.
Called Mate for short (pronounced mah-tay), this batch smells earthy, grassy, and strong.
Mate at the ends of the earth (Puerto Natales, Chile)
“In the South we drink more Mate than in the North where the climate’s hot. It’s good for the cold,” Juan says.
This isn’t the mojito-beach-bikini part of South America. You can actually travel to Antarctica from here. We’re sitting with his friends on a fjord chatting about living in the Patagonian wilds.
The heat from the gourd warms my hands. The idea seems more plausible with the protection of tea.
Sluugh. I reach the end of the water and Juan extends his hand.
Rule 2: Only one person serves Mate.
He refills the cup and hands it to the person on my right. They drink immediately.
The gourd orbits the conversation as Jaime serves again and again. The tea weakens with each sip. Eventually, he cleans out the cup.
I notice that the bent straw has a flat filter on the end. It stops the leaves from getting sucked up as you drink.
He buries the straw in dry tea, adds water, and takes the first drink himself to make sure it’s not too bitter.
His sacred role as server is to ensure the best drinking experience.
“Mate makes me crazy. I feel like I drank ten coffees,” he says.
I don’t notice a big effect but, then again, I drink a lot of espresso.
Depending who you ask, Mate can do everything from stop cancer to improve weight loss to boost sex drive.
Science recognises Mate’s caffeine content, metabolism boosters, and antioxidant compounds.
It’s a power tea that keeps you alert, and you need the energy out here. It’s cold!
Rule 3: Brew it warm not hot.
“The water can’t be boiling hot when you add it. It has to be around 80 degrees,” Juan explains, filling the cup from a family-sized thermos.
“Otherwise the tea will be bitter.”
Soon, I’m warm and energised. The tea’s strength has passed on to me.
“Now you can say ‘Thank you.’ It means you don’t want any more,” he says.
“Gracias,” I reply, relieved to finally say it.
I run a few errands and then go back to my hostel. One of the younger staff is at the desk and I notice the swan-like cup and straw.
“Mate?” I ask him, pleased to be in the know.
“Yes, want some?”
Rule 4: Mate is meant to be shared.
There’s fuzzy etiquette that if you’re drinking Mate alone and someone engages you in conversation, you should offer them some.
As the other person, it can be rude not to accept. In this case, I’d asked myself into it.
“Dulce?” Sweet? He asks me. Some people add sugar, honey, or Stevia to their brew. This is considered normal or sacrilege depending on who you ask.
“Sure,” if I’m going to drink more, I might as well try it a different way. He adds a dash of Stevia from a dropper bottle.
This time, the bitterness is blocked by sweetness and I can taste the more flavours in the tea.
I excuse myself with a properly placed “Thank you,” and make a call home to Canada.
“Wait, you all use the same straw?” My mother cringes as I list all the people I’ve shared Mate with today.
She’s convinced I will die of some local illness to which I have no immunity.
It hits me that sharing Mate is a strangely intimate exchange with strangers. You essentially swap spit with people you may not even know.
With Mate, you share everything from time to conversation to… microorganisms.
Perhaps an unintentional side effect is a boost for your immune system.
Mate in the city (Buenos Aires, Argentina)
“Whoa, was there an accident?” A car sits smack in the grassy centre of a highway’s on-ramp.
Paul and I are speeding alongside eight lanes of traffic into Buenos Aires.
I squint as we get closer. The car must have skidded off the ramp. Luckily, there was space to come to a stop.
“No,” Paul laughs.
Rule 5: Set the ambience.
“Find a green space, drink Mate. It’s practically a law here.”
As we pass by, the car’s trunk is open and two people use it as a bench. One holds the unmistakable straw and Mate cup, the other has a thermos.
Turns out people will take their chances, driving off a massive highway just to drink Mate somewhere slightly scenic. As we head into the city, more cars are parked along the shoulder.
Many people walk around until they find a suitable location.
Wow, Argentinians are hardcore into Mate, I think to myself.
Then, I arrive in Uruguay.
Mate as a lifestyle (any street in Uruguay)
“Headed to Montevideo?” I meet a trio of Brazilians road-tripping through Uruguay on vacation. They invite me along for the ride.
We thunk our big backpacks into their trunk and I hop into the back seat.
“Mate?” My new friend passes back a shapely chalice-like gourd.
The only things I recognise are the straw, that it’s in the green colour spectrum, and that it’s sitting in a gourd of some kind.
Rule 6: There’s more than one way to Mate.
The colour and preparation of Mate tea depends on where it’s grown. Sometimes Mate is smoked over a fire to dry and roughly chopped, making it dark green. Other times, it’s dried fresh and pulverised into a powder.
It could just be the vibrant colour but this Mate tastes sweeter, with no sugar added.
Mate’s popularity reaches from Brazil to Argentina, Chile, Uruguay, and Paraguay.
“In parts of Brazil and Paraguay, Mate is prepared inside of a fruit. It’s served cold using the juice to steep it,” my friend explains.
Cold Mate is called tereré. It’s like the tropical straw-in-a-coconut of the tea world.
It sounds idyllic in the jungle, but I can understand why they prefer it hot in the cold.
Rule 6: You don’t rush Mate.
“We’re just going to stop by my friends’ house for a few minutes,” Ana says. She’s been hosting me in Uruguay, giving me the insider intel.
We arrive an hour before our dinner plans on the other side of town.
“Mate?” her friend asks.
In a single moment, time ceases to exist. We sit, share stories, laugh, eat snacks and talk about the world.
After the time we were supposed to be at dinner passes, I ask casually: “Oh, are we still going to dinner?”
Their silence and expressions tells me I’ve confused them.
“Yes, we’ll just be there later,” Ana states as if that were an obvious fact that I should know already given the time.
I guess it is.
Not a moment is wasted on worrying about the future.
We are together in the moment with Mate.
Steam rolls out of the kettle nonstop to ensure more water is ready as the thermos is emptied.
We show up to dinner more than two hours late.
“Hey, welcome! How are you?” A giant hug pulls me into the house. No harm was done.
At any time, you have unspoken permission to take a Mate break.
On the streets of Uruguay, I see tons of people with a thermos under arm. Sometimes, they’re mid-Mate, standing in a park or parking lot with friends. Other times, they’re walking between Mate stops.
Everyone is always ready.
Since strong social connections are an important part of happiness, Mate seems like a great tool to increase well-being.
It also may change the laws of time itself.
Rule 7: Mate makes a statement.
The next day, I watch as a scooter jaggedly turns around a corner. The driver has a thermos under one arm and a gourd balanced atop the brakes between his thumb and forefinger. It seems like a big risk for a cup of tea (also, wouldn’t a backpack suffice?).
Mate is so embedded in the culture that it can be literally inseparable from the people.
“There’s a law here that people can’t drive and drink Mate because there have been grizzly accidents with the straw,” my friend Ana says.
I’m not sure if this is fact or folklore, but the mental image is gripping. I wonder how many times Mate has been pried from someone’s dead hands.
I take a seat on a bench overlooking the sea and open up Tinder. Countless dating profile photos feature Mate. I show Ana.
“There’s a joke that no one could run for president without a picture drinking Mate,” she laughs.
Mate symbolises buena onda, good energy, that you’re willing to share with others. You can live in the moment and not take time so seriously. You can craft the perfect cup.
Perhaps I’ve drunk too much.
It could just be a fashionable accessory, showing your inclusion in the club that knows “Thank you” means “No thanks.”
We walk by a skate park. Boards flip and clatter as they hit the ground, with or without their riders. All have beanie hats, saggy new-but-look-old jeans, and are swearing.
They gather together as one opens his backpack and pulls out a thermos and Mate straw. His tea sits in a blue metallic sphere, but it’s unmistakably Mate.
Mate is obviously not going out of fashion, if anything it’s getting more stylish.
Ana fills the gourd and passes me some Mate. I move the straw subconsciously, stirring the leaves a bit.
“Oh, usually you don’t stir the leaves,” she says. “Just leave the straw in place.”
“Sorry!” I say, realising there are more rules than I imagined.
“Oh, don’t worry there aren’t ‘official’ rules. No one should take Mate too seriously.”
Yerba Mate is a people thing, thus it comes in different flavours, vessels, and with personal preferences.
The only real rule is that it should be a wonderful experience shared between friends. So, don’t be a pretentious jerk.
That and save your “Thank you” for the end.
