Mate (Yerba Mate Infusion)

History

Mate is an infusion of yerba mate, the dried and ground leaves of Ilex paraguariensis, a holly native to South America. It is drunk from a gourd — the gourd itself is also called the mate — through a bombilla, a metal straw whose flared, perforated end works as a sieve, holding back the leaf while letting the brewed liquid through. The drink was first consumed by the Indigenous Guaraní, whose territory reached across what is now Paraguay, southeastern Brazil, and northern Argentina, and by neighbouring Tupí peoples, well before European contact; from that heartland in the Paraná basin the habit spread through the Southern Cone, and it remains most at home in Paraguay, Argentina, Uruguay, and southern Brazil. Mate is characteristically a social act rather than a solitary one: the same gourd and the same straw pass around a circle, refilled and handed on, until the leaves are spent.

The version set down here belongs to the Río de la Plata and its grasslands. Carmen Gazcon de Vela, writing from Buenos Aires, records it as it was dictated to her by an old gaucho on her estancia, keeping his 'meticulous explanations.' In his method the water is brought to three boils in a clay or enamelled-iron kettle (a pava); the gourd is packed with yerba alone and given two spoonfuls of cold water through the bombilla first, pressed but not stirred, so the cold water pulls out the aroma before the hot water is added over sugar; on serving, the bombilla is moved but never lifted. The headnote around it is the contributor's own framing rather than documented history: she calls mate 'almost a cult' among the people of the Pampas and repeats the gaucho's telling that this careful pouring — the cebadura — was the way of Artigas, the Río de la Plata caudillo, who was said never to take mate unless he had prepared it with his own hands. That last is offered as folklore ('they say'), and the source itself opens by mourning that mate's 'days of splendour have passed' — a period lament, not a fact about the drink. What the source does not settle is how far this sweetened, cold-primed preparation was the gaucho's own habit rather than a general rule; it is one estancia's practice, faithfully transcribed.

Ingredients

• water
• yerba mate (yerba)
• sugar

Instructions

1. Boil the water to three boils in a clay or enameled-iron kettle.
2. In the gourd packed with yerba, at the first boil pour two spoonfuls of cold water through the bombilla; press without stirring to draw out the aroma.
3. After the three boils, draw off the cold water by tilting the gourd and pressing with the bombilla.
4. Add sugar, then pour in the hot water calmly.
5. On serving, move the bombilla around without lifting it.