What Is Yerba Mate? Why Should I Care?

What is yerba mate? Yerba mate is a beverage made from the ground, dried leaves of the yerba mate tree, native to the area around the Paraná River in Paraguay (Folch, 9). As cultural anthropologist Christine Folch describes, yerba mate is widely enjoyed throughout Paraguay, Uruguay, Brazil, and Argentina where "the loose powder is typically steeped in hot water in a drinking vessel, often made from a gourd... called a mate... and strained through a bombilla, the drinking straw" (Folch, 9). Other localized forms of consumption exist, such as the Paraguayan tereré, consisting of yerba powder mixed with cold water instead of warm water as well as various herbs (Folch, 9-10). Yerba mate has been and remains a large cultural aspect in Paraguay, Uruguay, Brazil, and Argentina, being intimately linked with cultural rituals and even national identity.

Today, yerba mate's importance is not limited to Latin America. In the late 20th and early 21st century, yerba mate extended beyond its former borders of consumption, though production has remained primarily in Brazil, Argentina, and Paraguay. As a result of large amounts of immigration of Druze people to South America in the 1970s and 1980s, yerba mate is now more popular in Syria and Lebanon than any other place outside of Latin America (Folch, 6).  Yerba mate has also traveled to Europe, being consumed in Germany as a cold beverage (IARC). Companies like Guayakí have moved to marketing yerba mate as a health beverage, with advertisements aimed at consumers in the United States (Guayakí, "Yerba Mate"). Yerba mate has now become a beverage of importance outside of Latin America, being one of the six most-consumed stimulants in the world and consumption increasing (Guayakí, "Yerba Mate").