Mate

In Argentina, the word mate refers to two things: the infusion and the container in which it is drunk. The most traditional container is made from a porongo, a dried gourd, but there are mates made of wood, horn, metal, ceramic, and glass. You fill most of it with yerba mate—dried, ground leaves and stems of a native tree—moisten it with hot water without letting it boil, and drink through a metal tube with a filter at the end, the bombilla. The thermos next to it is part of the set.

Mate is meant to be shared. The person who prepares it, the cebador, drinks the first serve, which is usually more bitter, then refills it and passes it to each person in the circle, one at a time. Each person drinks everything and returns the mate to the cebador, who refills it for the next person. Saying “thank you” in the circle usually means you don’t want any more. Many drink mate bitter; others add sugar, orange peels, or herbs.

Law 26,871, signed on July 3, 2013, declared mate Argentina’s national infusion and defines it as the beverage prepared with yerba mate in a container, moistened with hot water and drunk with a bombilla. The law foresees promotion of mate in official events. Another law, 27,117, established National Mate Day on November 30, the birth date of Andrés Guacurarí y Artigas, a Guarani leader from Misiones. Yerba with geographic indication is produced in Misiones and the northeast of Corrientes, but the custom spans the whole country—in homes, offices, plazas, and car journeys.

Mate is not only Argentine. The Guarani peoples already used yerba before Europeans arrived, and the beverage spread across the Río de la Plata region. It is also traditional in Uruguay and Paraguay—where cold tereré is very popular—and in Brazil’s southern region, where the hot mate is called chimarrão. Each country has its own ways and rules for the circle. In Argentina there is also mate cocido, yerba boiled like a tea and strained, served at breakfast and in the afternoon snack.