Messi and Argentina won! Why bring 1,000 kilograms of yerba mate to the World Cup?

In the early morning of December 19th, Beijing time, Messi led the Argentine football team to fight for 120 minutes and finally defeated France in a penalty shootout to win the World Cup. This is also the third time in the history of the Argentine team to win the World Cup.

Recently, many Argentine fans have started drinking yerba mate tea, which is the "source of strength" of the Argentine team. After all, they brought nearly 1,000 kilograms of yerba mate tea to this World Cup . Moreover, yerba mate tea has appeared frequently on Messi's social media platforms.

Photo: ins@leomessi

What exactly is yerba mate? How is it different from our Chinese tea? You may not think that humans can drink mass-produced yerba mate, or get the inspiration from bird droppings.

Miracles in Guano

South America has two famous local specialty drinks, both of which are popular among locals for their taste and refreshing effects. The colonial era after Columbus spread them beyond the New World. One is the now popular hot chocolate, and the other is yerba mate. Although yerba mate is not as famous as hot chocolate, it can be said to be one of the most representative drinks in South America , and it is almost a symbol that cannot be avoided when understanding South American culture.

It's this ordinary little jar | Pixabay

The Argentine gaucho cowboys love to drink yerba mate, which is not only their evening entertainment, but also a way to get energy and warmth . After a day of horseback riding, sitting around the campfire, only a pot of yerba mate can drive away the cold and fatigue.

Even Darwin tasted yerba mate. When Darwin visited South America on the Beagle, he was deeply impressed by the culture of the gauchos. He wrote to his family, "I am almost a gaucho cowboy, drinking yerba mate, smoking cigars, and lying comfortably under the canopy as if on a feather bed." Although Darwin said so freely, with the spirit of a naturalist who dared to try, he lassoed his own horse when he was imitating the gauchos' roping of cattle.

The raw material of yerba mate is Ilex Paraguayensis , which is mainly distributed in Brazil, Paraguay, Uruguay and Argentina. Like other hollies, Ilex Paraguayensis is an evergreen dwarf shrub, but it can grow up to 15 meters. From a distance, Ilex Paraguayensis looks like a citrus tree, with shining silver leaves, small, slightly green four-petal flowers, and finally purple-black berries with hard seeds inside.

Yerba mate and the plants used to make it | Dick Culbert / Wikimedia Commons

The colonists who arrived in South America discovered the great commercial value of yerba mate and tried to cultivate it artificially, but they failed.

The seeds of Paraguayan holly have a hard shell, and it is difficult to germinate even if cut with a knife. The Jesuit priests who came with the colonists at that time persisted in their research and finally found that the reason why the holly trees in the wild can germinate smoothly is because of the help of birds - the fruits eaten by local birds lose their hard shells in the acidic environment of the digestive tract , and the seeds excreted by them germinate much more easily. So the priests also used chemical methods to soften the seed shells and successfully completed the cultivation of Paraguayan holly.

Even if it germinates successfully, growing Ilex guineensis is still not an easy task . First, the newly sprouted seedlings are soft and sensitive and need to survive in the shade until they grow taller and can adapt to direct sunlight. When planting, the distance between the plants must be taken into account to ensure sufficient light. When it comes to harvest, workers climb up the tree and cut off the leafy branches until the trunk becomes almost bare. In the next few years, workers will not pick the tree, allowing it to gradually recover and wait for the next picking.

Dried yerba mate powder | Pixabay

The leaves are brought back to the site, dried, and then cut into small pieces. Sometimes, the locals also use the smoke from underground fires to smoke the leaves. Unsmoked mate leaves are dark green, and smoking adds a layer of brown. The mate powder is then stored in wooden barrels and supplied to locals and mate lovers around the world.

The bitter taste of the forest

Argentina is the largest producer of yerba mate, but if we look at per capita consumption, Paraguayans drink more. Claude Levi-Strauss gave a detailed introduction on how to drink yerba mate in his book Tropical Melancholy:

For people in South America, yerba mate is a daily drink | Gary Mark Smith / streetphoto.com

Put a handful of yerba mate powder into cold water, boil it over high heat until the water boils, then turn off the heat immediately. Be sure to turn off the heat as soon as the water boils, otherwise the taste of yerba mate will be lost. This method, which is opposite to the normal way of making tea, is called "yerba mate tea" (cha dé maté), which is dark green in color and has an oily texture, like a cup of strong coffee .

If time is short, make " téréré ", pour cold water over a handful of mate powder and drink it with a pipe-like straw. If you don't like the bitter taste of mate, you can learn from the Paraguayan women's newspaper and drink " sweet mate " (maté doce): mix mate powder and sugar, roast it over a hot fire, then pour boiling water over it, and filter it after it is rinsed.

But the most popular way to drink it is called chimarrāo , which is the way the gauchos drink it in a circle around the fire. The person in charge of making the tea sits in the middle of the circle and fills a gourd-shaped pot two-thirds full with mate powder, then inserts a ball-shaped filter spoon into the bottom of the tea powder. Once filled with hot water, the mate is passed around. Each person takes two or three sips, then adds water to the person making the tea, and they take turns drinking until the tea taste disappears.

Pat Nixon, wife of US President Nixon, tries yerba mate | US National Archives & DVIDS - GetArchive

Many studies have questioned the safety of yerba mate because people in South America who love to drink yerba mate have a higher incidence of esophageal cancer . However, more in-depth studies in recent years have found that this is because South Americans always drink yerba mate at boiling hot temperatures, which damages the esophageal mucosa; if you only drink yerba mate at the right temperature, there is no clear health risk.

Similar to tea, yerba mate also contains caffeine , which can play a certain role in refreshing. So, if you drank yerba mate while watching the World Cup last night, your insomnia may not be because the game was too exciting, but because of yerba mate.

Nowadays, people who are familiar with yerba mate outside of South America can almost be divided into three categories: South American tourists, Argentine football fans , or Borges book friends . When reading Latin American literature, whether it is Borges, Bolaño or Llosa, you will encounter yerba mate from time to time.

This is the taste of Latin America | Pixabay

As a Borges book friend, I am no exception. The only difference from "Qinma Luo" is that I patiently wait for the tea soup to cool down before tasting it, because long-term drinking of hot drinks over 65℃ is a risk of cancer.

Yerba mate is a bit bitter at first, with a sweet aftertaste of ice cream and a hint of tobacco , which makes people feel refreshed. It is like smoking a hookah, and it is really a slow-paced refreshing drink. The filter straw is buried deep in the pile of tea leaves, and the tea leaves look like a fortune-telling pattern made of mosaics. Strauss said that yerba mate is "bitter and fragrant, as if the entire forest is concentrated in a few drops of liquid ."

Author: Ǒphelia

Edit: Red Queen

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