The taste of yerba mate tea, which is both bitter and fragrant, actually comes from horse manure

I said the carousel on the funfair on Sunday,

The shadow of heaven cracks its walls,

Fate lurks quietly on the edge of the knife.

A night that smells like scented yerba mate.

——Jorge Luis Borges, "Verses of Fourteen"

South America's two famous local specialty drinks are both popular among locals for their taste and refreshing effects. The colonial era after Columbus spread them beyond the New World. One is the popular hot chocolate today; the other is the less famous yerba mate. Outside of South America, people who are familiar with yerba mate can be divided into three categories: South American tourists, Argentine football fans, or Borges' book friends. yerba mate can be said to be one of the most representative drinks of South America, and it is almost an indispensable symbol for understanding South American culture.

It's this ordinary little jar | Pixabay

Miracles in Guano

The Argentine gaucho cowboys are keen on drinking yerba mate, which is not only their evening entertainment, but also a way to get energy and warmth. After a day of activities on horseback, sitting around the campfire, only a pot of yerba mate can drive away the cold and fatigue. When Darwin visited South America with the Beagle, he was deeply impressed by the culture of the gauchos. He wrote to his family: "I am almost becoming a gaucho cowboy. I drink yerba mate, smoke cigars, and then lie comfortably under the canopy, just like lying on a feather bed." Although Darwin said it so freely, he had the spirit of a naturalist who dared to try, and when he learned to lasso the cattle like the gauchos, he lassoed his own horse.

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 huge commercial value of yerba mate and had been trying to plant it artificially but to no avail. Because the seed shell of the Paraguayan holly is hard, 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 found that the reason why the holly trees in the wild can germinate smoothly depends on the help of birds. The fruits eaten by local birds lose their hard shells in the acidic environment of the digestive tract. The excreted seeds 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

Claude Levi-Strauss gave a detailed introduction on how to drink yerba mate in his book Tropical Melancholy:

Although we all believe that only geniuses can create great works, today I want to say that unknown workers can also create masterpieces that are equally as good.

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. In recent years, more in-depth studies 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.

Fans of South American teams must have seen Suarez and Messi share a cup of yerba mate. It is said that Argentine teams bring dozens of kilograms of yerba mate when they go abroad for games. Readers of Latin American literature, whether reading Borges, Bolaño or Llosa, will encounter yerba mate from time to time. If you are curious, you can buy a set of tools and tea powder to try it.

This is the taste of Latin America | Pixabay

As a friend of Borges, 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 above 65℃ is carcinogenic. Yerba mate is a bit bitter at first, and the aftertaste is a bit of ice cream sweetness, and it seems to have some tobacco flavor, which makes people refreshed. It is like smoking a hookah when you inhale it. It is really a slow-paced refreshing drink. The filter straw is deeply buried at the bottom of 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 whole forest is concentrated in a few drops of liquid."

Author: Ǒphelia

Edit: Red Queen

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