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I didn’t originally intend this yerba mate piece to be a multi-tea review, but that’s how things panned out. I’ve been curious to try yerba mate (Ilex paraguariensis) for a while now. It’s a shrub, related to holly, cultivated in South America and a very popular drink in that part of the world.
It is emphatically not a tea. It bears no relation to Camillia sinensis. It does however have an attribute which sets it apart from other herbal tisanes: yerba mate contains caffeine, and plenty of it. This makes it in my mind, a plant worthy of consideration.
I started with Teapigs’ Yerba Mate, a no nonsense offering of mate leaves and nothing else. Teapigs’ website likens it to green tea with a slightly smoky flavour. Well, I couldn’t detect any smokiness or tea type flavours here. I also couldn’t detect anything that made this brew even slightly pleasurable to drink.
It tastes of cabbage water and compost heaps. It’s a bit like mint tea, only much much worse. Originally I made it using boiling water, as instructed by the tea packaging. For my second cup, I used water at approximately 70o, as instructed by the Internet. Varying the brewing temperatures made no discernible difference to the disgustingness of the whole experience.
You may have observed that my first experience of yerba mate was not an altogether favourable one. The thing is, I didn’t want to write off Paraguay’s favourite beverage on the strength of two unfinished cups of the stuff. I knew I didn’t like this yerba mate, but perhaps there were other ones out there that I might get along with.
This was when I pressed into service other yerba mate blends which I had to hand. The first was Malwa’s Yerba Mate with Lime, a blend of mate, lemongrass, rosehip and lime peel. The second was Bird & Blends Guarana Chai which comprises of yerba mate, ginger, cinnamon, cloves, fennel, cardamom, coriander seeds, red peppercorns and guarana. (Oh hey there guarana! I haven’t seen you since the 1990s’ club scene. How’s it going?)
You know what, both of these drinks were perfectly pleasant. I appreciate that it’s not much of a recommendation for yerba mate if it only becomes drinkable by adding things that aren’t yerba mate to it. Such was my visceral reaction to mate though, that I was genuinely surprised that it didn’t permeate these tea blends with its stagnant pond water flavour.
Malwa’s tea tasted primarily of citrus with the hint of something green and fresh and possibly green-tea-like at its base. Bird & Blend’s Guarana Chai has its own madcap agenda going on being a spiced-up party extravaganza. The mate, guarana and spices get up close and personal with each other like sweaty, ecstatic 90s ravers and the combination works jolly well indeed.
In short, in neither Malwa’s or Bird & Blend’s tea blends does the yerba mate fuck things up.
I am not done with yerba mate yet. It intrigues me and is worthy of further investigation. In some ghastly alternate reality where Camellia sinensis does not exist, would yerba mate have become the world’s go-to hot beverage? If it had, it would have changed the history of the East India Company enormously. They’d have needed a different name for a start.
Today’s featured book is Petal, Leaf, Seed: Cooking with the Treasures of the Garden by Lia Leendertz.
