Mate: The Bitter Tea South Americans Love to Drink Author: TODD LEWAN, Associated Press Writer Source: APWSTM.international VENANCIO AIRES, Brazil (AP) -- To hit it off with a gaucho on the South American pampas, you don't need to ride bareback, wear baggy ``bombacha'' pants or a scruffy poncho, eat meat or grow a walrus mustache. Just don't say no when he drinks from a gourd filled with sludgy green liquid, hands it to you and says drink up. That's bad cowboy etiquette, amigo. He's drinking erva mate (pronounced AIR-vah MAH-chee), a bitter concoction brewed from tree leaves and sprigs. And if herbal tea seems better suited to armchair cowboys, be advised these men take their mate seriously. ``It's sort of a bonding thing,'' says Henrique da Costa, a swarthy cattle herder of 27. He sips his mate and burps. ``If I offer a stranger my mate and he doesn't accept, well, sir, I just don't trust him too much from then on out.'' The British prize their afternoon high tea. The Japanese cherish their simple and Spartan ceremony. So, da Costa asks, is it really so strange that gauchos have their own tea ritual? Across the southern cone of South America, millions have an almost mystical devotion to mate. In a region settled by immigrants from Germany, Italy, Ukraine, Poland and the Middle East, mate is a cultural bond across class and ethnic divisions. Each year, Brazil's three southernmost states imbibe 110,000 tons of mate. Argentina consumes 175,000 tons -- more than 11 pounds (5 kilograms) a person. Tiny Uruguay, the most dedicated mate-guzzler in the Americas, polishes off 33,000 tons. That works out to 22 pounds (10 kilograms) for every Uruguayan man, woman and child. Argentine President Carlos Menem occasionally breaks from his busy schedule to sit and sip. When Uruguay sent soldiers to Angola for a U.N. peacekeeping mission in 1995, an Air Force jet airlifted mate to Africa. In Rio Grande do Sul, Brazil's biggest mate-sipping state (60,000 tons are swilled down each year, 12 pounds (5.4-kilograms per person), ``The Herb'' makes its way into board meetings, bingo halls, hair salons, poker parlors, wedding receptions, even funeral homes. State residents are admitted fanatics. Norma Beatriz Abreu, a 25-year-old aerobics teacher, says she slurps the stuff with anything she eats. ``I tried it once for breakfast with tuna fish and mustard,'' she says. ``It wasn't as good as you might think.'' To the uninitiated, mate looks like finely milled grass clippings with a sprig or two dropped in. But mate connoisseurs point out that the shoots and 8-inch (20-centimeter) leaves are plucked by hand from a tree with the tongue-twisting name ``Ilex Paraguariensis,'' a relative of holly. ``It's the most natural drink since water,'' says Teresa Urban, author of ``The Book of Mate,'' one of many guides in print. ``It's uncompromising and true, a gift from the womb of Mother Nature.'' Maybe so. But its appeal can be lost on first-timers. ``Overall, I'd say it tasted like shoe polish,'' says Don Schwartz, an American who tried mate during a visit to Buenos Aires last year. Yet to devotees, mate does everything but fetch the paper. Some say its high concentration of vitamins can cure baldness. (It doesn't.) Others say a secret enzyme in mate helps ward off obesity and pimples. (No tests have been done to prove this.) And some swear it adds years to one's life. Male drinkers are nearly unanimous on one point: ``If you want to be macho, a REAL gaucho with the ladies,'' says Guilherme Cavalcanti, 31, ``then, brother, take a little extra mate before going to bed.'' The Guarani Indians in what is now Paraguay have used mate since ancient times. In 1609, Spanish Jesuit missionaries arrived and began cultivating it in Paraguay and the province of Sao Pedro do Rio Grande do Sul, Brazil. Its lore grew among the gauchos, who lacked fruits and vegetables but never developed scurvy, a disease caused by vitamin C deficiency. Mate's high concentration of vitamins C, A, B-1, B-2, carbohydrates, phosphorous, iron, calcium and caffeine (about half as much as coffee) helped them survive. Today, mate is a dlrs 3.2 billion industry employing more than 400,000 people in Argentina, Brazil and Paraguay. Last year, Argentina exported a record dlrs 30 million in mate -- up sixfold since 1990 -- to 40 countries. The bulk went to Chile, Syria, Lebanon, Israel, China, Egypt, Kuwait, Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates. The Arab fancy for mate began when Syrians, Lebanese and Egyptians fled the Ottoman Empire and landed in Argentina and southern Brazil. Many eventually returned to the Middle East -- mate in tow. Mate even seems to be gaining a toehold in the United States, where about dlrs 400,000 worth of the herb is consumed annually. In November, Coca-Cola launched ``Lift'' -- a processed mate drink -- in the Brazilian town of Maringa, in Parana state. Coca-Cola's version of mate is no less bitter than the real thing, says Carol Martel, a spokeswoman at Coca-Cola's headquarters in Atlanta. The company plans to market Lift in Uruguay and Argentina, but not -- for now -- in the United States. The hitch? ``Most Americans have never heard of mate,'' says Martel. The U.S. Drug Enforcement Administration apparently hadn't, either, when it raided the Basalt, Colorado, ranch of Ashley Carrithers last summer looking for what a tipster said was a 2-ton cache of marijuana. ``Agents came screaming into the ranch in a flurry of dust, and they jumped out and got into crouches, pointing guns at us,'' says Carrithers. It wasn't until after he'd produced shipping invoices and the drug-sniffing dogs had turned up their noses that the DEA agents realized they had uncovered 4,000 pounds (1,800 kilograms) of Argentine mate leaves Carrithers planned to market. ----------------------------------------------------------------------