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. 
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