Mate culture

One of the first things I learned about when coming to Argentina was the mate culture. Mate is not just a drink, or the traditional drink of Argentina (and other Latin American countries), it is a whole ritual and it has a lot of meaning. Mate mainly means sharing. It is the first thing you offer to guests who come to your house, you meet up with friends in a park and for sure there will be someone bringing along a mate set, you go for a nice walk with your other half and at a beautiful spot you stop to have a mate and chat. The whole culture of Argentina can be summarized in the act of sharing this one special drink.

But what is mate? Mate is a kind of tea that is made out of a special herb called yerba that is growing here. You have a special cup called mate (so the cup and the drink have the same name) you drink it from through a metal straw. The cup is filled with the herb and then you poor hot (but not boiling) water that is kept in a thermo flask on top of it. The person serving the mate drinks first (because the first cupful is often a bit bitter). When he or she emptied it, the cup gets refilled and then passed on to the next person in the round who then has to finish it, return the cup to the person serving who then refills it and hands it to the next person and so on. Mate can be drunk with or without sugar (even though some people will tell you that the only real way of drinking mate is without sugar – while others will tell you the exact opposite).

You can spend hours sitting around with friends, drinking mate and chatting. And when you run out of water you can usually get a refill at vending machines at petrol stations and often restaurants, cafes or hotels will fill up your thermo as well (even though you will probably have to pay for that service).

At the beginning I did not like mate too much but already after a few weeks I got very used to it. I now have several sets of them as well. Depending on the region, the mates are made out of glass, a pumpkin or wood and they come in all sorts of sizes and shapes. I have mate on my own while working because of its energizing effect and I have it with friends and work colleagues to socialize. And I love the community aspect of it, the sharing and I think it is a shame that we do not have something like that in Europe.