Grass clippings with a twist

Mate and bombilla in a calabaza.
Source: Wikimedia Commons. CC BY-SA 2.5

One of the things I forgot to do when I visited Argentina last year was drink the traditional beverage-- mate (pronounced "mah-teh"), or yerba mate, which, in theory, is sort of like a green tea, one of indigenous origin, existing prior to the settlement of South America by the Spanish and the Portuguese.

It's a popular beverage. I even saw someone on the Buenos Aires subway drinking it in the traditional way. There's a whole thing to it--a calabaza or gourd, a bombilla or silver or metal straw with one end serving as a sieve for the tea, and a traditional process for making it. You're supposed to pour the dry mate into the gourd, shake it to loosen the small bits, make a well in the calabaza with the bombilla, then slowly pour in warm water (not boiling). Next you let it brew a bit, then sip It through the bombilla. It has a social aspect, too, with people passing around the beverage to share.

The guy I saw drinking it was holding the gourd in one hand and had a Thermos tucked under his arm. He loosened the lid of the Thermos with his free hand and poured hot water into the gourd, all while perfectly balanced, without holding on to a subway strap or a pole. Impressive.

I've had mate before, years ago, in San Antonio, but I'd never had it done the proper way. So after the fact, I wanted to give it a try, and, figuring it might be a long while before I get back to Buenos Aires, I ordered a bombilla, calabaza, and mate through Amazon.

It took a couple of weeks to arrive. There's a whole post in the making about the complexities of Canadian customs and duties and what Amazon.ca and other retailers have to do to get your merch to you. Amazon.ca works well, generally, and is affordable, generally, but for other retailers based in the States (and let's face it, most retailers are based in the States) is more complicated and costly to get what you want in a timely manner.

Understandably, Amazon doesn't have warehouses full of mate, calabazas, and bombillas at their Greater Toronto Area distribution center in Brampton. (If there were an Amazon.ar, I'm sure they would.) So the mate had something of an arduous, roundabout journey to get here: The mate was packaged in Argentina for the Spanish market (and then perhaps further distributed to Syria and Lebanon, where the drink apparently is popular), then sold by a German online retailer, to some guy with weird tastes in Canada.

Thus mate is a global drink--or at least one that tastes like something that's been shifted around the world in an old container ship for several years. A container ship repurposed from an oil tanker that, in turn, had been repurposed from a fish trawler.

Sorry, Argentina, I love you, and I know mate is your national beverage and all that, but this is the most disgusting thing I've had in a long while--and I grew up on collards, pot likker, and Cheerwine.

What does mate taste like? Well, how to describe ... here are some possibilities:

• It's like drinking smoky yard waste that have the appearance of existing in a state somewhere between liquid and solid. 
• It's like you put a metal pipe into a storm drain near a golf course and thought, wow, I bet this will taste good. 
• It's like you fell face first into a bayou down stream from an alpaca rendering plant and thought, well, come to think of it, I am thirsty .... 
• It's like you gathered together a bunch of moldy, used chamomile tea bags, then repeatedly shot them out of a cannon, then hosed them down with a cocktail made from rancid Lilac Vegetal and Jean Naté cologne, and then made a tea out of it.
• It's like Walt Whitman traveled to Argentina and then wrote an ode to the beverage, entitling it "Leaves of Ass." 
• It's like the Grassy Knoll was made into a beverage that assassinates your tastebuds over and over again.

Most people I gather drink it straight, but others add a little sugar or honey, and others add lemon or orange peel. Some like it hot (or at least warm), and some like it cold. But even some sugar wouldn't fix this lukewarm mess. Dumping the entire yield of the Caribbean sugar crop and the Florida citrus crop wouldn't mask or erase that unmistakable taste of a beverage that I am guessing was originally proposed as a dare or revenge. And neither rain, nor snow, nor heat, nor gloom of night could make mate taste like anything other than the grass fire it is.

History tells us that the beverage originated among the Guaraní peoples of South America. I can only assume it was offered to the Spanish as revenge for smallpox. It seems like a fair if somewhat passive-aggressive exchange--an "I hate you but not quite enough to kill you" approach to the problem of the European conquest.

Hours later I couldn't un-taste the mate.

I think back to the guy on the subway with the calabaza and bombilla. He was at most thirty-something and attractive in that dirty blond German-meets-the Global South way (which I already have a weakness for), wearing a tanktop and jeans. I must admit that he had a slightly earthy, slightly peculiar, slightly funky aroma about him--which, months later, I realize was the odor emanating from the mate and not the man.

Apologies to Argentines, Paraguayans, Brazilians, Uruguayans, Syrians, Lebanese, and anyone else who imbibes mate and might be offended by this review. I know mate is a cultural thing. I know I should be less judgmental and "Western" in my thinking. Perhaps it's an acquired taste.

A taste acquired after a steady diet of Liquid Smoke, kale juice, and the sweat from Diego Maradona's jockstrap. Or mulch, napalm, and the runoff from a 19th-century gaucho's bathhouse. Or roadside weeds, singed hair, and the overflow from the mop bucket used at Eva Perón's mother's boarding house.

Thank goodness all those Italians moved to Argentina and brought with them their espresso makers, wine, sparkling water, and fancy sodas. 

Mate, me mata--Mate, you're killing me. And I'm not quite ready to die just yet.