# Mate: from the Guaraní forest to an everyday ritual

*A plant from the subtropical forest, a people who simply called it “the herb”, four centuries of history across missions, pampas and cities: how a cup of leaves became the gesture that holds a whole country together.*

Published: 2026-10-08 · https://www.ritualestore.it/en/blog/origini-del-mate

## In brief

- Mate is an infusion of yerba mate leaves (*Ilex paraguariensis*), a tree native to the subtropical forest spanning Paraguay, southern Brazil and north-eastern Argentina.
- The first to drink it were the Guaraní peoples, who called the plant *ka’a*, “the herb”; the word “mate” comes from the Quechua *mati*, the vessel.
- Banned in Buenos Aires in 1616, it was cultivated by the Jesuits in the seventeenth century; after their expulsion (1767) people returned to wild harvesting until 1895, when Carlos Thays managed to germinate the seeds again.
- Yerba contains caffeine, theobromine and theophylline, and antioxidant polyphenols such as chlorogenic acids; it should be drunk hot but not boiling.
- In Argentina mate has been the “national infusion” by law since 2013: it is found in more than nine homes in ten, and people drink more than six kilos per person a year.

In Argentina, mate is not offered: it is shared. It arrives mid-morning at the office, turns up on the dashboards of lorries, passes from hand to hand on the beach, in the stands, in kitchens at dawn. To understand how a simple infusion of leaves became the daily gesture of an entire country, you have to travel back up the rivers, to the forests where it all began.

## Where it comes from: the forest and the Guaraní

Yerba mate is a plant before it is a drink. Its scientific name is *Ilex paraguariensis*: a relative of the holly, an evergreen tree that in the wild grows to more than ten metres and thrives in the shade of the subtropical Atlantic forest, in the basin of the Paraná, Paraguay and Uruguay rivers. Today those lands are divided between Paraguay, southern Brazil and north-eastern Argentina, with the province of Misiones and northern Corrientes at the heart of production.

Long before those borders existed, the Guaraní peoples gathered the leaves of this tree and called them *ka’a*: simply “the herb”, as if there were no others. They chewed them, steeped them, and carried them on long journeys because they gave energy and dulled hunger and fatigue. They drank from small hollowed-out gourds and strained the leaves through plant-stem straws: the direct ancestors of the mate and bombilla we use today.

**The plant at a glance**

- **Botanical name**: *Ilex paraguariensis*, of the Aquifoliaceae family
- **Habitat**: Subtropical Atlantic forest across Paraguay, southern Brazil and north-eastern Argentina
- **Guaraní name**: *Ka’a*, “the herb”
- **Where the word “mate” comes from**: From the Quechua *mati*, the vessel: originally it meant the gourd, not the drink

## Conquistadors, bans and Jesuits

The Spanish who reached the Río de la Plata in the sixteenth century soon picked up the habit from the Guaraní, and within a few decades yerba had become a precious commodity, traded along the routes linking Asunción to Buenos Aires and as far as the mines of Peru. Not everyone was enthusiastic, however: in 1616 the governor of Buenos Aires, Hernandarias, banned its trade, judging it a vice that made men idle, with fines for the Spanish and lashes for the indigenous; in those same years the Jesuit provincial, Diego de Torres, denounced its use to the Inquisition as “diabolical superstition”. The ban failed: the habit was by then too deeply rooted.

It was the clergy themselves, in the end, who changed its fate. In the Jesuit *reducciones* of Paraguay, from the seventeenth century onwards, the fathers achieved what no one had done before: they cultivated yerba instead of gathering it in the forest. The plant’s seeds germinate with great difficulty, and finding a way to make them take root allowed the first orderly plantations to be established. For more than a century “Jesuit yerba” was one of the region’s chief sources of wealth, exported across the continent as “Paraguay tea”.

When the Spanish Crown expelled the Jesuits from its territories in 1767, much of that knowledge was lost. For over a hundred years people went back to harvesting from wild trees, in the *yerbales* of the forest, often in gruelling and exploitative conditions. Only in 1895 did the Franco-Argentine landscape architect Carlos Thays manage to germinate the seeds again in Buenos Aires, and in the early decades of the twentieth century cultivation restarted on a large scale, above all in Misiones: that is still where most Argentine yerba comes from today.

> Mate has been banned, taxed, exported, forgotten and rediscovered. The one thing it has never stopped doing is passing from hand to hand.

## How it conquered all of Argentina

From the north-east, yerba travelled down the rivers to Buenos Aires and from there spread across the pampas. Between the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries mate became the inseparable companion of the *gaucho*: during long days on horseback, in a boundless landscape without villages, the gourd and the kettle on the fire were rest, a light meal and company. Gaucho literature, with *Martín Fierro* foremost, portrays it as part of the landscape, like the horse and the campfire.

Meanwhile mate was also entering the homes of the colonial city. In wealthy families it was served in chased silver vessels with precious bombillas; in humbler kitchens a gourd and a little hot water were enough. It is one of the few habits that crossed every social class without changing form: the gesture was the same, only the material differed.

The great wave of migration between the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries did the rest. Millions of Italians, Spaniards and many others arrived in Argentina knowing nothing of mate, and adopted it quickly: it was cheap, it could be prepared anywhere and, above all, it was the simplest way into a community. Offering a mate to a neighbour, a colleague or a newcomer meant welcoming them. Within a generation, the children of immigrants were drinking it as if it had always been theirs.

*Yerba poured into the mate before the first water: the gesture with which every ronda begins.*

Today Argentina is, together with Brazil, the world’s largest producer of yerba mate: yerba is found in more than nine homes in ten, and the average Argentine drinks more than six kilos a year. In 2013 a law (no. 26,871) declared mate the “national infusion”, and a later law (no. 27,117) set 30 November as National Mate Day, on the anniversary of the birth of Andrés Guacurarí, “Andresito”, the Guaraní commander who governed Misiones and promoted the production of yerba. But mate is not only Argentine: it is at home in Uruguay, where per capita consumption is the highest in the world, at around ten kilos a year, in Paraguay, where in summer it is drunk cold as *tereré*, in southern Brazil, where it is called *chimarrão*, and even in Syria and Lebanon, brought by emigrants returning from South America.

## What’s in yerba: the health benefits

Part of mate’s success is explained by what the leaves contain. Yerba holds caffeine (long called “mateine”, though it is the very same molecule), together with small amounts of theobromine and theophylline, the same substances found in cocoa and tea. Regular drinkers describe a more gradual and lasting energy than coffee gives: thanks in part to the way it is drunk, in small sips spread over time rather than in a single cup.

- **Antioxidants**: yerba is rich in polyphenols, in particular chlorogenic acids, which research associates with an antioxidant action comparable to that of green tea.
- **Focus and alertness**: the combination of caffeine and the other alkaloids helps you stay attentive and clear-headed, which is why mate accompanies study and work.
- **Minerals and vitamins**: the leaves contain potassium and magnesium, as well as B vitamins, albeit in modest amounts per cup.
- **Hydration and lightness**: without sugar it is a virtually calorie-free drink, and anyone sipping it all day ends up taking in a lot of water.

> **Common sense**: Mate is a drink, not a medicine: studies of its effects are promising but still ongoing. It contains caffeine, so anyone who needs to limit it (during pregnancy, for example) would do well to moderate their intake. As for temperature, tradition calls for water between 70 and 80 °C, never at the boil, so as not to scorch the yerba. But for your health, how you drink it matters too: the International Agency for Research on Cancer (IARC) classifies beverages consumed above 65 °C as probably carcinogenic to the oesophagus, and cites mate among those often drunk very hot. Better, then, to let it cool for a moment before sipping.

## The potential of yerba

Yerba mate is far more versatile than the gourd and bombilla might suggest. The process that turns it into what we find in the packet is a small craft in itself: after harvesting, the leaves are passed quickly over a flame (*sapecado*) to halt oxidation, then dried, coarsely crumbled and left to age for months, sometimes more than a year, before the final grinding. Every step changes the result: with or without *palo* (the little stalks), more or less aged, more or less fine.

- **Hot or cold**: besides traditional mate there is *tereré*, made with iced water and citrus, Paraguay’s summer ritual recognised by UNESCO as intangible cultural heritage.
- **In a cup**: *mate cocido* is brewed as an infusion like tea, often with milk and a little sugar, and is the breakfast of many Argentine children.
- **Flavoured**: yerba pairs well with citrus peel, mint, lemon verbena and the herbs of the *yuyo*, the aromatic plants of River Plate tradition.
- **In the kitchen and beyond**: it is used in desserts, ice creams, liqueurs and energy drinks, and more and more brands around the world are discovering it as a natural alternative to coffee.

There is also a side that looks to the future. Yerba grown in agroforestry systems, in the shade of native trees as it originally grew, makes it possible to produce without felling the forest, indeed helping to restore it: in Misiones several projects use it to restore the Paranaense rainforest. The trees protect the plants from wind and sudden changes in temperature and the soil stays covered, to the benefit of leaf quality and of one of the continent’s richest and most threatened ecosystems.

## From drink to daily ritual

None of this, however, is enough to explain mate. What makes it unique is neither the plant nor the caffeine, but the way it is drunk. There is a *cebador*, the one who prepares it: they fill the mate with yerba, shake it to bring the dust to the surface, pour the water down the side of the bombilla and drink the first, most bitter sip themselves. Then they refill it and pass the mate to each person in turn, one at a time, always in the same round. Whoever receives it drinks it all and hands it back. When they want no more, they simply say “thank you”: the signal that, for them, the ronda is over.

They are minimal rules, but they create something rare: shared time. You do not drink mate in a hurry, nor alone when someone is beside you. *¿Unos mates?* in Argentina is a question that means much more: do you have time? Will you stop? Shall we talk? It is an invitation to sit down, to slow down, to spend ten minutes together for no particular reason.

From the forests of the Guaraní to the Jesuit missions, from the pampas of the gauchos to the kitchens of the immigrants, and on to today’s desks and beaches, mate has travelled four centuries, changing materials, names and owners, yet never losing its nature: it is a gesture repeated every day, and every day it places a pause where there was none before. And that, in the end, is exactly what we call a ritual.

## Frequently asked questions

### Where does mate come from?

From the subtropical forest in the basin of the Paraná, Paraguay and Uruguay rivers, today divided between Paraguay, southern Brazil and north-eastern Argentina, where the province of Misiones and northern Corrientes are the heart of production. The first to drink it were the Guaraní peoples, long before the Spanish conquest.

### Who invented mate?

No one in particular: it is a habit of the Guaraní peoples that predates the arrival of the Europeans. The Spanish adopted it in the sixteenth century, and in the seventeenth century the Jesuits were the first to grow yerba in plantations instead of gathering it in the forest.

### Why is it called mate?

The word comes from the Quechua *mati*, meaning the vessel: originally “mate” is the hollowed-out gourd it is drunk from, not the drink. The Guaraní called the plant *ka’a*, that is, “the herb”.

### What are the health benefits of mate?

Yerba mate contains caffeine, theobromine and theophylline, which help attention and concentration, and polyphenols such as chlorogenic acids, with an antioxidant action comparable to that of green tea. It also contains potassium, magnesium and B vitamins, in modest amounts per cup. Studies are promising but still ongoing: mate is a drink, not a medicine.

### Does mate contain caffeine?

Yes. The so-called “mateine” is the very same molecule as caffeine; in yerba it is accompanied by small amounts of theobromine and theophylline. Anyone who needs to limit caffeine, during pregnancy for example, would do well to moderate their intake.

### What temperature should mate be drunk at?

Tradition calls for water between 70 and 80 °C, never boiling, so as not to scorch the yerba. For your health it is better not to drink it above 65 °C: the IARC classifies very hot beverages as probably carcinogenic to the oesophagus.

### How did mate spread across all of Argentina?

From the north-east yerba travelled down the rivers to Buenos Aires and the pampas, where in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries it became the drink of the gauchos. Between the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries the millions of European immigrants adopted it too. In 2013 a law declared it the “national infusion”.

## Sources

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