I normally don’t get nervous for meetings, or dates, or any kind of new experience. I usually find a way to convince myself that nothing can go wrong. I try and think of a worst case scenario and set my expectations accordingly. That way, I don’t worry about screwing anything up and any positive outcome, even remembering to say please and thank you, gets tossed in the win column. I know I’m not setting the bar very high, but it works for me. Tonight was different, I knew I was about to get schooled…

It was exactly two weeks since I officially began the Great Maté Journey, my personal quest to learn anything and everything I could about yerba maté, a South American drink held by many to be a healthy, energy-boosting part of a well-balanced diet. The drink is widely consumed throughout South America as well as by a number of health conscious consumers all over the world. The drink is making an especially strong push with long-time coffee drinkers looking to replace the java habit with a healthier alternative.

Tonight I was meeting with Matéo Sluder, yerba maté connoisseur and Sales Rep for Guayaki Yerba Maté (his given name is really Matthew, but his love for maté inspired him to change his name to Matéo, that’s serious dedication). The goal of the night was to share some mate and have Mateo give me an overview of the traditional maté rituals. In South America, mate is normally drank from a hollowed out gourd with a mate-specific metallic straw called a bombilla. Loose maté leaves are put directly into the gourd, the gourd filled with hot water and the infused liquid sucked through the bombilla, which also acts as a strainer. Although I have been drinking maté for years, mostly with tea bags and other traditional tea kettles, it wasn’t until a month ago that I had my first gourd/bombilla experience. As I quickly found out and others later affirmed, it is a completely different level of mate drinking. However, just drinking out of the gourd was only half the experience. Traditional maté drinking is also an intimately social experience with a complete set of rituals around sharing the gourd with a group of people. Exactly the knowledge I hoped to glean from Matéo this evening.

Matéo arrived a few minutes later than I did and had brought along Adam, another mate veteran and Guayaki coworker. Mateo and Adam spent the first hour picking my brain, trying to figure out exactly what type of person would embark on a “Great Maté Journey.” Meanwhile, I spent the first hour absorbing all the mate knowledge I could handle. It wasn’t just the things they were saying, I was also taking mental notes of their actions, motions and subtleties around preparing the gourd.

One of the first things I noticed was their equipment. I thought I had finally joined the big leagues when I got my first gourd and bombilla, but compared to Adam and Matéo’s set-up, I had barely scratched the surface. Not only did Matéo and Adam each have elaborate gourds and bombillas, but each of them had a heavy-duty thermos that looked like they were preparing for mate drinking under any circumstance, even nuclear war. To carry the complete mate set, Mateo had a shoulder strapped satchel called a matera, which was about the size of my laptop bag. Each maté tool had its own fitted place inside the matera, which was really cool in an arms-dealing, professional-criminal kind of way. When Matéo busted out his mate equipment, people around the restaurant started to glance over as if a massive drug deal was going down. Just the right amount of tension and a lot of anticipation; it really felt like we were doing something illegal.

For our first gourd, Adam was the cebador, which is basically the yerba maté master of ceremonies. The cebador has a number of responsibilities throughout the maté session. The first job is to prepare the gourd as follows:

1) Fill the gourd about 2/3 full of maté.
2) Cover the top of the gourd with a hand, flip the gourd over, and give it a few tambourine-like shakes to move the largest fragments of maté to the bottom of the gourd.
3) Return the gourd to right side up, and shakes the maté over to create a ~45 degree mound of maté in the gourd. *If available, try adding a few drops of room temp water to hold the slanted mound of maté in place.
4) Insert the bombilla along the mound with the end of bombilla near the the bottom of the gourd.

After the gourd has been prepared and filled with water, the cebador is the first one to drink from it to make sure any loose particles of maté don’t end up in the back of the first drinkers throat. The cebador sucks the gourd dry, refills the gourd and then passes it to the next person. Adam passed me the gourd, making sure to explain the custom of having the bombilla pointing towards the receiver. I drank all the water from the gourd and thanked Adam as I passed it back to the cebador. Matéo was quick to mention that thanking (“Gracias”) the cebador when you pass back the gourd is an indication that you have had your fill of maté and are likely to be skipped on the next round. I made a mental note: be precise with your thank you.

The most surprising thing I learned from Matéo and Adam wasn’t about maté at all, it was about water temperature. Despite being prepared with a NASA-approved thermos, Adam immediately ordered a large glass of hot water when he got to the table. I spent the whole night trying not to look like an idiot by asking dumb questions, but I was curious about the water situation. They already had their thermoses and now had a glass of piping hot water that the waitress brought over. I noticed Adam mention to Matéo that the new glass of water was too hot, and when he issued a warning about the temperature before he passed me the gourd I knew that they took temperature very seriously.

“How hot do you want to water to be?” I had to ask, expecting a relative answer like warm, hot, very hot, just less than boiling, etc.

“168 degrees.” Adam responded sternly. I mentally converted that to my relativity scale and decided it was a little over half-way to boiling. Matéo explained the importance of using the right temperature to maximize the nutritional value of the maté. The nutritional science was a little over my head so I just took their word for it, 168 degrees it is.

After a few hours and 3 or 4 gourds, only Matéo and I remained. The conversation had covered everything from maté to South America, life-stories to shamanism. However, one thing Matéo said really stuck with me. He mentioned that yerba maté had a way of bringing interesting people into your life. After tonight, I had every reason to believe him.