Yerba Mate is extremely fitting for Christmas Eve. It's a relative to a holly plant, is often shared by people in South American as they sit around a gourd and drink from metal straws called a bombilla (my source here), and has a stimulating effect on heartrate much like caffeine does. Mate is also supposed to contain vitamins and minerals, so theoretically, it's healthier than coffee (but that can be said about a lot of things). Anyway, I need this today so let's drink.
Outsides: Yerba mate is just yerba mate, and I don't have a gourd so I guess my authenticity is out the door. I got it in Zen Tea's sample size and have to say, this is a pretty good size and can easily make 10-15 cups of this. One thing I did wrong was that I used near boiling water when apparently (from Wikipedia and not the directions on the packet), you're supposed to use hot water and not boiling, but I let it sit for about 5 minutes (1.5 teaspoons in 8 oz). The color is greener than a typical herbal blend but still that same shade of yellow. It smells like a light green tea.
Insides: Well, it's not bitter so that's good. This drink has a medium to light body with a sweet and slightly planty flavor (kinda like green tea). Another thing is that this yerba mate seems to be very mild in flavor, especially compaired to something like coffee or energy drinks. I went and added some sugar to see if any new flavors would be brought out and with that, this drink tastes like the Dilmah Ceylon Green Tea or Lipton Pure Leaf Green tea. I like it and am curious to try some of the fruit flavors.
Overall: If you don't like coffee or energy drinks but still want to get your caffeine in somehow, try this out.
My Rating: Try it in general. I'm probably going to get some from Prestogeorge, but Zen Tea still has a decent price on this.
Zen Tea is a Canadian Tea retailer specializing in mid to high quality tea and has a wide variety of teas around the world.
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