In the United States, the first major push to popularize and cultivate yerba mate didn’t happen until 1899, when representatives from Brazil and Paraguay boasted about its benefits at the International Commercial Congress in Philadelphia.

By the 1700s, it was consumed all over South America: from what is now Paraguay across Peru, Bolivia, southern Brazil, Uruguay, Argentina, and Chile. But according to Christine Folch, the author of the upcoming book Yerba Mate: A Stimulating Cultural History, Jesuit missionaries in Paraguay were the ones who transformed yerba mate into a true cash crop, by developing techniques for cultivating it on a large scale-methods that relied on the forced labor of indigenous people. The Spanish liked the energy yerba mate gave them and began selling the leaves. They collected leaves from a particular species of holly, dried them, and then either chewed the ka’a or placed it in an orange-size gourd to be steeped in water and passed among friends.Īn early-19th-century lithograph of José Gaspar Rodríguez de Francia, the ruler of Paraguay, holding yerba mate (Source: Letters on Paraguay by John Parish Robertson and William Parish Robertson) The Guaraní people had used yerba mate-which they called ka’a-as a stimulant and for its medicinal effects since time immemorial. Within a few decades of their arrival in what is now Paraguay in the early 16th century, the Spanish were already drinking the local infusion they’d picked up from the indigenous Guaraní. Long before North Americans rejected yerba mate, European colonizers were falling head over heels for the stuff.

The plant has been seen as a moneymaking commodity since Europeans first arrived in the Americas. But in this land of individualism and germophobia, the real thing will simply never catch on. After more than 100 years, plenty of added sugar, and growing consumer desire for “clean caffeine,” something companies are calling yerba mate is finally on shelves near you. The average Argentinian or Uruguayan drinks more than 26 gallons of the green infusion each year, but as far as I can tell, the average North American has never even tried South America’s most consumed beverage-at least not in its traditional form. And yet, my track record for tempting friends into tasting it is abysmal. I’m drinking yerba mate with my Argentinian mother-in-law as I write this, and I’ll probably be drinking it with her or my husband when you read it. It’s the preferred caffeine source of Lionel Messi, Zoe Saldaña, and the pope. You can drink it all day without feeling like your stomach acid is burning through your esophagus. It makes you feel simultaneously energized and relaxed. It shouldn’t be hard to persuade people to take a sip of yerba mate.

Clean yerba mate drink