Roots and Passion
To matear (drink Yerba Mate) is a tradition; a ritual that you share with your family, friends or can enjoy by yourself. Even though we live far away from our native country, and embrace another, The United States, as our new home, drinking yerba mate is something special that keeps us connected to our roots. We’ve been sharing our heritage with people from other cultures to create new roots and connections within our new community. The “we” I refer to are the two Argentinian women behind Matear Yerba Mate: Paola (me, the one writing this) from Buenos Aires and Veronica from Misiones. After living in Miami, Florida for many years, we eventually met, and something incredible began that later led to our beautiful company.
Traditional Yerba Mate vs. Tereré
For me, drinking yerba mate was always something very traditional, meaning I’d only drink hot yerba mate without adding anything else. On the other hand, for Veronica, it’s all about pairing tereré (iced mate) with everything you can find, which is very typical in the Northeast of Argentina. It’s typically prepared with juice, but after spending years at university in Asuncion Paraguay, Veronica began to make tereré with more herbs (yuyos).
I still remember the delicious and refreshing flavor of this amazing ginger and lemon tereré Veronica prepared; I was fascinated! At that time, I had my own garden, which has been a passion of mine since I volunteered at organic farms in California and local farms in Miami. Veronica and I used to hang out in my garden, grab some herbs (e.g. spearmint, moringa, lemongrass) and make fresh mate and tereré with them.
The beginning of Matear Yerba Mate
At that point in our lives, both Veronica and I were looking for a new adventure. We wanted to work on something that we both believed in and felt passionate about.
It was Veronica who took the first step (at that point she felt to work with her hands); she signed up for a course in Paraguay, in order to learn how to make wrapped mates (cups) and thermoses. After she completed the course, she went to Misiones to visit her family and gave me a phone call. It was on that phone call that the idea popped up of having a “yerba mate house.” We wanted to uplift the spirits around us; to energize the vibes!
Right away, Veronica searched for a local farm to get the yerba mate from. Since we didn’t want to source our yerba mate from a farm that used herbicides or any kind of pesticides, it had to be organic; we wanted to offer a really healthy mate, which Veronica eventually found! It was a family farm with organic practices and yerba mate that tasted delicious.
Back in Miami, we visited our local farmer’s markets to explore for more ingredients in order to handmake all of our favorite blends. A few months later, we had everything in order to start our first market, where we offered our creations of artisan-brewed organic iced mate and all of the necessary gear; thermoses and mate gourds with our design on them.
Soon enough, more and more people started to ask for our blends, which is when we began to hand package all of our most popular yerba mate blends in order to sell them. The first blends we produced were those intended to be brewed in tea cups, and we followed those up with blends intended to be consumed via mate cups.
The future of Matear Yerba Mate
We love to bring people closer together with Yerba Mate. We enjoy it so much when someone stops by our stand to try mate for the first time, allowing us to give them the tools to start their own ritual. We encourage people to both follow some basic guidelines and then break them! There isn’t only one way to make mate; there are different and unique ways and you have to find what works for you.
Currently, we’re at the farmer’s markets in Miami Dade and Broward county. We love having a direct connection with our customers within our community, as well as through our online store.
This is just the beginning of our yerba mate journey!
Cheers,
Pao & Vero
To purchase some of our handcrafted products, head to our website. Also, you can visit us in our local market locations! Be sure to connect on Instagram and Facebook!