An organic loose-leaf blend of green maté and lemon from POP TEE — the sharper of the two maté blends, and the one that tastes most like the real thing.
Maté is a social object as much as a drink. Across Argentina, Uruguay, Paraguay and southern Brazil, maté is drunk from a shared gourd through a metal filter straw, the bombilla, and passed around a group. There is a whole etiquette to it: one person, the cebador, keeps the gourd and refills it, and each drinker finishes their serving and hands it back rather than passing it along. Saying “thank you” when you return the gourd means you have had enough and want no more — a genuine trap for visitors, who thank the host politely and are then never offered another. In Uruguay you will see people walking down the street with a thermos under one arm and a gourd in the other hand. It is not a beverage category; it is a daily habit shared by tens of millions of people.
Why lemon rather than mint. The mint blend softens maté; this one sharpens it. Citrus acidity cuts across the leaf's vegetal bitterness and brightens it without covering it up, so what you taste is still recognisably maté — grassy, faintly smoky, slightly bitter — with the edges lifted. If you already like maté, this is the blend to buy. If you have never had it, start with the mint.
Brew it at 80 °C, not boiling. This matters more than any other instruction on the packet. Boiling water scalds the leaf and pulls out a harsh, flat bitterness that no amount of sugar will repair — and it is the reason a great many people conclude they dislike maté after one badly made cup.
And let it cool before you drink it. The association between maté and oesophageal cancer found in long-term South American studies tracks the temperature at which it is traditionally drunk — very hot indeed — rather than the plant itself, and the same association appears for any scalding beverage. Drinking it warm rather than hot is a simple thing to do and worth doing.
Contains caffeine, roughly comparable to tea.
Available at Só Verde, an organic concept store in Foz, Porto.
POP TEE
POP TEE
POP TEE
