Organic Brazilian green maté blended with berries — the fruitiest of the range, and the one that works best cold.
Why fruit and maté suit each other
Green maté is vegetal with a bitter edge. Fruit brings acidity, and acidity is the classic counterweight to bitterness — the same reason lemon goes into tea and vinegar into a rich sauce. The berries do not sweeten the maté so much as balance it, which leaves the underlying grassy character intact rather than burying it.
The colour is part of the appeal: brewed strong and iced, it comes out a deep pink-red rather than the murky green of plain maté.
What maté is
The leaves of Ilex paraguariensis, a South American holly. Not tea, and not a caffeine-free infusion — it contains caffeine, roughly between a cup of tea and a weak coffee per serving. This is green Brazilian maté, dried without smoke rather than cured over a wood fire.
Brewing it
80 °C, never boiling. Boiling water scalds the leaf and produces a harsh bitterness the fruit cannot cover. Boil the kettle and let it stand two or three minutes.
A teaspoon to a tablespoon per mug, five minutes, re-infusing up to three times. Note that dried fruit gives up most of its flavour on the first infusion, so the second and third cups taste more of maté and less of berry — which is not a bad thing once you have got used to it.
Iced, which is the point
Brew at double strength, let it cool, and pour over plenty of ice with a squeeze of lemon. It is a far better cold drink than most bottled iced teas and it has no added sugar unless you put some in.
Worth knowing
Let it cool below about 65 °C before drinking hot. Contains caffeine; the guidance in pregnancy is under 200 mg a day from all sources.
Mojo Maté
Mojo Maté
ORIGINAL MATE
ORIGINAL MATE
