Yerba Mate Tea - A Caffeinated Organic Tea

Yerba mate tea, often just simply called mate, can be an herbal tea made out of the leaves of Ilex paraguariensis. This plant, staying in the Ilex genus, is really a species of holly, related to the common American holly or English hollies. Yerba mate is unusual in that it is one of the few caffeinated herbal teas, certainly, the only caffeinated herbal tea that is widely available in western countries.

Yerba mate is not technically tea (the only real true teas result from the tea plant, Camellia sinensis), and, though it is technically an herbal tea, individuals selling it usually avoid labelling it as such, because people tend to assume that natural teas are caffeine free, and Yerba mate consists of caffeine.

Yerba mate is taken traditionally in several the indigenous cultures of SOUTH USA. This way of life has spread in to the traditional cultures of many of the places of South America, which have blended both European and Native American cultural practices.

Traditionally, the mate leaves happen to be steeped and the sip is offered in a hollow gourd.  mate tee  is steeped in warm water in the gourd. These gourds are created rather permanent, occasionally reinforced with household leather or metal. A group of people would after that drink mate by moving the gourd around, and having it by way of a straw. The straw has a strainer inside it, which filter systems out the leaves.