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“File under stupid tea tricks. I had two Finum baskets on my desk at work, both with measured portions of this in it. The first was to consume, the second was to attempt to ascertain how many...” Read full tasting note
“So, my 4-Hour Work Week Samovar thingy came a few days ago, but I hadn’t had the chance to open it up until today. And…I discovered that the included book is missing! This is actually not a huge...” Read full tasting note
“Not much to say on this one but a decent yerba mate. Very earthy! The flavor seems to change with every sip. I’m not sure why there are white twigs in the leaves though… I’m not sure if that is...” Read full tasting note
“I originally ordered this tea from Samovar because I was getting short on the Mate Lemon Blast that I have and I like the nice kick that I get from Yerba Mate (And I admit, it was mainly because I...” Read full tasting note
Origin: Organic Yerba Mate from Paraguay.
Flavor Profile: Mineral rich, earthy and sweet with notes of bran, hay, and sweetgrass.
Tea Story: Our honeyed take on Yerba Mate sweetened up a bit with the delightful anise flavor of organic licorice root. This herbal is the only herbal we have that has caffeine. Yerba Mate was originally sipped by the Guyarani Indians in South America. Today, Yerba Mate has become a daily ritual all over South America and now San Francisco too.
In the fields and villages of rural Paraguay, Yerba Mate consumption provides a reflection of the strongest traditional values of rural Paraguay. When receiving guests, a host always invites them to drink Yerba Mat? not just out of courtesy but also because of tradition.Yerba Mate is customarily sipped from a gourd, called aguampa, through a metal straw, called a bombilla, while being passed from person to person. In this fashion, Yerba Mate is consumed in the presence of family, friends, co-workers or guests because it provides an opportunity for social interaction.
People take the time to visit, share ideas, and get to know each other while drinking Yerba Mate These customs demonstrate their place in Paraguayan culture as a tradition based in community and regard for others.
The people of Paraguay have enjoyed Yerba Mate for hundreds of years. Yerba Mate has been regarded as a traditional herbal medicine and healthy daily ritual throughout regions of South America. In Europe, it has been recommended as a stimulant that reduces stress, obesity, headaches, and arthritis.
The nutrients of this naturally caffeinated drink comprise of 24 vitamins and minerals, 15 amino acids, potent antioxidants, and 196 active compounds (superior to green tea’s active compounds). Yerba Mate does contain caffeine (in spite of the “myth” about “mateine”). However, compared to coffee, Yerba Mat?contains up to 50% less caffeine. As a result, a serving of Yerba Mate provides a more balanced stimulation without the nervous jitters often associated with coffee and other highly-caffeinated beverages.
Yerba Mate is more than just a yummy herbal infusion – it is used as a tonic, a diuretic, and as a stimulant to aid gastric function in herbal medicine systems throughout South America and is regarded as a rejuvenating, healthy drink to aid in everyday life.
We tasted a lot of Mate out there, but finally hooked up with a small collective of family farmers in Paraguay to supply us.
We chose them for two reasons:
1. We really liked the full, strong, bittersweet, vegetal taste of their product.
2. We wanted to help support them maintain their traditional farming methods and culture.
There are other small farmers all over South America who are currently seriously threatened by big agro-business, and they are being tempted to convert all of their farms to soybean production. The problem with soybean farming is that in a few years their land gets depleted of its nutrients, they use pesticides and chemicals to produce the biggest crops in the fastest way possible, and their local economy is threatened by big-business interests.
Brew up the best Yerba Mate around, and help to support these small family farms. We think mate tastes best when sipped in the traditional gourd, guampa, from the traditional metal straw, bombilla.
Samovarian Poetry: Bittersweet & vegetal, a antioxidant boosting beverage from South America
Food Pairing: Yerba Mate earthy and slightly bitter, but it pairs well with morning pastries: raisin bran muffins, croissants with lots of butter, Samovar’s Quinoa Ginger Waffles.
Samovar's is dedicated to preserving the simplicity and integrity of the tea traditions and inspiring people to practice peace through drinking tea.
File under stupid tea tricks.
I had two Finum baskets on my desk at work, both with measured portions of this in it. The first was to consume, the second was to attempt to ascertain how many servings were left in the tin. (My guess is there were about 3-4.)
I say were because after I steeped the first basket, I grabbed a basket to toss out what I thought was the spent yerba mate and dumped the dry mix into the garbage.
There are now about 2-3 servings left and I feel like an utter dolt. If this had been something I love, I would have been heartbroken, too.
Fortunately, I’m sure it is more than apparent from my previous notes on this how I feel about yerba mate. On the bright side, I’m one serving more away from being able to recycle the awesome black matte Samovar tin. I already know what I want to put in it.
So, my 4-Hour Work Week Samovar thingy came a few days ago, but I hadn’t had the chance to open it up until today. And…I discovered that the included book is missing! This is actually not a huge problem for me, since I ordered the special for the yerba mate…but even so!
Anyway, I must be seriously insane to be sipping on yerba mate at nearly 8pm in the evening. I’m questioning my own judgement here…but really, it smelled nifty and…new tea! Too weak to say ‘no’.
I’m really digging the smell, honestly. It’s very grassy…but less like the soft green grass of summer, and more like pond reeds of some kind, or something slightly woodier, something thicker, with a stalk. Bamboo, maybe. Not quite sure. It’s an earthy, nutty, but grassy (reedy) smell with a green note at the very end.
The description notes that there’s licorice root in here somewhere, but if so it’s so subtle that I’m not able to isolate it on its own, which for me is a good thing.
It almost has a savory chalkiness to it. That sounds terrible, but I’d say that it reminds me of…I don’t know…oats or some other grain before you turn it into granola or oatmeal or what-have-you. Not chalky, per se, but…
Oh, I’m totally spacing the words that I want. Maybe finishing this cup will help!
This is a pretty robust cup. I can see people either loving it or hating it, but I definitely dig it. I’m really looking forward to trying the other two that came in the set!
It was discovered by AmazonV that the set does not come with the book. Most of us thought otherwise too! :( http://steepster.com/discuss/572-samovar-the-4-hour-workweek-organic-yerba-mate-set
Did anybody check the actual Select page? I would except I don’t know how to recall that date’s Select back to view it ….
I looked at that Select and the book is included. I posted on AmazonV’s discussion above.
Okay…for a minute there I thought I was nuts, but I was pretty sure I’d read that it did. Thanks for finding that! That makes me feel better about the note I sent the company to see what they wanted to do about the missing piece!
Maybe get Jason involved? Since it may include more than just you and AmazonV… I’m not sure who all ordered that Select but maybe Jason can do the talking for everybody?!
Not much to say on this one but a decent yerba mate. Very earthy! The flavor seems to change with every sip. I’m not sure why there are white twigs in the leaves though… I’m not sure if that is part of the yerba mate but I thought yerba mate was just the green leaves. I waited a half hour to cool after boiling for this to steep for 3-4 minutes. It always seems like I’m sleepy after drinking yerba mate though! It doesn’t energize me like black tea. The second cup went for 4-5 minutes and was a bit astringent but nothing I can’t handle.. still good.
I originally ordered this tea from Samovar because I was getting short on the Mate Lemon Blast that I have and I like the nice kick that I get from Yerba Mate (And I admit, it was mainly because I really like Samovar’s tea and I was wanting to add more things to my order and this one was fairly cheap >_> ).
So, when I first smelled this tea, I could smell subtle hints of sweetness in it, but it didn’t have a lemony/vegetal small like my previous yerba mate did, so I thought this would be interesting. When I steeped this, the brew was so dark compared to the other one too… So I really didn’t know what to expect with this tea when taking my first sip…. I was expecting an earthy/vegetal taste like the previous one as well, but since this was so dark and almost muddy looking, I was expecting this to be bitter which most yerba mates are supposed to be…. But man was I wrong…… This tea is really really amazing!
This tea definitely has an earthy taste to it, but then it is followed by a nice sweet punch to your taste buds! The sweetness is especially noticeable when you exhale, it is pretty amazing. I’ll write more on this later. I highly recommend it though!
Recently got a sampler pack from Samovar through a Twitter contest-thing. So, adding that to the two samplers sets I ended up with from Adagio… it looks like I better get around to trying (and liking) mate.
Having only tried a toasted mate before, this is my first ‘real’ experience with yerba mate. It has an interesting herbal, almost minty sort of taste to it. But it has something else to it that I can’t quite put my finger on. (I think in the toasted, I referred to it as tobacco-y. This is not the same… something.)
Definitely an unofficial rating at this point.
Steep Information:
Amount: 2 tsp
Water: 500ml filtered water 175°F
Tool: Breville One-Touch Tea Maker BTM800XL
Steep Time: 3 minutes
Served: Hot
Tasting Notes:
Dry Leaf Smell: bitter, vegetal, grassy
Steeped Tea Smell: grassy, vegetal, a little sweet
Flavor: sweet at first, then vegetal and grassy
Body: Light
Aftertaste: bitter
Liquor: translucent yellow-green
I do not like grassy teas or herbal infusions, and this was grassy, even though a bit naturally sweet. BLEH
Images: http://amazonv.blogspot.com/2010/10/samovar-loose-leaf-mate-tea-yerba-mate.html
I got this from swapping teas with AmazonV. I had lost this in my house, and finally found it to brew it. My only experience with mate was in a Celestial Seasoning blend. It was from 2004 I think, they had a line of flavored mate. My favorite was the Island Spice, what a shame they cut it. So from that, I thought mate was awesome! I also have had it in blends, so I thought it must be good.
So the dry leaf smell just didn’t seem appealing. It is earthy! I like my cheese earthy, not the tea I drink though. It came out beautiful green. The taste? Um…just not me. I prefer it blended. I took one sip, and that was enough! I can’t rate it since it’s just mate I don’t like. I had another brand I wasn’t much a fan of either.
Well this was definitely a new experience.
My first foray into the world of Yerba Mate. I recently got interested in a few varieties from Samovar, but I wanted to go with the “original” before trying any deviants.
First of all, portions of this tea is so fine that not even my laser cut infuser could keep it all in. So I can imagine that my first infusion is going to taste different from subsequent ones, but we shall see.
First impressions are that it’s very grassy, but not as bad as some other people had made it seem. There’s a very sweet, grassy initial taste that leaves behind an interesting aftertaste, almost slightly bitter in nature.
As a black tea fan, I can actually say that I like this. I haven’t gotten a chance to see how good it is with multiple infusions, but at least the first infusion was bursting with flavour.
So, this was the first time I actually tried Yerba Mate and I know this is Samovar’s twist on it, but yeah… it was super intense and kinda weird. I eventually got used to the flavour somewhat and I really enjoyed the experience of the metal straw and cool clay pot to drink out of, but wow, SO intense!!!! It was a bit like trying Lapsang Souchong for the first time. Kinda weird, too intense, but kinda fun for the same reasons. Interesting, but wouldn’t rush to order it again. Would be keen to try a different Yerba Mate somewhere else to see if Samovar’s was just made too strong.
