Recoleta is not where you go to find Buenos Aires at its most chaotic. It is where you go to find it at its most considered. Wide boulevards, Belle Époque architecture, cafés that seem to exist outside of time. The kind of neighbourhood where the afternoon has weight to it.
We were there on our honeymoon. And somewhere between the art market at Plaza Francia and the long evenings that seemed to stretch further than evenings do at home, we noticed something.
Everyone outside had a gourd.
The City That Drinks Together
Not some people. Not tourists doing it for a photograph. Everyone. The woman reading on a bench in the park. The group of friends talking in the square. The man sitting alone outside a café, bombilla in hand, watching the street go by.
Mate in Buenos Aires is not a trend or a ritual you have to seek out. It is just what people do in the afternoon. As natural and unconsidered as a cup of tea in England. Except somehow more considered at the same time, because of the gourd, the bombilla, the specific and deliberate act of preparing it.
We had tried mate before. In Central Europe, passed around between friends from Germany and Austria and the Czech Republic. We liked it. But we had not understood it yet.
Buenos Aires is where we understood it.
What the Gourd Actually Means
In Argentina, the gourd is not just a vessel. It is a signal. It says I am here. It says the afternoon is mine. It says I am not rushing anywhere and neither should you.
The ritual of passing it between people, each person drinking from the same bombilla, the same shared cup, carries something that is hard to articulate in English. It is about trust and ease and the particular quality of time that comes from slowing down together.
We watched this happen around us for days. And we felt something shift.
The coffee we had been drinking every morning was still there, still necessary, still good. But it belonged to the first part of the day. The getting-going part. The part where you need to be sharp and fast and ready.
The afternoon was mate's.
Coming Home
The gap was obvious the moment we landed back in the UK. Mate existed here only as an ingredient buried in energy drinks, stripped of its context and its culture and its centuries of meaning.
The gourd was not coming with us. We knew that. A sparkling can was the right format for a London afternoon, not a traditional brew. But the feeling behind it, the calm, the sustained energy, the sense of the afternoon belonging to something worthwhile, that was worth bringing back.
Matelo is our attempt to carry that across. Not to recreate Buenos Aires in a can, which would be impossible, but to offer something of what we found there. A drink that belongs to the second half of the day. That gets out of the way and lets the afternoon be what it could be.
Steeped in culture for centuries. The UK is only now discovering it.
If you want to understand more about what yerba maté actually is and where it comes from, our [Learn page] has the full story. And if you are ready to try it, you know where to find us.
Wondering with a Maté is Matelo's series on the places that inspire us. Explored with a can of Matelo. Matelo. Steeped in Culture.