Mate Gourd
The mate gourd is the dried calabash cup from which yerba mate, the leafy infusion of the Guaraní, is drunk through a metal straw called a bombilla, passed hand to hand around a circle of friends. The Guaraní of Paraguay, Brazil and Argentina prepared a drink of the herb before the Spanish arrived, and colonial accounts already describe it being shared; the Spanish word mate itself comes from the Quechua mati, for the gourd that holds it. Etiquette is precise: the cebador pours, drinks the first, often bitter, sip and refills, and the gourd circles clockwise, never returning to the cebador for