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Beach Vendor · Iced Mate Tea

Mate Leão

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This is a sweetened, iced version of yerba mate sold cold in cans — the opposite preparation from the hot gourd-and-straw mate found in southern Brazil and across Argentina.

Chilled, sweetened yerba mate tea sold in cans and bottles from coolers carried by beach vendors along Rio's Copacabana and Ipanema shoreline. It's a fixture of the exact walking-vendor economy that also sells Biscoito Globo.

Why it's made this way: Rio's tropical beach climate turned yerba mate — normally a hot Southern Cone drink — into a cold, sweetened beach product found almost nowhere else in this form.
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