Ingredients You Can Add to Your Yerba Mate

April 24, 2026

Time to Read: 6 minutes

Quick Overview

Mate is endlessly customizable. People have been adding sweeteners, spices, fruit, and more for centuries. Below are over 15 traditional ways to change up your mate's flavor, with a simple how-to for each.

In this article, you'll find ideas across:

Sweeteners, from sugar to honey and egg yolk
Spices like cinnamon and cloves
Citrus, coconut, and fruit
Coffee, tea, milk, and even alcohol

We have covered sweet mate and mate with milk, and citrus and herbs in tereré. Adding sweeteners, spices, and dried fruit goes back to colonial times and is still common today. Drawing on Javier Ricca's book El mate, plus a few of our own, here are more ways to experiment.

Sweeteners

Sugar

Sweet mate is popular in places like northern Argentina and central Chile. If you use a natural gourd, remember it will absorb the sweetness, so keep a dedicated gourd for sweet mate if you also drink it plain. Be mindful of how much you add, since it adds up fast. A few ways to do it:

Add a sugar cube or two teaspoons to the gourd with the yerba, cover and shake to combine, then continue as usual. Or add a little sugar on top of the yerba near the bombilla, and top up as you go.
Hold a sugar cube or teaspoon in your mouth as you sip (just now and then).
Dissolve sugar into the thermos water, making sure it fully dissolves before adding more.
For a caramelized flavor, burn a little sugar onto the gourd walls with a couple of embers, then top up as the taste fades. In parts of central and northern Argentina, a red-hot iron is dipped in sugar and dripped into the gourd.

Egg yolk

Mate with egg yolk and sugar was a refined treat in the late 18th and 19th centuries, prized for its foamy texture. Whisk two or three yolks with half a cup of sugar, then add a teaspoon before each refill.

Honey

Mate with honey is called mate misqui, from the Quechua allpa-misqui (“earth honey”), named for a ground-dwelling bee in northern Argentina. Add a teaspoon of honey to your mouth before sipping, or stir it into the hot water.

Molasses and rapadura

Molasses, the dark syrup from sugar crystallization, can be stirred into the hot water. Rapadura, a Brazilian sweet made from cane honey and milk, can go in the gourd before the yerba, or in your mouth before you sip.

Spices

Cinnamon

Mate with cinnamon was common in the mid-20th century, and traditionally thought by some to help with cramps or sore throats, though that is folk belief rather than established fact. Add ground cinnamon to the yerba as you prepare it, or drop a cinnamon stick in the hot water.

Cloves

Cloves are used to aromatize mate. Add one or two dried buds to the hot water.

Fruits

Orange, lemon, and grapefruit

Oranges, grapefruit, and lemon. — Citrus zest and peel brighten up a mate.

Use citrus zest or peel fresh or dried. Fresh, add a little zest with each refill. Dried, peel the fruit in one long spiral, hang it in the sun to dry, briefly pass it over a flame, then cut it up and add to the gourd. Citrus juice is also lovely in tereré.

Coconut

Grate fresh coconut pulp, or use shredded coconut (watch for added sugar). Add a teaspoon at the start, and another after about half a liter.

Coffee and tea

Coffee beans and ground coffee. — Mate with coffee is treated as a dessert in parts of Argentina.

Coffee has been mixed with mate since at least 1867, and it is still enjoyed in central Argentina (Entre Ríos, Misiones, Corrientes) as a dessert. Add a teaspoon of coffee on top of the yerba before a refill, along with sugar. The same works with black or green tea. As with sweet mate, the gourd will absorb the flavor, so use a dedicated one.

Milk and alcohol

Milk. Mate de leche has been around since colonial times and took hold in the late 19th century. It is softer and higher in calories, so it is often a morning drink, sometimes given to children at breakfast. Use ceramic or glass cups and a bombilla you can fully clean (ideally one where the filter and neck separate). Milk also works for mate cocido.

Alcohol. Caña and aguardiente were the classic 19th-century mix-ins; today people also use grappa, gin, rum, or beer. Either pour a small amount into the gourd along with the water, or, when preparing the mate, replace the first lukewarm water with a shot of your chosen drink, then continue as usual. Adding alcohol to very hot thermos water is not recommended, as the heat can affect it.

Tip

Anything sweet, fruity, milky, or boozy soaks into a natural gourd. Keep one gourd for plain mate and another for your experiments, or use a glass or ceramic cup that rinses clean.