Canarias Edición Especial

First look

Nose

Canarias Edición Especial has a very nice, aged and fragrant aroma. It smells perfumy and almost not like yerba mate at all. This yerba mate has a very woodsy and spicy nose — I’m thinking of a sawdust of palo santo wood with a touch of piney and resin aroma, and maybe even some cedarwood. Canarias Edición Especial smells like a woodshop where they make expensive wooden furniture and I love it. Add to that some sweet notes of an aging, but not fermenting tobacco leaf and what you’ll get is a very unique and distinctive aroma, that is noticeably different to a classic Canarias Tradicional.

Cut

Canarias Edición Especial has a typical Uruguayan yerba mate PU-1 cut which is very fine with a high powder content and almost no stems. In that regard it’s pretty similar to its brother and is a little bit finer than other popular yerba mate from Uruguay — Sara Tradicional.

The color of Canarias Edición Especial is very uniform and serves as a nice example of a special selection yerba mate. It actually looks like yerba mate leaves were carefully picked, dried and aged to form a product that looks very high in quality with its saturated olive green color, especially compared to a more bleak and grey-ish Canarias Tradicional.

Preparation

As I mentioned earlier, the cut of Canarias Edición Especial is quite fine and powdery, even to a Uruguayan standard. Finer cut makes it more tricky to prepare this yerba mate and will require more skill and better tools. It’s really easy to get your bombilla clogged while drinking Canarias Edición Especial, so you will need something more specialized, like spoon bombilla or maybe even a Brazilian bomba.

Another thing that helps with clogging issues is a proper molding technique to create a nice separation between the mountain of yerba and water hole for your bombilla. People new to Uruguayan yerba mate will have a hard time with Canarias Edición Especial and would find more newbie-friendly yerba mates like Sara Tradicional or Del Cebador Clásica, but for seasoned matero, especially the one who had a previous experience with Canarias yerba mates, should be up for the challenges presented by the cut of this yerba mate.

Temperature-wise, I find that the perfect range for Canarias Edición Especial is between 70°C and 80°C / 160°F and 175°F . You can, although quite carefully, go beyond that temperature and not lose much of the flavor, but I would not recommend going as low as 60°C / 140°F as it seems to be not enough to extract all the flavor from this mate.

Most convenient way to get ideal water temperature is to use an electric kettle or a stovetop kettle with temperature control. If you prefer traditional kettle you can use a infrared thermometer or a food thermometer .

Taste

Coming from Canarias Tradicional, I was expecting at least some of those rugged, leathery, soily flavors to come up in the taste of Canarias Edición Especial. But the fragrant and spicy nose hinted at a mate that is completely different, which it is — Canarias Edición Especial is nothing like its traditional version. Smooth, creamy and buttery mouthfeel is accompanied by malty and grainy notes, reminiscent of an unsweetened cereal like the ones that are usually branded as a healthier alternative to a regular cereal.

I don’t taste any of the papery and musty flavors from Canarias Tradicional, and to my surprise I struggle to pick up any woodsy notes that were so abundant in the nose of this yerba mate. I can also taste some camomile, even though Canarias Edición Especial is not a compuesta. Finally, a taste of cherry bit concludes an interesting set of flavors of this mate.

Not necessarily more complex than Canarias Tradicional, this mate is simply different — the flavors are much more “edible” in Canarias Edición Especial for the lack of a better term — and I would never guess that these two yerba mates belong to the same brand. Other than being syrupy and full-bodied, it’s even hard to draw parallels between Canarias Edición Especial and other Uruguayan yerba mates, which makes it definitely worthy of earning a permanent spot on a shelf.

Finish

Another surprise waited for me in the aftertaste of Canarias Edición Especial, but this time not quite as pleasant. The finish of this mate was not as long as I thought it would be and had medicinal and iodine aftertaste to it which felt a bit off. I was quite disappointed not to be able to pick up anything else, but the finish was not that pronounced to ruin the overall impression of Canarias Edición Especial and actually made this mate more drinkable, letting me have one sip after another with zero pauses, and after some time ignore the aftertaste completely and focus on its good qualities.

Durability

Despite having to turn this mate quite early on (around 8th or 9th refill), Canarias Edición Especial always managed to surpass 20 refills, often reaching a very promising 25 refills. I would consider it a moderate mate which sits a bit higher on the durability spectrum, depending on where you would consider it to be washed. Speaking of lavado — the flavors of Canarias Edición Especial washed up gradually and gracefully and it was still enjoyable even after this mate lost most of its taste.

The last thing you want while drinking mate is to constantly re-heat your water or add more ice to it. No matter if it's hot mate or cold tereré, use a vacuum bottle or a very popular in South America mate thermos with spout.

Effect

No matter if I was enjoying Canarias Edición Especial in the morning or in the evening, it always had the same potent effect — invigorating, energizing and focusing. Do not sit still while drinking this mate, as it will make you feel a bit jittery — Canarias Edición Especial is a perfect companion for a busy morning when you run around the house and need to get a lot of stuff done before noon.

I would advise you not to drink this mate at the end of the day as it seems to have a relatively high caffeine content and may disturb your sleep, as it did in my case.

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What are your thoughts on Canarias Edición Especial? Comment below!