These cookies are used to provide you with a more personalized experience on our website and to remember
choices you make when you use our website.
For example, we may use functionality cookies to enable commenting functionality.
These cookies are used to collect information to analyze the traffic to our website and how visitors are
using our website.
For example, these cookies may track things such as how long you spend on the website or the pages you visit
which helps us to understand how we can improve our website site for you.
The information collected through these statistics and performance cookies do not identify any individual
visitor.
Read more about exact cookies we use in our Privacy Policy
Piporé Suave
Yerba Mate Review
Published on
5 minutes to read
Share this article
Copy link to clipboard
If you make a purchase through links in this article, I get a small commission at no cost to you. Learn more
Soft mate sounds like boring mate, but don’t be fooled by the label of Piporé Suave. This yerba mate is actually quite the opposite of being boring — a whiff of freshly opened bag and a first sip would prove you that. What Piporé Suave is, is a unique Argentine yerba mate that does not smell nor taste like any other Argentine yerba, and provides such a rare relaxing effect, which all combined shows you how diverse and one-and-only yerba mate can be.
Use code MateExperience10 for 10% off the whole order!
First look
Nose
The aroma of Piporé Suave is very unusual for an Argentine yerba mate.
It smells very green and grassy, closer to a fresh Brazilian erva mate, rather that an aged Argentine yerba.
The nose of Piporé Suave is strong and very summery — besides the fresh-cut grass I get sweet and zesty citrusy notes, raw and moist wood, non-roasted peanuts and raw green hazelnuts.
The aroma of this yerba mate very much reminds me of Meta Mate 23, and makes me really excited to see how these vegetative and chlorophyllic notes are going to transfer to its taste.
Cut
With such a fresh and grassy nose, I was expecting to see a very saturated and green cut of Piporé Suave.
While it is certainly greener than an average Argentine yerba mate, the cut still looked pretty standard for Argentina — definitely aged, still quite pale, with a lot of olive green tones and lots of inclusions of darker toasted leaves.
Piporé Suave has a con palo cut, which is the most popular cut of yerba mate in Argentina, so no surprises here as well.
The balance of the cut is really great — leaves range from small to medium, stems are also there but do not overwhelm with their size, and powder is present in a way that does not make Piporé Suave dusty, but adds fluffiness, airiness and stickiness to the cut.
I could not find any distinct info about aging or drying of Piporé Suave, so judging by its cut I assume that it has not been different to any other Piporé yerbas.
What I noticed, however, is the huge amount of seeds in the cut of this yerba mate, which makes me think that such a distinct and erva-like aroma has something to do with the time of year when yerba for Piporé Suave was harvested.
Preparation
Piporé Suave is really easy to prepare.
Con palo cut guarantees that you’ll never clog your bombilla, and a perfect amount of powder allows it to become sticky and solid for the mountain of yerba.
When it comes to the temperature, this yerba mate in my experience is better suited for water that is on the colder side —
60°C-65°C/140°F-150°F will get you the best balance of flavors and durability.
I find that with
70°C-75°C/160°F-165°F water Piporé Suave is still relatively good taste-wise, but the durability suffers by a noticeable margin.
And with
80°C-85°C/175°F-185°F water this mate is still drinkable but less balanced and even more short.
With the fresh grassy nose and aged pale cut, I was really intrigued by how Piporé Suave would actually taste.
First few sips are confusing — green, raw, sweet notes are interspersed with bitter, woodsy and dry fruity.
One sip you think it tastes like any other Argentine con palo yerba, the other sip is totally different and takes you far away from Argentina all the way back to Brazil.
After about 5 refills Piporé Suave finally settles down, and those notes start to play together in harmony.
As a matter of fact, this mate taste neither like a traditional Argentine con palo yerba, nor like any Brazilian, Uruguayan nor Paraguayan.
I get notes of grass, bitter chlorophyll, olive oil, raw peanuts, hazelnuts and sunflower seeds; slightly burnt whole grain cookies, milk and chocolate.
This distinctive flavor combination with syrupy and smooth yet light-bodied mouthfeel creates a really unique tasting mate, making Piporé Suave a great example of how diverse and unrepeated this drink can be.
Finish
The milky chocolatey notes take all the attention in the aftertaste of Piporé Suave.
The significant bitterness found in the taste of this mate completely disappears in its finish, but overall, the aftertaste of Piporé Suave is so bleak and short that there is nothing really to tell you about.
Together with smooth light body though it makes Piporé Suave a very drinkable mate that can be sipped at fastest cadence.
Install our free web app!
It is instant and won't take up space on your device. Keep reading Matexperience anytime, anywhere — even offline.
Durability
If prepared with correct temperature for this yerba mate, Piporé Suave can yield from 23 to 25 refills, which almost makes it a long mate but still falls into a moderate durability category.
This mate also has a noticeable evolution, starting with an aforementioned first 5 confusing refills that shift into a more predictable but not less interesting taste profile in the middle of a drinking session, followed by a gradual washing out and a light, grassy and slightly bitter lavado.
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
Suave yerba mate means that it is meant to be soft both in terms of flavor and its effects.
And soft it is — Piporé Suave is one of those rare relaxing mates that you not just can, but would want to drink exclusively in the evening for its sedative and calming properties.
I have a theory that it has something to do with the correlation between the time of year when yerba mate is harvested (which can be known by the amount of seeds found in the cut of the yerba mate), and the caffeine content in its leaves.
Other yerbas that are full of seeds, like La Merced Barbacuá and La Selva Tradicional, however, have completely different effects which contradicts my theory.
Anyhow, Piporé Suave still provides the mental clarity and tons of health benefits, like any yerba mate should, but relying on it as a coffee substitution after a sleepless night would be a mistake on your part.
Afternoon is also a good time to enjoy Piporé Suave, but simply due to the scarcity of relaxing yerbas, my personal choice was to reserve this mate for my evenings, when I can benefit from its ability to improve my reading comprehension, but also safely go to sleep shortly after.
***
What are your thoughts on Piporé Suave? Comment below!
Subscribe to the free newsletter!
Get access to new content as soon as it is published and receive exclusive offers, deals and discounts on yerba mate and related products! You can unsubscribe anytime.
Yerba mate
Pronounced [YER-bah MAH-teh] (or [SHER-bah MAH-teh] in Rioplatense Spanish). Also known as Ilex paraguariensis, a holly plant natively grown in South America, particularly in Northern Argentina, Paraguay and Southern Brazil (the term erva mate is used there more often). Yerba mate is used to make a beverage known as mate in Spanish, or chimarrão in Portugese. Oftenly, the term yerba mate is used to describe not only a plant, but also a final product of grinding, drying and aging the plant.
With stems in Spanish. Type of yerba mate cut which is characterized by presence of stems, or palos in Spanish. Usually more light and sweet than sin palo cut. Very popular in Argentina and Paraguay.
Special drinking straw with a filtration system in the lower end of it. Usually made from metal or hollow-stemmed cane. Used for drinking mate traditionally with a gourd.
When mate is prepared traditionally, a mountain of yerba is yerba that is located inside the gourd in form of slope, that is exposed to hot water while drinking. Proper mountain of yerba will be always half-dry and half-wet, which results in more balanced and long mate. On the opposite side of mountain is the water hole.
Pronounced [MAH-teh]. Traditional South American caffeine-rich infused drink, very popular in Argentina, Paraguay, Uruguay and Southern Brazil (the term chimarrão is used there more often). It is prepared by steeping dried leaves of yerba mate in the gourd. Sometimes the gourd itself is referred to as mate.
Spanish adjective which means washed. Used as a term to point out that all the flavors “washed away” from mate and it becomes tasteless. The more refills yerba mate can take before becoming lavado, the longer durability it has.