In 1917, Don Nicolás Pawluk started a plantation of 20 yerba mate bushes. Back in the day, everything was manual — yerba mate was dried in the clay oven and milled by hand in a wooden barrel with mortar.
Since then all the processes have been modernized, including the installation of a barbacuá dryer in 1960 that is a signature thing for their yerba mate to this day. Now the efforts of Sol y Lluvia — a small but caring company — are continued by his son, Luis Felipe Pawluk.
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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. Wikipedia article
Barbacuá
The oldest method of drying yerba mate, first used by Guarani indians hundreds of years ago. During the barbacuá process, the leaves are exposed to the heat of a wood fire for a long period of time (around 12-24 hours), which gives the final product distinctive smoky flavor.
