In the Guaraní language spoken in Paraguay, tereré is an onomatopoeic word coined to mimic the sound of the last three sips a person makes when sucking ice-cold water through a bombilla, i.e., a metal straw with a filter on the end submerged in yerba mate leaves. On December 17, 2020, UNESCO declared the tereré of Paraguay as an intangible cultural heritage, which includes the drink (tereré), its preparation methods, its circular distribution, and the funny sucking noises. See YouTube video below.

I learned to drink tereré back in the late 1970s when I was a Peace Corps volunteer in training and living with my host family not too far from Asunción. On hot summer afternoons the father of the family would fill the common container, usually a guampa, an ornate cattle horn, with cold water. As the yerba mate leaves absorbed the first pour, making the water level mysteriously drop, papá – winking at me – would remind his youngest child that Santo Tomás, the patron saint of tereré, was taking the first sip.

Now that summer is almost here, I bought my first bag of yerba mate. ¡Qué rico!

Tereré

iPad painting done on Sketch Club using an Apple Pencil. My guampa is made of palo santo wood, which I picked up on a trip to Argentina in the early 2000s.

Check out this short UNESCO video describing the Paraguayan customs associated with tereré: