Coffee Shop’S Ingredient Has Tea Drinkers Buzzing

Dan Garcia of Hope has started a new buzz in the Pacific Northwest. And it isn’t from caffeine.

“People want to be energized,” said Garcia, who runs Monarch Mountain Coffee with his wife, Kathy, “but they are looking to put things into their body that are healthy for them.”

Known for his fresh-roasted coffee beans and for the warm, friendly coffee house he and his wife operate on Fourth Avenue in Sandpoint, Garcia nevertheless has been looking for a way to help people with health problems kick the caffeine habit.

He received an intriguing e-mail inquiry from South America in February. An Argentinian company was contacting people in the United States regarding yerba mate’, an herbal product meant to ensure health, vitality and longevity.

Although virtually unknown in the United States, this special drink is a centuries-old favorite of the Guarani Indians of Paraguay.

According to legend, a tall, fair-skinned, blue-eyed God named Pa’i Shume introduced the Guarani to the green tea, which came to be known as the “drink of the gods.”

“It is not a true tea bush,” Garcia explained, “but a wild tree growing 10 to 30 meters high.” The tree is related to a species of holly called Ilex paraguarensis and is grown in Argentina, Brazil, Paraguay and Uruguay.

Yerba (which is Spanish for herb) mate’ traditionally was sipped through a bamboo straw that filtered out the leaves and twigs in the bottom of a container, hence the word mate’, a native word for gourd.

The Sichel family of Argentina, wholesalers of the plant for more than a century, spent three years developing a process whereby the leaves of the plant could be ground fine enough to be served in an espresso machine “without generating heat that destroys the integrity of the product,” said Garcia.

The Sichels contacted coffee roasters they had located through the Internet and eventually chose Garcia to represent yerba mate’ in the United States.

Garcia served a test run of the drink to his friend Leon Lewis. Leon was hooked. He talked to his brother, Bill. As a result, Garcia and the Lewis brothers formed Aviva Ltd. Co., and obtained exclusive rights to import the product to North America and Canada.

Garcia arranged for the finely ground leaves to be contained in a 6.4-gram tea pod, or compressed filter, that could be easily placed in an espresso machine.

“There is no cross contamination with coffee made in the same machine,” said Garcia, whose excitement about the new product is contagious. “This allows coffee house operators and customers to have a choice of either herbal green tea latte or a coffee latte,” he said.

Garcia, who worked for 18 years in the oil business in Alaska, was born in Wallace, where his father worked for the Sunshine Mine. After years of commuting to North Idaho, “one week on, one week off,” he was looking for a way to make a living at home. A year after his wife started the Monarch Mountain Coffee business in a closet-sized space on McGhee Road in Ponderay, Garcia leapt at the chance for an early retirement.

The Garcias have been busy ever since. On Oct. 1, Dan went “right into the lion’s den,” he said. He presented the Mate’ Latte at the prestigious Seattle Trade Show, Coffee Fest and won the coveted Best New Product Award. Offers to broker the product throughout Canada and the United States rolled in.

Meanwhile, the Garcias were kept busy serving Mate’ Latte to excited customers in Sandpoint.

For those who want to abandon the double tall with 2 percent and flavor, there is a whole new lingo to remember.

Mate’ Latte, which is made like a traditional latte but with yerba mate’ instead of coffee beans.

El mate’, a cup of “plain old tea brewed in a pot,” Dan said.

Gaucho mate’, a cup of tea with another South American product, a sweetened soy-based creamer called leche de sya.

For more information, go to www.yerba-mate.com or call (877) 255-1473.