About Top Leaf Mate' LLC

The Starbucks of Maté
Written by Laurie J. Rice
Wednesday, 16 May 2007
www.tsweekly.com

If you are a maté drinker, odds are you’ve run across Santiago Casanueva.He is the unofficial maté guru of Central Oregon. There is no one who can sing the praises of this age-old tree tea the way Santiago can. And no one will do it with more enthusiasm.

Wide-eyed and buoyant, Casanueva will regale any willing listener about the benefits of maté, using words like “tonify” and “nutrify” to make his point. He will offer up specialty drinks for sampling, give you his card and a couple of mate pills for “energy, weight loss and over-all well being.” Even those that know their maté will probably get something special or new when Casanueva is serving them. If you believe him, he’s surprisingly successful at getting people “turned on” to maté.

“Nine out of 10 (people) like it, if I can get them to try it, they’ll be hooked” claims Casanueva.

He even has a YouTube video (www.youtube.com – search Bend, OR or yerba maté) exalting the joys of drinking maté that underscores Casanueva’s loyalty to his beverage of choice.

Casanueva got his start in Redmond as a a partner in Santiago’s Yerba Mate with Nate Winkler and Nate’s parents. Santiago’s was a resounding success in its first year, spreading the word of maté and the phrase “off the bean and on the green” throughout the youth culture of Central Oregon.

Given the success, questions of “what next?” surfaced. It became clear that the partners had different visions. Nate and his parents wanted to maintain the existing retail end of the business and grow the Internet/wholesale end. Casanueva, on the other hand wanted to create the “Starbucks of maté.”

Casanueva parted ways with Santiago’s in October of 2006 and immediately started searching for partners to start, what he hopes will be, a series of maté retail stores resembling the Starbucks model. After a few attempts at other locations in downtown, he applied as a barista at Café 28 – a kind of offshoot of 28 Lounge. He started chatting with owners Steve and Sheri Helt about his business plan and by the end of the interview Casanueva had found himself the partners he was looking for – and the ideal downtown location.

New at MatéAgo’s is the pure Argentinean-grown certified organic maté blended with Casanueva’s “secret ingredient,” “L.” After chatting with Casanueva for a few minutes it’s evident that keeping secrets may not be his forte as he tells me the “L” stands for Chinese Licorice Root. Not a huge licorice fan, I wasn’t jumping at the chance to try a MatéAgo concoction, but Casanueva doesn’t take no for an answer. He prepared an Iced Ava Latté (named after his 4 yr-old daughter) for me made with steamed almond milk, agave nectar and two pulled shots of maté that, I must say, was wonderful. As I sipped my sweet, frothy drink, he mixed up a cold beverage of all natural strawberry lemonade granita with 2 shots of maté to create an earthy, refreshing summer quencher for another thirsty customer.

When it comes to Casanueva on yerba maté, the preparation possibilities are as endless as the benefits of drinking it. Serving iced, steamed or just a splash of almond, rice, hazelnut or the traditional cow’s milk with mate straight up, sweetened, iced or part of an exotic beverage, MatéAgo’s has it covered when it comes to making maté accessible to the coffee and tea drinking public.

MatéAgo’s