Project Mate Bar, Delray Beach

Project Maté Bar is a café and shop devoted to one special variety of tea: yerba mate. A favorite in South America's Guaraní culture, the antioxidant-rich leaves are brewed throughout Argentina, Uruguay, Paraguay, and Southern Brazil. Fanatics praise its earthy taste, its bounty of vitamins (A, C, and E), and its minerals (calcium, magnesium, and potassium). And with two-thirds the caffeine of coffee, but none of java's dehydrating qualities, yerba mate is especially praised for the special brand of calm alertness it helps impart.

At Project Maté Bar, sippers quaff the energizing elixir or take home the powder or leaves they need to brew their own. The shop culls its yerba mate sustainably, relying on trees, and tea from the branches' teapots, that grow in Brazil's town of Sao Martinho, Rio Grande do Sul. In addition to yerba mate, the shop offers organic blended teas and tea accessories. Sweet-toothed tea fiends can even munch Belgian chocolate infused with yerba mate. Since the drink is traditionally swigged from a gourd, Project Maté Bar stocks plenty of etched, cured gourds for that purpose.