Do you feel it? The not-so-subtle shift? It has people spending $400 at upscale supermarket chain Erewhon and supermodels creating non-alcoholic, functional beverages. Culture has been building steadily toward “healthy lifestyles” being in vogue and nightlife is far from immune. There are more mocktails, juice options, and non-alcoholic beers than ever before. A new party at the East Village’s Joyface, billed as a “nighttime disco for millenials,” runs from 5 to 10 p.m., allowing partiers to be asleep before midnight. In some less wholesome spaces, ketamine has eclipsed cocaine’s long-term popularity, replacing the stimulant with a drug used for therapizing PTSD. At the center of it all is a Brooklyn raver go-to cocktail: tequila-spiked yerba mate.
Unlike a Long Island Iced Tea, Tequila Mate does, in fact, contain tea. It has roughly the same caffeine level as a standard cup of coffee and keeps clubgoers on the dance floor until the lights come on. Is this cocktail’s rising popularity the solution to finding a healthier way to rage? Or is it just a Vodka Red Bull in disguise?
From Ritual to Raves
Yerba mate is a plant indigenous to South America. The leaves are dried, ground, steeped, and usually used for medicine or social rituals. Predictably, mate was taken by another continent and adapted to its culture, with Germany being the origin of mate’s modern club popularity.
In 1924, a small beverage company in Northern Bavaria made raver history by bottling what would eventually become the celebrated Club-Mate brand. Loscher,
