Aviva Message From Our Founder

Welcome! Fall is just around the corner and nothing is more warming than a hot cup of yerba mate. We have returned from the Nascore trade show in Portland Oregon. It was a very good show for Aviva and yerba mate. I have been doing this for four years and it is amazing to me how many people don't know about yerba mate. But on the other hand, it is amazing how the awareness keeps growing from year to year. You can help grow that awareness. The next time you are in your favorite coffee shop, take them a empty bag of Aviva and tell them you want them to carry our brand. It would save you shipping and introduce yerba mate to more people.

The show was geared to the specialty coffee and tea industry. We had great success and real good feed back on the high quality and the high standards we keep with our yerba. It was nice educating people on the sticks versus no sticks issue. Sticks do help keep the bombilla clear when drinking mate out of a gourd, but other than that they add little or nothing to the quality of the taste or the nutritional aspect of the yerba. To make a point we took the Aviva Challenge. We took a bag from one of our major competitors and separated the sticks and stems. The sticks and stems took up about 50% of the bag! We had two jars— one with sticks and stems and the other with the left over tea. The left over powder was a combination of ground up mate with 50% ground up sticks and stems.

We designed our line to integrate with the way that North Americans drink their beverages. That is why you will find only leaf and very little sticks and stems in Aviva's yerba mate. Take the Aviva challenge and separate the sticks and stems from your bag of mate. Send an email with an attached picture of the two stacks and I will send you a sample of our yerba free, including the shipping.

New products for the upcoming season.... we all know what that is, with out me mentioning it. We call it our grab and go tea bags. Each nicely designed package has 6 tea bags. We have plain yerba, Chai, Spearmint, Passion Berry, and Ginger peach. We will have these available on our site by the first of October. Great stocking stuffers.

News from Paraguay:
Had a nice talk with my partners. I called them and they were in a meeting with SGS, the certifying agency. Progress is being made in the Wild harvest certification. I received the good news that possibly by February of 2004 we will have our WILD HARVEST CERTIFICATE and our organic certification as well. Last newsletter I incicated that it might take three years for the certified organic,but the agency indicated that it is a wild stand of yerba mate. Basically we couldn't get a Wild Harvest Certification without it being organic.The ranch should receive electricity in two weeks. They currently use a generator that turns off at 9:00 each night. They are in the process of putting in a new sanitation system and a completely new shower room in for the workers. Yes, with hot and cold running water. Most of the showers are outside with just cold water. I say most because they installed a hot and cold shower in my honor, the first of it's kind when I visited a year ago. From my conversation yesterday, it was pointed out to me again how labor intensive it is to produce the mate to our standards. So the next time you sit down and enjoy a cup of our yerba, think of the hard work that goes into getting it from the Ranch to your house. With that said, keep warm, keep healthy and be well.