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Barron Trump is entering the beverage aisle in May. The news broke last week after SOLLOS Yerba Mate, a lifestyle beverage brand, announced the launch of its canned pineapple-and-coconut drinks. Barron, a 20-year-old college sophomore and son of the current President of the United States, is one of the directors of the Palm Beach-based company.
According to a LinkedIn post from the company, the name SOLLOS is a combination of the Spanish word for sun, “Sol,” and its reverse, “los,” which is meant to represent a sunset. If you’re confused because “los” is actually Spanish for “the,” you’re not alone.
The fabricated name isn’t the brand’s only faux pas. Its trademarked slogan, “Created in a Cabana,” suggests that yerba mate is a tropical drink, when it’s actually native to South America. It touts health buzzwords like “clean” and “functional,” but beneath the beach-front marketing (“born in the sunshine state” of Florida), the sugary energy drink barely nods to traditionally steeped yerba mate and its Indigenous purveyors.
Made from the leaves of the native South American Ilex paraguariensis, yerba mate emerged more than a thousand years ago with the Guaraní of Paraguay. (It was also consumed by the Charrúa of Uruguay and Tupí of Brazil.) The drink remains a staple across the Southern Cone (in Argentina, Brazil, Chile, Paraguay, and Uruguay), and is still enjoyed in a traditional method: The leaves are brewed in a gourd (or mate) and sipped through a perforated straw called a bombilla.
“Yerba mate isn’t just a beverage but also a symbol of cultural identity,” says Dr. Rafaela Vannuchi, a Brazilian nutritionist. “Its consumption is deeply intertwined with tradition and history, making it a cherished part of our heritage.”
SOLLOS isn’t the first company to transform yerba mate into carbonated soft drinks, explains Marcos Stubrin, the Argentine co-founder of MateCaps, an organic yerba mate capsule company. In the U.S., ORGANICS Viva Mate by Red Bull, Yerba Madre, and PepsiCo’s Yachak all market similar canned mate drinks. Club-Mate, a popular soda in Germany, has been around since the 1990s. And Barron isn’t the first white “celebrity” to sell a yerba mate beverage: Rapper Mackelmore has been the creative director and an investor of CLEAN Cause, a sparkling yerba mate, since 2022.
I’m Uruguayan and, just like my Charrúa ancestors, I drink yerba mate in its traditional form; I usually share it with my girlfriend several times a week. I’ll never trade drinking yerba from a mate for drinking yerba in an energy drink — no matter how many new brands pop up on shelves.
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