In California, the Uruguayan Denis Viegas Detobel launched a series of beverages based on yerba mate, taking advantage of the boom.

Denis Viegas Detobel was born and raised in Montevideo, the son of a Uruguayan father and a Belgian mother. Later, his family moved to Lajeado, in Brazil, near Porto Alegre, where he completed his secondary education. "In Uruguay I didn't drink mate, but I started drinking it in Brazil, and since in the south of the country they drink mate from huge calabashes or porongos, today the mates that Uruguayans or people from the Argentine littoral are used to drinking seem like miniatures to me," notes the man from Montevideo. At 20, Denis decided to live new experiences and went to continue his studies in Business Administration in Hawaii. But after three years, "following a love" – he says – he moved to California and was one year away from finishing his degree. There he worked in marketing for various companies until he decided to start his own business, in the canned beverage sector. First, he imported a drink with the flavor preferred by Brazilians, guarana, which comes from that ...