Familia Zaragoza

Familia Zaragoza traces to 2008, when Carla Zaragoza left Buenos Aires by train with her two young sons and resettled in Misiones province, first in Oberá and eventually in Puerto Iguazú, where the family built a life around yerba mate from scratch. Years later her sons, Damián and Santiago, turned that history into a brand named for her, describing it as a tribute to the years she spent building the family's footing largely on her own. The business processes yerba using the barbacuá method: leaves are dried slowly over wood smoke and heat for as long as eighteen hours, a slower process than mechanical drying that lets the leaf absorb smoke aroma directly, then rested in burlap sacks for eighteen to twenty-four months so the flavor matures before sale. The line includes a despalada, stem-removed style with a stronger, more concentrated taste from finer grinding, closer to the Uruguayan style of yerba than the stemmed Argentine standard. Sourcing draws on local Misiones producers and an artisanal mill working under a third-party arrangement rather than a single company-owned plantation. The brothers now run the storefront in Puerto Iguazú and ship the finished yerba nationwide, keeping the business rooted in the same province their mother resettled the family in nearly two decades ago.