Ingredients · Tea
Green Rooibos
Aspalathus linearis · Fabaceae (pea family)
What it’s like, and how to use it
- 212°F / 100°C
- 5 to 7 minutes, or longer
- will not go bitter
How to use it
Fully boiling water, 5 to 7 minutes, and it will not go bitter however long you leave it. Excellent iced and cold-brewed. Lighter than red rooibos, so it suits delicate fruit and floral blends where red would dominate.
With food
Citrus and stone fruit. Honey. Almond. Light cake. Cucumber. Fresh cheese.
With spices
Lemongrass. Mint. Ginger. Cardamom. Lemon peel.
With tea
Honeybush, its Cape cousin. Blended with citrus and light fruit rather than heavy spice.
Its story
Where it comes from
Endemic to a small part of the Western Cape and farmed only in about 60,000 hectares of the Cederberg; the EU protected the name in May 2021, so any true rooibos is Cederberg rooibos. Our lot's farm is unconfirmed.
What happened
Rooibos is not tea and never was — it is a needle-leaved shrub of the pea family. Its industry rests on two men: Benjamin Ginsberg, whose Jewish family had brewed tea from a samovar in Russia, and who cured rooibos in barrels in imitation of the Chinese method for Keemun black tea from around 1904; and Pieter le Fras Nortier, the Clanwilliam district surgeon, who from about 1930 worked out cultivation with local farmers, the seed needing to be scarified before it would germinate. In 2019 the Khoi and San were recognised as the rightful traditional knowledge holders of rooibos in the first industry-wide benefit-sharing agreement of its kind — a levy of 1.5 per cent of the farm-gate price, split evenly between the two communities. The green version is recent by comparison: developed in 1995 by the Agricultural Research Council.
On the shelf with it
Sold on its own, and in these blends.
-
Green Rooibos, Organic
Regular price From $8.00 CADRegular price
