Ingredients · Tea

Rooibos

Aspalathus linearis · Fabaceae (pea family)

Rooibos
Not tea. Rooibos is a needle-leaved shrub of the pea family that grows in one mountain range in the Western Cape and nowhere else, and since 2021 the name has been legally reserved for it. It is the base of thirty-three products here for one practical reason above all: it cannot go bitter no matter how long you steep it, which makes it forgiving in a way no real tea is, and it is naturally sweet, so a fruit blend built on rooibos needs less help. Red rooibos is oxidised, which is what turns it red-brown. Green rooibos is the same leaf left unoxidised — a harder process, a more expensive tea, and a lighter, grassier cup.

What it’s like, and how to use it

The partLeaf
KindTea
CaffeineCaffeine-free
Where it is fromSouth Africa
TasteHoney, dried fruit and vanilla with a little wood; smooth, naturally sweet, never bitter. Green rooibos is malty and slightly grassy
How to brew it
  • 212°F / 100°C
  • 5 to 7 minutes, or longer
  • will not go bitter

How to use it

Steep 5 to 7 minutes in fully boiling water; it will not turn bitter if you forget it. Excellent iced and cold-brewed. Takes milk well. Used as a base for spiced and fruit blends more often than drunk plain. Also good as a cooking liquid for poaching fruit, and in place of water in a spice cake.

With food

Honey and vanilla. Stone fruit and berries. Chocolate. Cinnamon and baked apple. Cream. Shortbread and biscuits. Citrus.

With spices

Cinnamon, cloves, cardamom, ginger and nutmeg for a caffeine-free chai. Vanilla. Lavender. Orange peel.

With tea

Honeybush, its Cape cousin, which behaves the same way. Blended with hibiscus and rosehip for a tart fruit cup, or with lavender and rose for a floral one.

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, roughly 250 km north of Cape Town; Clanwilliam is the district town where cultivation began. The EU granted it protected designation of origin in May 2021, so any true rooibos is Cederberg rooibos. Which farm, and whether wild or cultivated, is not something we can confirm without the supplier's record.

What happened

The name is Afrikaans for red bush. Ethnobotanical records of rooibos as a drink go back only to the late nineteenth century, among Khoi-descended people of the Cederberg. It became an industry through two men: Benjamin Ginsberg, whose family had brewed tea from a samovar in Russia, 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 with local farmers to cultivate it. The seed was the obstacle — it had to be scarified before it would germinate, and the story is told that an elderly Khoi woman found the first usable supply by following ants back to their granary. In 1994 an American company registered the word Rooibos as a US trademark; it took until 2005 to get it cancelled and returned to the public domain. And in 2019, after four years of negotiation, 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.

On the shelf with it

Sold on its own, and in these blends.

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