Tagged: geographical indication
The Climate Rooibos Needs Is Leaving Its Only Legal Home
European and South African law both restrict the name rooibos to a narrow, delimited stretch of the Cederberg and its neighboring valleys. A peer-reviewed bioclimatic model, and the farmers already testing its warning in the field, say that exact ground is growing less suitable for the plant, with nowhere the name can legally follow it.
Who Gets to Call It Rooibos? The Fight for a Plant's Name
A Texan company spent four years demanding money from anyone who used the word "rooibos" to sell tea, until a US court struck its trademark down. Here is how South Africa lost the name, won it back, and built three separate legal shields so it could never happen again.
Four Times Someone Tried to Own the Word Rooibos
The famous fight over the word "rooibos" ran from 1993 to 2005 in a US courtroom. It was not the first attempt to own the name, and it was not the last. Here are the other three, including the one the industry's own founding family gave back on its own.
The History of Rooibos
The full history of rooibos, from a wild Cederberg shrub used by the Khoisan, through Benjamin Ginsberg's 1904 trade and Pieter Nortier's 1930 cultivation breakthrough, to the trademark fights and the protected name it carries today.
The Rooibos Trade
How the red bush is priced without a public auction, where the crop actually goes, what its certification marks verify, how the name is legally protected, and how concentrated the buying side really is.
The Cederberg
The Cederberg, a sandstone mountain range in South Africa's Western Cape, is the home of rooibos and almost its only home. This is the canonical account of the region: its location and boundaries, the acid fynbos soil and winter-rain climate that suit the bush, the legume and fire adaptations that fit it to the place, and the geographical protection that has fixed the name to the ground.