Tagged: geographical indication

1. 01 The place · 16 Jul 2026 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.
2. 02 The trade The trade · 16 Jun 2026 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.
3. 03 The trade · 29 Jan 2026 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.
4. 04 The trade 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.
5. 05 The trade The trade 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.
6. 06 The place The Cederberg The Cederberg is the Western Cape mountain range that researchers place at the centre of rooibos's wild range: its acid sand, winter rain and fires, and where each source draws the edge of rooibos country.