Tagged: south africa

1. 01 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.
2. 02 The trade · 5 Mar 2026 Three Different Promises on a Rooibos Label Organic, Fair Trade, and Rainforest Alliance are three different promises on a rooibos label, not one certification. Here is what each stamp verifies, and what predicts which farmers hold one.
3. 03 The plant · 5 Mar 2026 Rooibos and Honeybush Are Not Cousins, Not Really Both are caffeine-free, both grow only in the Cape, and both get called "the other South African tea." Past that, they are two different plants from two different tribes of the legume family, two different mountain ranges, and two different antioxidants, and the historical record on how each was actually brewed is stranger than either box on the shelf lets on.
4. 04 The place · 29 Nov 2025 More of the Cederberg Is Under a Conservation Pact Than Under Rooibos Rooibos farms in the Cederberg have signed more land into formal conservation agreements than the entire industry cultivates, a corridor that also keeps a camera-trapped leopard population, a dying cedar, and the plant's own wild backup moving.
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.