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Rooibos

Rooibos is the caffeine-free infusion made from Aspalathus linearis, a needle-leaved legume grown in South Africa's Cederberg.

The Ministry of Rooibos 6 min read 8 sources

Contents

The short answer
Contents
What rooibos is
Where it grows, and where the name is protected
Red and green are the same plant
What is in the cup
A short history
How to brew it
Sources

The short answer

A caffeine-free infusion from one South African plant, made red by oxidation or kept green by quick drying.

Rooibos is a caffeine-free infusion made from the leaves and fine stems of Aspalathus linearis, a fine, needle-leaved shrub that grows only in South Africa's Western and Northern Cape. True tea, the black, green, oolong, and white of it, all comes from a single plant, Camellia sinensis; rooibos comes from another plant altogether. So when someone calls it "red tea", they are naming the colour in the cup, not the botany.

Explainer · The cup

Red and green

One plant, two paths.

Red rooibosCut, bruised and left to oxidise. Path Cut, bruised and left to oxidiseColour Deep red-brownTaste Sweet, woody, faintly honeyedAspalathin Less

Green rooibosDried quickly instead. Path Dried quickly insteadColour Nearer the leaf's own greenTaste Lighter, grassier, more delicateAspalathin Considerably more

Both

No caffeine at all: never there, not removed.
Low in tannins.

What rooibos is, the plant, the family, and the two facts that set it apart.
Where it grows, and where the name is protected, the home region and the designation of origin.
Red and green are the same plant, the one processing step that separates the styles.
What is in the cup, what is absent (caffeine, most tannin) and what is present (aspalathin).
A short history, from the wild bush to a cultivated crop.
How to brew it, the method, plain or iced.

What rooibos is

Rooibos is the dried, cut foliage of Aspalathus linearis, brewed in hot water. The name is Afrikaans for "red bush"⁴. It belongs to the family Fabaceae, the legumes, the same broad clan as peas, beans, and clover. The Dutch botanist Nicolaas Burman first published the species in 1768; the name it carries today, Aspalathus linearis² (Burm.f.) R.Dahlgren, keeps both Burman and the later botanist who moved it into the genus Aspalathus on the record. Like its legume cousins it makes its own nitrogen, by way of bacteria in root nodules³, which is a good part of how it survives the poor, sandy, acidic soil it calls home.

rooibos, Afrikaans for 'red bush' (Online Etymology Dictionary)
Aspalathus linearis (Burm.f.) R.Dahlgren, basionym Psoralea linearis Burm.f. 1768 (GBIF)
Nodulation of rooibos (Aspalathus linearis), an indigenous South African legume that fixes nitrogen (Biology and Fertility of Soils, Springer)

Unlike true tea, it contains no caffeine at all. It is also low in tannins¹, which is why it rarely turns bitter, even when you forget it steeping.

Aspalathus linearis (SANBI, PlantZAfrica): needle leaves, Fabaceae, caffeine-free, low in tannins

Where it grows, and where the name is protected

Rooibos grows in one part of the world. The Cederberg, a range of weathered sandstone mountains a few hours north of Cape Town, is the heart of it, alongside neighbouring areas such as the Sandveld and the Suid Bokkeveld. The plant is adapted to a hard life: poor, acidic, sandy soil, hot dry summers, and cold wet winters, the fynbos biome of the Cape. It has not been cultivated successfully at scale anywhere else.

That single origin is now legally recognised. In 2021 the European Union reserved "Rooibos" and "Red Bush" as a Protected Designation of Origin⁵: the names may be used only for the dried leaves of pure Aspalathus linearis grown or wild-harvested in the named municipalities of the Western and Northern Cape. How the name came to be protected, across a US trademark fight and two continents, is its own story; the terroir and the regional detail are on the terroir page.

Commission Implementing Regulation (EU) 2021/865 (Rooibos/Red Bush PDO)

Red and green are the same plant

There are two main styles of rooibos on the shelf, and the difference between them is processing, not species. Both come from the same bush.

Red rooibos is the traditional style. After the leaves and stems are cut and bruised, they are left to oxidise, which turns them from green to the deep red-brown that gives the bush its name and develops the sweet, woody, faintly honeyed flavour most people recognise.

Green rooibos skips that step. The leaves are dried quickly instead, closer to the way green tea is made, which keeps them nearer their natural green state. The cup is lighter, grassier, and a little more delicate, and it retains more of the plant's original antioxidants, because the compounds responsible are partly broken down during oxidation. The fuller comparison of the two, flavour, processing, and chemistry, is on the green-versus-red page.

	Red rooibos	Green rooibos
Processing	Cut, bruised, then left to oxidise, the step loosely called fermentation	Dried quickly instead, closer to how green tea is made
Colour	Deep red-brown, the colour that names the bush	Nearer the leaf's natural green
Cup	Sweet, woody, faintly honeyed, the one most people recognise	Lighter, grassier, a little more delicate
Aspalathin	Less. The compound degrades during oxidation	Considerably more
Caffeine	None, and never any. Not decaffeinated	None
Tannins	Low, which is why it does not readily turn harsh	Low

What is in the cup

Two things make the composition of rooibos distinctive.

The first is what is absent. Rooibos is naturally caffeine-free. That is not the same as decaffeinated, which is caffeine removed after the fact; rooibos never contained any. It is also low in tannins, which is the reason it is gentle and does not readily turn harsh.

The second is what is present. Rooibos contains aspalathin, an antioxidant compound found in almost no other plant, alongside a related compound called nothofagin. Green rooibos carries considerably more aspalathin than red⁶, because the compound degrades during the oxidation that makes red rooibos red. Laboratory and animal studies have examined rooibos in connection with oxidative stress and metabolic measures. Most of that work is preliminary. What the studies do and do not show is set out on the health page.

HPLC quantification of aspalathin and nothofagin in rooibos as affected by processing (Food Chemistry, ScienceDirect): green far higher, both fall during fermentation

A short history

The written record of the Khoi-descended people of the Cederberg brewing it as a drink is thin and begins only in the late nineteenth century⁸. The commercial story⁷ turns on two figures. In 1904 a merchant named Benjamin Ginsberg, an immigrant from the Russian Empire, marketed the cured product beyond its home valleys. In the 1930s, Le Fras Nortier, a Clanwilliam doctor and nature lover, discovered that the seeds would only germinate if they were cracked open first, which is the moment rooibos moved from a foraged plant to a cultivated crop. The full account, including the indigenous heritage and the benefit-sharing agreement that followed, is on the history page.

Van Wyk and Gorelik, The history and ethnobotany of Cape herbal teas, South African Journal of Botany 110 (2017) 18 to 38
Rooibos history: Benjamin Ginsberg, the first exporter (SA Rooibos Council)

How to brew it

Use freshly boiled water and give it five to ten minutes. Drink it plain to taste the wood and honey of it, or with a little milk if you prefer. It takes well to both hot and iced preparation. The full method, including iced rooibos and the espresso-style "red espresso," is on the brewing page.

Sources

rooibos cederberg caffeine-free basics

Next in Start here · 2 of 5The Cederberg

The cupGreen vs Red Rooibos: What Oxidation Changes The plantRooibos and Honeybush Are Not Cousins, Not Really The placeThe Cederberg

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