Rooibos

Rooibos is not tea. That is the first and most useful thing to know about it, and once you have it the rest comes easily. It is a caffeine-free infusion made from the leaves and fine stems of Aspalathus linearis, a fine, needle-leaved shrub that grows only in the Cederberg and a handful of neighbouring districts of South Africa's Western and Northern Cape, and nowhere else on earth. 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. What follows is the whole of it, taken gently and in order: what the plant is, where it is allowed to grow, how the red and green styles part company, what the science does and does not say, and how to make a good cup. Each of the deeper corners has a page of its own, linked at the end.

Contents

This record covers, in order:

• 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

Strip away the marketing and rooibos is a plain thing: the dried, cut foliage of Aspalathus linearis, brewed in hot water. The name is Afrikaans for "red bush", and the plant earns it, a broom-like shrub with fine, needle-like leaves. It belongs to the family Fabaceae, the legumes, the same broad clan as peas, beans, and clover, which surprises people who expect a tea bush. The Dutch botanist Nicolaas Burman first published the species in 1768, for those linear, needle-like leaves; the name it carries today, Aspalathus linearis (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 nodules, which is a good part of how it survives the poor, sandy, acidic soil it calls home.

The single most useful fact about rooibos is the one that sets it apart from true tea: it contains no caffeine at all. It is also low in tannins compared with black or green tea, which is why it rarely turns bitter, even when you forget it steeping. Those two properties, caffeine-free and low in tannin, are the durable, uncontested facts a drinker most often wants.

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 Origin, the same class of protection held by Champagne and Parma ham, and the first African food to enter that register: 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. In short, rooibos that is not from this corner of South Africa is, by that rule, not rooibos. 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.

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, a step often loosely called fermentation, 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.

What is in the cup

Two things make the composition of rooibos distinctive, and both are worth stating carefully.

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 honest 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 red, because the compound degrades during the oxidation that makes red rooibos red. Aspalathin is genuinely of interest to researchers, and laboratory and animal studies have examined rooibos in connection with oxidative stress and metabolic measures. Most of that work is preliminary, and the strong claims that circulate online run well ahead of the evidence. Rooibos is a pleasant, caffeine-free drink that contains antioxidants, among them aspalathin. That is a fair and accurate thing to say, and the Ministry says no more than that. It is not a medicine. What the studies do and do not show is set out, with the same caution, on the health page.

A short history

The Khoekhoe and San of these valleys are recorded as the first people to know the wild bush, though the written record of them brewing it as a drink is thin and begins only in the late nineteenth century. The commercial story turns on two figures. In 1904 a merchant named Benjamin Ginsberg, an immigrant from the Russian Empire, refined the curing process and marketed the cured product beyond its home valleys. In the 1930s, Pieter Lafras Nortier, a doctor and naturalist working near Clanwilliam, worked out how to germinate the notoriously stubborn seeds by scarifying their hard coats, which is the moment rooibos moved from a foraged plant to a cultivated crop. Nearly everything grown today descends from that work. The full account, including the indigenous heritage and the benefit-sharing agreement that followed, is on the history page.

How to brew it

Rooibos is forgiving, which is a relief. Use freshly boiled water, give it five to ten minutes, and do not worry about over-steeping, because the low tannin means it will not turn harsh the way black tea does if it sits. 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. There is no wrong hour for it, and because there is no caffeine to bargain with, the evening is as good a time as any. The full method, including iced rooibos and the espresso-style "red espresso," is on the brewing page.