Rooibos tea

What makes it unique is that it originates from the Cederberg Mountains in South Africa (just north of Cape Town), where it continues to thrive to this day. As one of the most biodiverse regions in the country, the Cederberg is home to a UNESCO World Heritage protected wildlife area, 500-million-year-old sandstone formations, and rock art heritage dating back 6,000 years left by the San people who originally inhabited the region.

In the Cederberg region, locals have been harvesting and brewing naturally growing rooibos for centuries. While farmers still harvest wild rooibos in the area, some commercially cultivated rooibos has been transplanted to other parts of South Africa. In fact, South Africa is the only country in the world that produces rooibos tea, with over 450 growers producing up to 15,000 tons of rooibos annually. Around 7,000 tons of rooibos tea are exported from South Africa to more than 30 countries around the world. Germany, the Netherlands, Japan, the United Kingdom, and the United States are the largest importers of this herbal tea.

The rooibos plant, Aspalathus linearis, is a member of the legume family and thrives in the arid, rainy mountainous regions. The linear description of the plant comes from its linear growth structure, which produces long, needle-like leaves. The plant flowers in early spring, producing yellow blossoms. Each flower yields a legume containing a single seed, which pops out when mature and falls onto the dry ground around the plant. Early gatherers of wild rooibos discovered that ants harvested these seeds, so they would often look for ant hills to collect the seeds needed for replanting. Today, farmers sift through the sandy soil around rooibos plants to collect fresh seeds in preparation for the new crop each spring. The rooibos plant takes about 18 months from seedling to harvest-ready, and is typically harvested in the South African summer.

Rooibos is harvested and processed similarly to tea plants.

When harvested, the dense rooibos bushes are hand-cut, and their stems and leaves are bundled together. These bundles are sorted and then cut or bruised to promote oxidation. Oxidation, or exposure to oxygen, produces the plant’s essential oils and helps the leaves develop a rich color and flavor. The higher the level of oxidation, the redder, sweeter, and fuller the flavor. This is what we know as red rooibos. Less oxidized rooibos is immediately steamed and dried instead of being oxidized, so it retains a slightly green color and a green, mineral-like flavor. This less oxidized version is called green rooibos.

The grading of rooibos, like the leaves of the Camellia sinensis tea plant, depends on the leaf-to-stem ratio. Higher-grade rooibos contains more flavorful leaves and fewer stems and tea dust.