The Story of Rooibos: From the Cederberg to the World
Almost every tea you've ever had could be grown in a dozen countries. Rooibos can be grown in one. Not one country - one region, a stretch of mountainous wilderness a few hours north of Cape Town, and nowhere else on earth. People have tried to cultivate it elsewhere. It doesn't take. Something about the specific soil, climate, and altitude of the Cederberg is the only combination the plant will accept.
That singular origin is the beginning of what makes rooibos interesting. But the fuller story - how a wild mountain shrub became a drink exported by the tens of thousands of tonnes, and whose knowledge made that possible - is richer, and more complicated, than the tidy version usually told.
One Plant, One Place
Rooibos comes from Aspalathus linearis, a spiky, needle-leaved shrub in the legume family. The name is Afrikaans for "red bush," describing the deep reddish-brown colour the leaves take on after they're processed. It's part of the fynbos - the extraordinary, biodiverse shrubland of South Africa's Cape Floral Kingdom, one of the richest and most concentrated botanical regions in the world.
The plant grows in the Cederberg and surrounding areas of the Western and Northern Cape, a landscape of dramatic sandstone formations, dry mountain air, and hot summers. Rooibos evolved to thrive precisely there, and attempts to grow it commercially in other parts of the world have consistently failed. This is why, in 2021, rooibos was granted Protected Designation of Origin status - the same kind of legal geographic protection that means only sparkling wine from the Champagne region can be called Champagne, and only cheese from a specific part of Italy can be called Parmigiano-Reggiano. The word "rooibos" now legally belongs to tea grown in that one region.
The Knowledge That Came First
Long before rooibos was a commercial product, it was known to the Khoisan - the indigenous peoples of the Cederberg, among the oldest continuous human populations on earth. They knew the wild plant, knew where it grew high in the mountains, and harvested it: climbing the steep slopes, cutting the fine needle-like leaves, carrying them back down by donkey in bags, then bruising and drying them in the sun.
That harvesting and processing method was documented in 1772 by Carl Thunberg, a European botanist travelling in the Cape, who observed the indigenous people gathering the wild plant. His account is often credited with sparking wider interest in rooibos - though it's worth being precise about what that means. Thunberg didn't discover rooibos. He documented a practice that indigenous communities had already been carrying out for generations. The distinction matters, and for most of the tea's modern history it was ignored.
There's an honest historical nuance here that better sources acknowledge. The rooibos the Khoisan prepared was not identical to the tea we drink today - the modern fermented, processed product came later, through a combination of indigenous knowledge and settler cultivation. But the foundational knowledge - which plant, where it grew, how to harvest and process it - originated with the Khoisan. Everything built on that base was built on their knowledge.
From Mountain Tea to Industry
Early Cape-Dutch settlers took up rooibos as a practical substitute. Black tea had to be imported by ship from Asia and Europe at considerable expense, and rooibos was growing locally and free for the harvesting. It became the affordable, home-grown alternative to a costly import - which is a role rooibos has arguably played ever since.
The commercial story usually centres on Benjamin Ginsberg, a Russian immigrant from a tea-trading family who, from 1904, began trading rooibos in the Clanwilliam district and marketing it as "Mountain Tea." Ginsberg is often called the father of the commercial rooibos industry, and he did play a genuine role in turning a local practice into a traded product. But even his contribution rested on harvesting knowledge learned directly from Khoisan communities. He was building on a foundation that already existed.
The plant resisted farming for a long time. Wild rooibos was all there was, because nobody had worked out how to reliably germinate the seeds, which have a notoriously tough outer coating. That changed in the 1930s, when a local doctor and amateur botanist named Dr Pieter Le Fras Nortier began serious work on cultivating rooibos from seed. His breakthrough - discovering that scarifying the tough seed pods allowed them to germinate - is what turned rooibos from a wild-harvested curiosity into a farmable crop.
Here, too, there's a name the standard histories tend to leave out. Nortier's cultivation work depended on Khoisan knowledge of where the scarce seeds could even be found - in particular, a woman named Elsie Doelman, who is said to have known how to locate and collect them effectively. Without that knowledge, the cultivation experiments that launched the entire modern industry might never have succeeded. Her contribution rarely appears in the formal story.
A Long-Overdue Reckoning
For roughly two centuries, the pattern held: indigenous Khoisan knowledge underpinned an industry that grew into a significant export business, while the communities whose ancestors originated and sustained that knowledge received almost nothing in return.
That began to change recently, and it's a genuinely significant part of the modern rooibos story. In 2014, government-commissioned research formally confirmed the Khoisan as the traditional knowledge holders of rooibos. Then, in November 2019, after nearly a decade of negotiation, the rooibos industry and representatives of the San and Khoi peoples signed one of the world's first industry-wide traditional-knowledge benefit-sharing agreements. It requires the industry to pay an annual levy - calculated as a percentage of the price paid to farmers per kilogram of harvested rooibos - into trusts controlled by Khoisan community councils.
The agreement was described by those involved as a restoration of dignity and a form of reparation for a long history of exclusion. It set an international precedent for how indigenous knowledge might be recognised and compensated. It's also, by many accounts, imperfect and incomplete - critics note that not every community holding traditional knowledge is included, and that the industry remains shaped by deep historical inequities. Both things are true at once: it was a landmark, and there is further to go. An honest telling of the rooibos story includes both the achievement and its limits.
What Makes Rooibos Worth the Story
Set alongside its history, the qualities of the tea itself make more sense. Rooibos is naturally caffeine-free - not decaffeinated, but a plant that simply never produced caffeine in the first place. It's low in tannins, which gives it a smooth, naturally sweet character without the astringency of black or green tea. And it carries a distinctive antioxidant profile, including aspalathin, a compound found in no other plant on earth - a fitting signature for a tea that grows in no other place on earth.
The flavour is warm, woody, and gently sweet, with notes often described as honey, caramel, and vanilla. That natural sweetness and full body are exactly what make rooibos such a good base for other flavours - it holds spices the way black tea does, with enough character to stand up to them. If you want the fuller detail on its caffeine-free nature and health properties, the guide to rooibos benefits covers that ground in depth.
Rooibos, a Long Way From the Cederberg
There's something fitting about a tea this rooted in one specific place travelling so far. Rooibos is now exported worldwide and turns up in cafés and kitchens on every continent - a plant that grows in one mountain region, carried into cups tens of thousands of kilometres away.
Old Growth Beverages' Rooibos Turmeric Chai is one small chapter in that long journey - South African rooibos, brought to British Columbia, and paired with the warming spices of Indian chai tradition. It's a genuinely global cup: a caffeine-free rooibos base carrying organic turmeric, cinnamon, ginger, cardamom, and peppercorn. The rooibos does exactly what it has always done well - it takes the spices generously and gives back a smooth, naturally sweet, caffeine-free drink.
Using rooibos as a chai base is itself a nice echo of the plant's whole history: a tea that began as an affordable, caffeine-free alternative, now offering the same thing to a new set of drinkers who want the warmth and ritual of chai without the caffeine. If you're curious how that compares to a traditional black-tea chai, the breakdown of caffeine across the chai range lays it out, and the history of chai tells the other half of this cup's story.
Frequently Asked Questions About Rooibos History
Where does rooibos come from?
Rooibos comes exclusively from the Cederberg and surrounding regions of the Western and Northern Cape in South Africa. It's the only place on earth where Aspalathus linearis - the rooibos plant - grows and can be cultivated successfully. Attempts to farm it elsewhere have consistently failed. In 2021, rooibos was granted Protected Designation of Origin status, legally restricting the name "rooibos" to tea grown in that specific region.
Who first discovered rooibos?
Rooibos wasn't "discovered" so much as long known. The indigenous Khoisan people of the Cederberg used the wild plant for generations before any outside documentation. A European botanist, Carl Thunberg, documented the indigenous harvesting practice in 1772, and this is often cited as the plant's "discovery" by outsiders - but the knowledge originated entirely with the Khoisan, who had been harvesting and preparing rooibos long before it was recorded.
What does "rooibos" mean?
"Rooibos" is Afrikaans for "red bush." The name describes the deep reddish-brown colour the plant's needle-like leaves develop during processing (specifically the fermentation, or oxidation, step). In some countries rooibos is also known as "red tea," "redbush," or "African red tea," though it isn't a true tea in the botanical sense, since it doesn't come from the tea plant Camellia sinensis.
Who was Benjamin Ginsberg?
Benjamin Ginsberg was a Russian immigrant from a tea-trading family who, beginning in 1904, started trading rooibos commercially in the Clanwilliam district of the Cederberg and marketing it as "Mountain Tea." He's frequently called the father of the commercial rooibos industry. His work was genuine, but it relied on harvesting knowledge learned from Khoisan communities - a foundation the commercial industry was built upon.
What is the rooibos benefit-sharing agreement?
In November 2019, after years of negotiation, the South African rooibos industry signed a landmark agreement with representatives of the San and Khoi peoples, recognising them as the traditional knowledge holders of rooibos. The agreement requires the industry to pay an annual levy - a percentage of the farm-gate price of harvested rooibos - into trusts controlled by Khoisan community councils. It was one of the world's first industry-wide traditional-knowledge benefit-sharing agreements and set an international precedent, though it has also been criticised as incomplete.
Why can rooibos only grow in South Africa?
Rooibos has adapted specifically to the unique conditions of the Cederberg region - its particular soil composition, climate, rainfall pattern, and altitude, as part of the fynbos ecosystem of the Cape Floral Kingdom. This combination has proven impossible to replicate elsewhere. Commercial cultivation attempts in other countries have failed, which is part of why rooibos received Protected Designation of Origin status tying it legally to its region of origin.
Is rooibos a real tea?
Not in the strict botanical sense. True teas - black, green, white, oolong - come from the Camellia sinensis plant. Rooibos comes from a completely different plant, Aspalathus linearis, making it technically a herbal tisane rather than a tea. However, it stands apart from most herbal infusions: it has a distinct botanical identity, a specific place of origin, and a substantial body of research, placing it in a category of its own rather than among typical herbal blends.