The history of Rooibos Tea

Rooibos or Rooibosch tea (Aspalathus linearis) was probably originally used by the indigenous Khoi-descended people of the Clanwilliam area. They had a huge fund of knowledge of the dietary and medical value of the local wild plants.

When the Dutch settlers arrived, they adopted much of this knowledge and incorporated it into their own pharmacopoeias. One of their main herbal remedies, buchu, a diuretic, is now being used for medicinal purposes in the USA and Europe. Buchu grows alongside wild Rooibos tea plants in the Cedarberg Mountains of the Western Cape.

Through the 17th and 18th Centuries, European botanists visited the area, all of which commented on the profusion of “good plants” and their use as powders and diffusions for curative purposes.

In 1772, Swedish botanist Carl Thunberg noted, “of the leaves of Borbonia Cordata the country people made tea”. Borbonia was an earlier classification of Aspalathus - Rooibos!

Until the end of the 19th Century, the local people climbed up the mountains and cut the fine needle-like leaves from wild plants, chopped them with axes and bruised them with hammers before leaving them to dry in the sun.

In 1904, Benjamin Ginsberg (a Russian who settled in South Africa, descendant of a famous tea family and grandfather of Bruce Ginsberg, managing director of Dragonfly teas) became fascinated by this wild plant and realised its potential as a marketable product. Despite its huge success, Rooibos is still “processed” in much the same way, in the open in the pure air of the mountains, still relying on the sun for drying, without chemicals or additives.

In the 1930s, Benjamin Ginsberg inspired Dr P Le Fras Nortier, a local doctor and nature lover to carry out experiments on cultivating the wild seeds. The results were so successful that Benjamin was able to encourage local farmers to begin the cultivation that would allow him to make the tea a commercial venture.

One of the biggest problems was the gathering of the seeds. Dispersed by the plants in the wild, they were no larger than a grain of sand and quickly were lost in the soil. So scarce were the seeds that in the 1930s the price soared to £80 a pound, making them probably the most expensive seeds in the world!

Despite this, one woman continually brought in large bags of the seed in contrast to the matchboxes delivered by other collectors. Eventually she told her story. One day while searching the dirt for the tiny seeds she noticed a species of black ant dragging a seed along the soil. She followed the ant back to its nest. On breaking it open she found a veritable granary!

Up to 25,000 seeds (450g) have been found in a single nest.