Uncover the Enchanment of Rooibos in South Africa’s Rugged Mountains

I popped a pod into the Nespresso system in my lodge room, and as tea stuffed the mug, I inhaled the woody, caramel aroma of rooibos. The broomlike shrub — its identify is Afrikaans for “red bush” — is local to the Cederberg Mountains of South Africa’s Western Cape, the place temperatures can get up above 100 levels in summer time and leave to akin chilly in wintry weather. The patch is, in reality, the one park on the earth the place rooibos grows.

In February, I traveled alongside the N7 freeway north of Cape Town to enjoy the Rooibos Route, an itinerary of farms, factories, tea stores, and eating places. I sampled rooibos as a tea, in a milkshake, in a martini, in a steak sauce, or even as an exfoliant throughout a therapeutic massage. 

One morning, I rode a Land Cruiser over grime roads the colour of marmalade with a information, Byron Hartung, and 3 alternative visitors of Bushmans Kloof Wilderness Reserve & Wellness Retreat to one among 130 rock-art websites at the component. This used to be a shamanic website of the San, the nomadic hunter-gatherers who first inhabited South Africa. As we collected round pictographs of livestock with lengthy eland-type our bodies and figures tilted in dance, Hartung defined that the rock used to be greater than a canvas to the San — it used to be a gateway into a religious global. The art work are 3,000 to ten,000 years used. As I gazed at them, on this sheltered spot at the veld, I felt transported again in day.

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The San handled rooibos as medication, and fresh analysis has proven that its distinctive polyphenols would possibly help middle fitness, offer protection to towards sure cancers, and control blood sugar. Indigenous South Africans have lengthy been disenfranchised and impoverished, and feature observable minute of the wealth that has come from the plant’s world increase. They had been additionally no longer correctly known for having found out and perfected it. However due to an guarantee that took impact in 2022, they’ve been formally named the standard wisdom holders for the plant, and population trusts now obtain 1.5 p.c of the rustic’s overall annual gross sales of uncooked rooibos. (The proceeds are supposed to advance into building and support tasks all the way through the rustic.)

The theory of the Rooibos Path had percolated for years, as Sanet Stander, who had a tea store within the branch, fielded requests from vacationers about visiting farms. In 2012, Stander formally introduced the path and created a web site that lists actions, similar to farm excursions, that vacationers would possibly no longer were in a position to organize on their personal.

I drove out to the Wupperthal Original Rooibos Cooperative, within the Tra-Tra Valley. Greater than 70 small-scale farmers of Indigenous descent develop rooibos on plots of land there, slashing the shrubs by means of hand with sickles. The cooperative, based in 2009, is housed in a whitewashed development with a thatched roof that German missionaries constructed within the early nineteenth century. 

After we entered, lots of decorative rooibos branches, introduced from the order farms and wrapped in white polypropylene baggage, lay at the ground. The village of Wupperthal remains to be a Moravian venture station, and in spite of the identify “cooperative,” the church nonetheless owns all the land and the farmers’ properties, a legacy of the dispossession of Indigenous family throughout the colonial and apartheid eras. 

In 2021, rooibos become the primary African product to be granted “protected designation of origin” situation. As with champagne in France, the identify rooibos is unique to South Africa. “Our ancestors sold rooibos to the missionaries, and it was later commercialized,” Edgar Valentyn, a fifth-generation farmer in Wupperthal, defined to me. “That’s a lot of tea going out into the world. We’re glad it’s being protected so nobody else can call their product rooibos. This is especially good for our farmers who have just a small amount of land.”

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Within the the city of Clanwilliam, we restrained on the Ou Tronk Museum, housed in a former prison, to view the historical past of rooibos via a much wider lens. The showcase is stuffed with used equipment, gear, teapots, tattered antique packaging, and maps. Informational panels provide an explanation for the processing and grading of rooibos. A central attribute is an used case with greater than 30 little glass jars of rooibos samples amassed by means of Benjamin Ginsberg, an immigrant from Russia who pioneered the plant’s commercialization firstly of the twentieth century.

Upcoming an past’s bumpy power, we arrived at Skimmelberg, a large-scale natural farm with 300 acres dedicated to rooibos. I joined a bunch of Scandinavian vacationers within the plantation’s yard, the place the fermenting and drying of rooibos leaves pull park. I crouched beside a mound of leaves, amassed a couple of needle-like strays, and gave them a affectionate swab. As their deep burnt-orange colour bled onto my fingertips, I recalled that “Rooibos Tea” used to be one of the most lead 10 colours within the Pantone Style Colour Development Record for the approaching season. I imagined the unique sound spreading out into the sector, via style and alternative techniques. 

The Carmién Tea Shop akin Citrusdal is referred to as the gateway to the Rooibos Path, however I selected it as my travel — one terminating alternative to experience a cup of tea and a chew to devour. Liezel van der Merwe, Carmién’s gross sales supervisor, talked to me in regards to the South African rugby staff, the homegrown blended martial arts champ Dricus du Plessis, and Tyla, the South African singer who had simply received a Grammy the former night time. “These things keep the nation together,” she stated. “That is also what rooibos does. It gives hope for a better tomorrow.” 

A model of this tale first gave the impression within the December 2024 factor of Journey + Diversion beneath the headline “Freshly Brewed.”