The words, plainly explained

The legal principle that when an industry uses an indigenous biological resource, and traditional knowledge attaches to it, the holders of that knowledge share in the benefits. For rooibos this produced an industry-wide agreement in 2019 and a levy of 1.5% of the farm gate price.

Full authority: Aspalathus linearis (Burm.f.) R.Dahlgren. A shrub of the pea family growing up to about two metres, with needle-like leaves 15 to 60 mm long and yellow flowers in spring and early summer. Aspalathus is the largest genus of the pea family found only in South Africa.

The step that makes rooibos rooibos. After the young branches are cut, the material is chopped very fine and then bruised, which is what allows the colour and flavour change to begin. Everything people recognise about red rooibos follows from this.

The mountain range and district north of Cape Town where most South African rooibos is grown, and where the forms used to make tea are mainly found. Also a local municipality, one of the sixteen named in the EU origin regulation.

The botanical region at the southern tip of Africa, exceptionally rich in plant species found nowhere else. Rooibos is one of its fynbos plants, adapted to its poor, acid, sandy soils.

In rooibos, usually a group of small-scale farmers who process and market their tea jointly rather than selling to a large processor. The Heiveld Co-operative in the Suid–Bokkeveld, founded in 2001, is the best-known example.

The plant family rooibos belongs to. This is the single most surprising fact about it: rooibos is a legume, botanically closer to peas and beans than to the tea plant, Camellia sinensis, which is not a relative at all.

The price a processor pays a farmer for the crop — the value at the farm, before processing, packing, branding and export are added. It matters here because the Khoi and San benefit-sharing levy is calculated as 1.5% of it.

You will see the heaping step called fermentation almost everywhere, including in some botanical sources. It is now generally understood to be oxidation rather than anything microbial. Rather than take a side in somebody else’s argument, this site describes what actually happens to the leaf: cut, bruised, heaped, changes colour, dried.

The fine-leaved shrubland of the Cape, growing on ground leached of nutrients over a very long time. Fynbos plants are adapted to poor acid soil and to fire. Rooibos is one of them, which is why the conditions that make this country marginal for other farming are the conditions it is built for.

A classification of processed rooibos by leaf and stem content, cut and consistency. Grade describes the physical character of the tea. It is not a quality score in the way a wine rating is, and should not be read as one.

The same plant and the same leaf, without the heaping step that turns it red. Because it is not oxidised it keeps a lighter colour and a different flavour, and it is generally more expensive to produce.

Another Cape legume made into a drink, and a genuine relative of rooibos — unlike tea. A different plant producing a different infusion, often sold alongside rooibos and frequently confused with it.

An international agreement on access to genetic resources and the fair sharing of benefits from their use. South Africa is a party to it, which is part of why the rooibos benefit-sharing agreement exists.

South Africa’s National Environmental Management: Biodiversity Act 10 of 2004. With the Bioprospecting, Access and Benefit Sharing Regulations of 2008, it is the domestic law under which the rooibos agreement was concluded.

The chemical change that turns bruised rooibos leaf from green to reddish brown as it sits in heaps before drying. It is what the industry has long called fermentation, and it is the difference between red rooibos and green rooibos.

The strongest of the European Union’s origin protections: not merely made a certain way, but grown in a certain place. The same instrument reserves the name Champagne to Champagne. Rooibos received it in 2021.

The English rendering of “rooibos”, and a name protected alongside it. The EU registration covers both ‘Rooibos’ and ‘Red Bush’, so neither can be used in the EU for tea grown outside the demarcated area.

Pronounced roughly roy-boss. Both the plant, Aspalathus linearis, and the drink made from its dried leaves and stems. Under EU law the name is reserved to material grown or wild-harvested in one demarcated area of South Africa.

The growing area on the Bokkeveld escarpment in the Northern Cape, around Nieuwoudtville. Distinct from the Cederberg, and home to smallholder rooibos farming including the Heiveld Co-operative. Merging it into “the Cederberg” is a common and unhelpful error.

A drink made by infusing a plant that is not tea. Rooibos is a tisane, not a tea, however it is shelved in a supermarket. “Herbal tea” means the same thing more loosely.

Rooibos gathered from plants growing naturally rather than from a planting. The EU regulation explicitly covers rooibos that has been “cultivated or wild-harvested in the geographic area”, so both count.