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The Rooibos of South Africa: Stop 7 on the World Tea Tasting Tour
If you’re looking for a drink with all the health benefits of tea, a similarly great taste, but no caffeine, look to South Africa! Rooibos is made from the South African red bush (Aspalathus linearis). Using rooibos instead of tea is a great way to enjoy a caffeine-free hot (or iced) drink without using any chemical decaffeination process. Rooibos is full of antioxidants, Vitamins C and E, iron, zinc, potassium, and calcium. It is naturally sweet without adding sugar.
Rooibos grows only in the Western Cape of South Africa, and a similar plant called honeybush (the Cyclopia plant) grows in the Eastern Cape. Its flowers smell of honey, hence the name. The taste of honeybush is similar to rooibos, though perhaps a bit sweeter. Like rooibos, honeybush is naturally free of caffeine and tannins; perfect for a late-evening drink.
The teas we tasted were:
- Red rooibos (organic)
- Green rooibos (organic)
- Honeybush (organic)
- Jamaica red rooibos (organic, fair trade)
- Bluebeary relaxation (organic, fair trade)
- Iced rooibos
- Cape Town Fog (a vanilla rooibos latte!)
South Africa, as the name implies, sits at the very southern tip of the African continent. It completely surrounds a small country called Lesotho. South Africa covers 471,443 square miles (about three times the size of Montana) and has a population of 51,770,000 (a bit more than Spain). Despite wide open spaces in the middle of the country, the large cities make it overall densely populated.
The country has the largest economy in Africa, yet about 1/4 of the population is unemployed and living on the equivalent of US $1.25 per day.
Red rooibos
Rooibos isn’t a huge part of the South African economy. It does, however, employ about 5,000 people and generates a total annual revenue of around US $70 million, which is nothing to sneeze at. The plant is native to South Africa’s Western Cape, and the country produces about 24,000,000 pounds of rooibos per year.
The name “rooibos” is from the Dutch word “rooibosch” meaning “red bush.” The spelling was altered to “rooibos” when it was adopted into Afrikaans. In the U.S., it’s pronounced many different ways but most often some variant of ROY-boss or ROO-ee-bose.
I’ve written quite a bit about red rooibos in several posts — and about the copyright issues — so I won’t repeat it all here. Rooibos is also great as an ingredient in cooking: see my African Rooibos Hummus recipe for an example.
Green rooibos
Green rooibos isn’t oxidized, so it has a flavor profile closer to a green tea than a black tea. Again, I’ve written a lot about it, so I’ll just link to the old post.
Honeybush
Honeybush isn’t one single species of plant like rooibos. The name applies to a couple of dozen species of plants in the Cyclopia genus, of which four or five are used widely to make herbal teas. Honeybush grows primarily in Africa’s Eastern Cape, and isn’t nearly as well-known as rooibos.
It got its name from its honey-like aroma, but it also has a sweeter flavor than rooibos. It can be steeped a long time without bitterness, but I generally prefer about three minutes of steep time in boiling water.
Jamaica Red Rooibos
I decided to bring out a couple of flavored rooibos blends for the tasting as well. The first is Jamaica Red Rooibos, a Rishi blend. It has an extremely complex melange of flavors and aromas, and is not only a good drink, but fun to cook with as well (see my “Spicing up couscous” post).
Jamaica Red Rooibos is named for the Jamaica flower, a variety of hibiscus. The extensive ingredient list includes rooibos, hibiscus, schizandra berries, lemongrass, rosehips, licorice root, orange peel, passion fruit & mango flavor, essential orange, tangerine & clove oils
BlueBeary Relaxation
BlueBeary Relaxation one of the blends in our Yellowstone Wildlife Sanctuary fundraiser series (the spelling “BlueBeary” comes from the name of one of the bears at the Sanctuary). It’s an intensely blueberry experience that’s become a bedtime favorite of mine. It’s like drinking a blueberry muffin!
Iced rooibos
To make a really good cup of iced rooibos, prepare the hot infusion with about double the leaf you’d use normally, because pouring it over the ice will dilute it. Both green and red rooibos make great iced tea. I prefer both styles unadulterated, but many people drink iced red rooibos with sugar or honey.
Cape Town Fog
This South African take on the “London Fog” is a great caffeine-free latte. To prepare it, you’ll want to preheat the milk almost to boiling. If you have a frother of some kind, use it — aerating the milk improves the taste. Steep the red rooibos good and strong, and add a bit of vanilla syrup or extract. We use an aged vanilla extract for ours. Mix it all up, put a dab of foam on top if you frothed the milk, and optionally top with a light shake of cinnamon.
This was the seventh stop on our World Tea Tasting Tour, in which we explore the tea of China, India, Japan, Taiwan, England, South Africa, Kenya, and Argentina. Each class costs $5.00, which includes the tea tasting itself and a $5.00 off coupon that can be used that night for any tea, teaware, or tea-related books that we sell.
For a full schedule of the tea tour, see my introductory post from February.
Cooking With Rooibos: African Rooibos Hummus
Last weekend, we hosted an “African Tea Experience” at the tea bar. Unlike our World Tea Tasting Tour sessions, this one was a private party that we donated to a local nonprofit organization for a silent auction fundraiser. Instead of just tasting some tea we made this a more immersive experience, including — among other things — food.
My first thought was to use the Hipster Hummus that we’ve prepared here before, but it’s really more of a Middle Eastern hummus than an African one. What’s the difference? I’m glad you asked.
Hummus is currently thought of as a Middle Eastern dish. Lebanon is pushing the European Commission to declare hummus a uniquely Lebanese food. In Israel, hummus is a staple. You can find it anywhere in Turkey or Palestine. But that’s not where the dish originated.
According to Gil Marks’ Encyclopedia of Jewish Food, the earliest known recipes for hummus date back to 13th century cookbooks from Cairo. It’s still a popular dish throughout northern Africa, and there are few differences between the African version and the Middle Eastern version. For this event, I decided to make a more Africanized version of our regular hummus.
All hummus is based on chickpeas (or garbanzo beans) and tahini (sesame paste). The primary ingredient difference in the African version is cumin. I decided to add red rooibos, which is a uniquely South African tisane (it’s often called “tea,” but since it isn’t made from Camellia sinensis, it isn’t technically tea). What we ended up with isn’t traditional, but it did get rave reviews. Despite the hot sauce, it isn’t overly spicy. Personally, I’d consider it almost mild. You could substitute a hot paprika for the milder roasted one that I used to give it more kick, or increase the Sriracha sauce.
Ingredients
- One 15-oz can garbanzo beans/chickpeas
- 1-1/2 tbsp sesame tahini paste
- 1 tsp cumin
- 1/2 ounce red rooibos leaves
- 1-1/2 tsp minced garlic
- 4 tbsp fresh-squeezed orange juice
- 1/2 tsp sea salt
- 1/2 tbps Sriracha
- 1/4 tsp roasted Israeli paprika
- 1 tsp olive oil
- sprig of fresh parsley
Process
- Drain the garbanzo beans/chickpeas and set aside the juice
- Heat the juice almost to boiling and add the rooibos — steep for five minutes
- Put beans, tahini, garlic, cumin, orange juice, salt, and Sriracha in a food processor
- Add 1/4 cup of the tea infusion to the food processor
- Blend everything to a smooth consistency
- Chill overnight in the fridge
- Spread hummus on plate with a dip in the center
- Drizzle olive oil through the center dip (not shown in the picture above, where I put pita chips in the middle instead)
- Sprinkle the paprika over the hummus, and garnish with parsley
- Serve with pita chips or fresh pita bread
The flavor of the rooibos definitely comes through, although it’s a bit subtle. Feel free to increase both the amount of leaf and the steeping time if you want more rooibos character.
Enjoy!
Rooibos: The African Red Bush
How have I been at this blog for so long without writing about rooibos? Oh, I know this blog is about tea, and I did write a post about green rooibos last year, but I haven’t covered straight red rooibos yet.
Rooibos comes from a bush called Aspalathus linearis, which grows in the west cape of South Africa. The name “rooibos” is from the Dutch word “rooibosch” meaning “red bush.” The spelling was altered to “rooibos” when it was adopted into Afrikaans.
The rooibos bush (Aspalathus linearis) in bloom
Rooibos is also often called “red tea,” but most tea professionals shy away from that name for several reasons:
- The term “red tea” is used by the Chinese to refer to what we call “black tea.” No sense having two different drinks with the same name.
- Rooibos isn’t tea, since it doesn’t come from the Camellia sinensis plant. Instead, it is a tisane or herbal infusion.
- Rooibos only has that rich red color when it’s processed like a black tea. Green rooibos is more of a golden honey-colored infusion.
Rooibos is a tasty drink that is also good for cooking. Hopefully, I’ll have a chance sometime soon to write a review soon of the cookbook A Touch of Rooibos. I have been looking through it lately and it’s filled with interesting ideas. Generally, when used for cooking, the rooibos is steeped for quite a while and then reduced to a thick syrupy consistency. Unlike black tea, it can be steeped for ten minutes or more without becoming unpalatable and bitter.
Unlike “real” tea, which all has caffeine, rooibos is naturally caffeine-free. Since the flavor is similar to a mild black tea, this makes it a favorite bedtime beverage for many tea drinkers. Rooibos is also high in antioxidants.
Herbalists make many claims about the health properties of the rooibos tisanes. The Web site for the South African Rooibos Council (SARC), in fact, has very little information that isn’t in some way tied back to health claims. There are more and more studies being done, but available data are lacking in specifics (in my opinion, anyway) so I’m not going to quote any of those there. Feel free to check SARC’s site for lots of studies.
I don’t mean to imply that rooibos is only about the health benefits. It is, in fact, a very tasty drink. Most rooibos drinkers in the U.S. enjoy it straight or with a bit of sweetener (honey or sugar). In South Africa, it is commonly served with a bit of milk or lemon as well as honey. A group funded by SARC and Stellenbosch University has recently developed a “sensory wheel” for rooibos, describing both the desirable and undesirable aspects of flavor and mouthfeel. If you are interested in more information, click on the wheel below.
Rooibos Sensory Wheel as described in the article “Sensory characterization of rooibos tea and the development of a rooibos sensory wheel and lexicon,” available on Science Direct. Click the wheel above to view the article — there is a charge for the full text version.
Also, there is an article you can download in PDF format (click the thumbnail to the right to download) that describes the sensory wheel and the process used to create it.
Compared to tea, rooibos is a pretty small market. South Africa’s annual rooibos production is about 12,000 tons. That output is about equivalent to annual tea production of the Darjeeling region of India, or about a tenth of the tea production of Japan (the 8th largest tea producing country). Nonetheless, rooibos is important to South Africa, employing about 5,000 people and generating about $70 million in revenues.
The leaves of the rooibos bush are more like needles than the broad leaves of a tea plant. To produce red rooibos, the leaves are harvested, crushed, and oxidized using a process based on the one used in making Chinese black tea. Typically, the leaves are sprayed with water and allowed to oxidize for about 12 hours before being spread out in the sun to dry.
Green rooibos, as the name implies, is unoxidized or very lightly oxidized, and is processed more like a green tea.
For more information about the rooibos industry, I recommend the article Disputing a Name, Developing a Geographical Indication, from the World Intellectual Property Organization.
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