The story of Rooibos is a unique and extremely interesting one - a story that started at the turn of the last century in the Cedarberg region of the Western Cape. It was the locals of the area who first discovered that the fine, needle-like leaves of the Aspalathus linearis plant made a tasty, aromatic tea.
It was they who first harvested the wild-growing plants, chopped them with axes and then bruised them with hammers, leaving them to ferment in heaps, before drying them in the sun. Today Rooibos is still processed in much the same way, but of course the methods are more mechanised and refined.
In 1904, Benjamin Ginsberg, a Russian immigrant and pioneer in the area, became interested in Rooibos and realised its marketing potential. He started trading it from the people of the mountains. No doubt the fact that Ginsberg was descended from a family who had been in the tea industry in Europe for centuries, provided him with a good background and the necessary experience to market this new "Mountain tea".
As a result of the Rooibos market collapsing after the Second World War, the producers established the Clanwilliam Tea Cooperative in 1948. At the request of the Cooperative, the Minister of Agriculture appointed the Rooibos Tea Control Board in 1954, with the defined goals of regulating marketing, stabilising prices, and improving and standardising quality.
A new era began for the Rooibos industry, as the Board's leadership guided the industry in its first definite steps towards real stability and prosperity. Since that time, the industry has made steady progress, refining its production methods and increasing distribution so that the unique goodness of Rooibos can today be enjoyed by people the world over. |
