Tasting Notes
A richly delicious infusion with deep earthy notes, bright red berries and cedar. Can be beautifully enhanced by the addition of a twist of lemon zest.
If you enjoy sweetening your tea, Rooibos turns to caramel with a delicate drop of maple syrup.
RED BUSH
Rooibos
This is no ordinary tea harvest. But then Rooibos (Afrikaans for 'red bush') is no ordinary tea. Strictly speaking a legume, the needle-like leaves produce a deeply delicious caffeine-free drink. It has been used as a medicine to cure innumerable ills and drunk for pleasure for many thousands of years by the people of this area.
HORSEBACK
Bush Tea
This is real bush-tea - it's beyond organic and indigenous. To protect the delicate ecosystem of the Cederberg Mountains it's harvested on a on horseback with machetes, ensuring no damage is done to the fragile local environment.
This is sustainable farming at its best.
LOCAL HERO
Dr Frikkie Strauss
We source it from a farmer who is also the local GP - Dr Strauss. He is an amazing man who is not just interested in saving people but the environment and the endangered local Cape Leopard.
An extract from "Infused: Adventures in Tea"...
Hangover Rescue Recipe
It's our wild rooibos, sweetened with a bit of maple syrup, brought alive by a squeeze of lemon juice or a spritz of lemon zest and balanced, like a salty caramel, with a single grain of sea salt. It's smooth, deep and mellow and, goddamn it, I think it really works. Rooibos has been used for thousands of years by local tribesman in Africa to treat dehydration. The maple and the salt provide the necessary electrolytes to make it isotonic.
Use 3g of rooibos tea per 150ml of boiling water and steep for three to five minutes. Strain and stir in: half to one teaspoon of maple syrup, according to preference; a squeeze of half a lemon; and a flake of sea salt. Add a twist of lemon zest on top.
When I'm particularly crushed by a hangover, crushed so small I feel like a little girl lost in an IKEA car park in a strange city as night falls, I use vanilla rooibos.
You don't have to buy a flavoured rooibos. Some synthetic vanilla flavourings come from by-products of the wood-pulping industry and the natural ones might come from the anal glands of beavers. (Okay, the beaver bum juice is a rare one you're unlikely to stumble across, but it is a ‘natural' flavouring.) It's safer to just use vanilla pods.
Fill a glass jar, (I use one with a wired, flip-top, rubber-sealed lid) full of rooibos. Take a vanilla pod and cut it open lengthways, as if opening the belly of a fish. Stick it in the jar so that it’s entirely submersed in the rooibos (cut the pot into pieces if you need to). Put the jar in a cupboard you use regularly and leave it for a couple of weeks, giving it a shake every time you see it. You can use a zip-lock bag instead, but I’ve found glass is better at holding the flavour over time. The good stuff has so much flavour, you want to keep it at its best. And the really good stuff is wild.
Quantity
Use 2.5g of leaf per 150ml of water.
Temperature
For the optimum infusion use 100°C (212°F) water.
Time
Infuse for 1 - 3 minutes, tasting regularly.
