Day 166: Today's Pick — Rooibos (a South African Tea That Isn't Tea)

There is a small leguminous shrub that grows in the Cederberg mountains of South Africa's western Cape, in a single, unusually narrow strip of dry, sandy, mineral-rich soil, that has not yet been successfully cultivated anywhere else on Earth. It is called Aspalathus linearis, known locally as rooibos (Afrikaans for "red bush"), and it is the source of the slightly sweet, deep-red infusion that, in 2025, accounts for approximately my entire winter beverage consumption after 4 p.m.

Rooibos, technically, is not tea. It is not made from the Camellia sinensis plant the way black, green, oolong, and white teas are. It is an herbal infusion — same category as chamomile, mint, and rosehip — and accordingly contains zero caffeine. This is the single most important practical fact about rooibos. You can drink five cups of it at 9 p.m. and still sleep. You can give it to a child. You can drink it at a restaurant after a heavy dinner without lying awake at 1 a.m. running through credit card statements.

What does it taste like? The closest descriptor I have, and it's imperfect: a faintly sweet, vaguely earthy, slightly floral red-orange brew, with notes of dried fruit and warm wood. There is no astringency. There is no bitterness — even if you steep rooibos for forty minutes (which you should not, but you can), it does not get harsh, because it lacks the tannins of true tea. This makes rooibos infinitely forgiving. Pour boiling water on a teaspoon of leaves, walk away, come back when you remember, drink. It will be fine.

A small history note, because rooibos has one. The local Khoi people of the Cederberg used the leaves medicinally and as a beverage for hundreds of years before the first European traveler — a Russian-born botanist named Carl Humberg — wrote about it in 1772. It moved into European trade slowly, gained popularity during the World Wars (as black tea became scarce), and then went global in the 1990s and 2000s after a series of antioxidant studies fueled the wellness-product wave. The vast majority of rooibos is still grown by family-scale farms in a roughly 30,000-square-kilometer region centered on the town of Clanwilliam, harvested by hand, and either sun-dried (for green rooibos) or fermented and oxidized in long red-orange piles (for the more familiar red rooibos).

Practical notes for first-time drinkers.

Buy loose-leaf, not bagged. Bagged rooibos at the grocery store is fine but flat. Loose-leaf, especially from a single-estate South African farm — Carmién, Khoisan, Wupperthal, Annique — is a noticeably better cup. The leaves should look like fine red-brown pine needles, not dust.

Brew strong, brew long. Use a slightly heavier dose than you would for black tea — a heaping teaspoon per cup. Boiling water. Five to eight minutes of steep. The longer it sits, the more body it develops. There is no over-steeping penalty.

Try it with milk and a little sugar. This is the South African café standard. A "rooibos espresso" or "rooibos latte" — strong concentrate, steamed milk, no caffeine — is the move at the end of a winter dinner. Many specialty cafés make a version. At home: brew a small pot strong, add half hot milk, half a teaspoon of sugar.

Skip the heavily flavored varieties. Vanilla rooibos, caramel rooibos, "rooibos chai" — most of these are oversweet supermarket products that mask, rather than complement, the underlying tea. A simple plain rooibos, brewed strong, is better than 90% of the flavored versions.

Honeybush is the cousin worth knowing. Cyclopia genistoides, honeybush, is a closely related South African herb infusion, slightly sweeter and more honeyed in flavor. If you like rooibos, you'll like honeybush; pair them in your tea cabinet for variety.

A small philosophical note. There is, in 2025, no shortage of evening drinks marketed at "winding down" — sleepy teas, magnesium drinks, melatonin gummies disguised as cocktails. Most of these are fine. None of them are as straightforwardly good as a hot mug of plain rooibos at 9 p.m. on a Tuesday in December. The drink does not need to be enhanced. It does not need to be flavored. It does not need to be mixed with anything. It just sits there in your hand, faintly sweet, faintly red, faintly warm.

Day 166. The pick is a not-tea. Have a cup.