Unique regional status to South Africa's rooibos tea can turn fortunes for crop

Come December, when farmers near Cape Town harvest rooibos leaves, they will become the first generation to grow and sell a tea with a unique regional status, a designation awarded to other such products as French champagne or Irish whiskey. The rooibos tea, whose name means "red bush" in Afrikaans - the language of South Africa's earliest European settlers - was the first African product to get such a status in the European Union in June. Farmers and agriculture experts now hope the EU's treatment of rooibos could help boost demand and improve the crop's profitability. These rosemary-type shrubs are indigenous to a small area of the drought-prone Western Cape and Northern Cape provinces. "We expect there to be a considerably bigger market so definitely we will expand now that there is more stability and economic viability," said 61-year old Deon Zandberg, a manager at Vanrhynsdorp farm. Rooibos - commonly drunk as a tea, infused in drinks and used in beauty products - dates back ...