Bruce Ginsberg: Rooibos, Britain and Dragonfly Tea

Bruce Ginsberg: Rooibos, Britain and Dragonfly Tea

Bruce Ginsberg grew up watching his grandfather work the rooibos bush in South Africa, then built one of the first UK brands fully committed to organic certification. Here is the story.

Published 9 Mar 2026 Curator-written, not crowdsourced

Bruce Ginsberg and Dragonfly Tea, in summary: A UK guide to Bruce Ginsberg: grandson of Benjamin Ginsberg, the first to pack rooibos as a tea; the man who introduced rooibos to British tea drinkers in 1976; and the founder of the family-run Dragonfly Tea.

Our Dragonfly deep dive covers the brand; this is the founder, and a genuinely good example of a personal history turning into a product philosophy.

Last reviewed by the teas.co.uk team in September 2026.

Rooibos in the blood

Bruce Ginsberg’s connection to tea is generational. His grandfather, Benjamin Ginsberg, had lived in Russia with an uncle in the tea trade before settling in South Africa. From 1904 he turned his attention to the wild rooibos of the Cederberg mountains, and he became the first to pack it and sell it as a tea of consistent quality, experimenting with old Chinese curing methods to process the leaf. The family stayed in the trade, so Bruce grew up with rooibos as the family business rather than a passing trend.

1976: rooibos comes to Britain

In 1976 Bruce came to England to open the British market for rooibos, and he is credited as the first to introduce it to British tea drinkers, at a time when almost nobody here had tasted it. He went on to found Dragonfly Tea and its sister brand, Tick Tock, and the business is still in the family: his daughter Georgia has joined it, carrying the Ginsberg tea story into another generation.

Why it matters

Dragonfly is a rare case of a British tea brand whose founder’s family history really is the product. The thread runs from a grandfather who first packed rooibos in the Cederberg, to a grandson who brought it to Britain, to a family company still selling certified organic rooibos today, and it is exactly the kind of story a neutral tea wiki should tell rather than only profiling the giants. Compare the certification landscape in our Pukka organic and B Corp and Clipper Fairtrade pages.

In the cup

The Dragonfly range stays close to that family story: pure rooibos, simple rooibos blends and clean organic infusions, covered in our rooibos benefits and rooibos guides. It is one of the clearer cases where the founder’s story and the product on the shelf actually match.

In short: Bruce Ginsberg

Detail	Fact
Brand	Dragonfly Tea (UK), with sister brand Tick Tock
Rooibos in Britain	Introduced rooibos to British tea drinkers in 1976
Family heritage	Grandfather Benjamin Ginsberg first packed and sold rooibos as a tea, from 1904
Family location	Cederberg region, South Africa (rooibos heartland)
Range	Certified organic rooibos, green tea and herbal infusions
Tea bags	Dragonfly says its tea bag paper is sealed with PLA, a plant-based polymer, for industrial composting
Brand status	Family-run; his daughter Georgia has joined the business

The Cederberg rooibos region context

Rooibos (Aspalathus linearis) grows commercially only in the Cederberg and the neighbouring districts of South Africa’s Western and Northern Cape. Attempts to grow it commercially elsewhere have not succeeded, because the plant depends on the region’s particular soil and climate. Since 2021 rooibos has been a Protected Designation of Origin in the EU, which formally ties the name to that area. The Ginsberg family’s part in the story began with Benjamin’s first packets of rooibos in the early 1900s.

Reference noted

From the curatorteas · Take the simplest thing on this page that fits your routine. Range and ritual are for week two.

Tea reading

For the modern Dragonfly brand see the Dragonfly deep dive. For rooibos basics see the rooibos guide and rooibos benefits. For comparable certified-organic herbals see Pukka organic and B Corp and Clipper Fairtrade. For other tea founders see Thomas Lipton. For organic certification context see the organic tea guide.

The bottom line on Bruce Ginsberg

Ginsberg is the grandson of the man who first packed rooibos as a tea, and the man who brought it to Britain in 1976: a rare case in British tea of a founder whose family history actually shows up in the product. Dragonfly carries that line into certified organic rooibos and simple infusions, and the family still runs it. He is the obvious modern-founder counterweight in any tea-people section, balancing the giants (Twining, Lipton) with a quieter family story.