Buchu has a history as a natural herbal remedy in the San-Khoi healing culture. Traditional ceremonial and cosmetic uses of buchu as a body perfume in the form of dried crushed leaves mixed with animal fats have been documented. 

The Khoikhoi introduced Buchu to the Dutch settlers in the Cape as a herbal remedy in the 17th and 18th centuries. The first record of buchu export is by Reece & co who shipped dried leaves to England in 1821. By the late 19th century large volumes of dried buchu plant material were exported to England and the USA. Initially buchu was used as an infusion or tincture as a natural health tonic for rheumatism, cholera, bladder diseases, stomach complaints, dropsy, dyspepsia, cystitis and gout. Bales of buchu leaves were even listed on the cargo manifest of the Titanic on its doomed maiden voyage across the Atlantic in April 1912.

Around 1900, Buchu was found to produce an essential oil upon steam distillation.

In the late 1960s modern analytical methods (GC and GC-MS) identified the main flavour components in buchu oils. Almost simultaneously in 1971, Lamparsky et al (Givaudan) and Sundt et al (Firmenich) independently described the cis/trans-8-mercapto-p-menthan-3-one isomers in buchu oil as the source of its cassis flavour.

Firmenich registered a patent describing the synthesis of nature identical cis/trans-8-mercapto-p-menthan-3-one in 1971. 

Suddenly buchu oil was no longer required to impart a good cassis aroma, with the result that usage drastically decreased and the buchu oil market crashed. This period in buchu’s history saw widespread neglect and removal of the few established buchu plantations that existed to supply the market.

However, renewed emphasis on natural flavours and fragrance raw materials in the EU during the 1990s created a new demand for buchu oils, the only known natural source of cis/trans-8-mercapto-p-menthan-3-one and cis/trans-8-acetylthio-p-menthan-3-one.