Crocus sativus — hand-harvested in Iran, one of the oldest and most labour-intensive spices in the world.
Each Crocus sativus flower produces exactly three crimson stigmas — the threads that become saffron — and they have to be picked by hand, at dawn, before the blossom opens fully in the heat of the day. It takes tens of thousands of flowers to produce a single kilogram. Iran has grown saffron on its high, arid plains for thousands of years, and remains the source of most of the world's supply today.
It's a spice defined almost entirely by the labour behind it: no machine has ever been able to replace the human hands that separate the stigma from the flower without bruising it.
We're extending Omninova's approach beyond Araku Valley — building direct, honest sourcing relationships with saffron growers in Iran, the same way we've built ours with the hill farmers of Andhra Pradesh. That takes time to do properly, and we'd rather launch it right than launch it early.
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