The flower
Crocus sativus is sterile. It cannot set seed, so every plant grown today descends from corms lifted and divided by hand, generation after generation. That is the first reason saffron costs what it does: the crop cannot be sown, only propagated.
Each flower opens for a matter of hours and carries exactly three crimson stigmas. Those threads are the saffron. Everything else — petal, style, stamen — is discarded, or should be. A great deal of what is sold as saffron is not.
The harvest
Picking runs for roughly three weeks in late October and early November. It happens at first light, before the sun opens the flowers fully and starts to strip the volatile compounds that carry the aroma. Whole families work the rows; there is no machine that can do this.
The flowers are carried back in baskets and the stigmas separated by hand the same day, then dried slowly. Timing and temperature during drying decide the final colour and aroma as much as the growing conditions did.
Why Kashmir
Kashmiri saffron is graded separately from Iranian and Spanish crops for a reason. The threads are shorter, thicker and darker, and the crocin content — the compound responsible for colour, and the primary measure of quality under ISO 3632 — typically tests higher than saffron grown at lower altitude.
The trade-off is volume. Kashmir produces a small fraction of the world’s saffron, which is precisely why so much of what is labelled Kashmiri is not.
How we buy
Our sourcing is run by Sanjay Gupta, our co-founder and local partner, who has spent twenty-five years in procurement and quality control in the region and buys directly from growers he has long-standing relationships with.
That means: no auction lots, no blending across origins, and traceability from the field to the batch number printed on the pouch. On-site quality checks happen at the point of purchase, not after the consignment has already travelled.
What happens next
Saffron is shipped to the UK, tested against ISO 3632 by an independent laboratory, and encapsulated by a UK third-party manufacturer working to GMP standards. You can read about that side of it on the purity and testing page.
1,600m
Approximate altitude of the Pampore saffron plateau.
3 weeks
The entire harvest window, once a year, in late autumn.
25 years
Our local partner’s experience buying in the region.
Launching 2026
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