They’re growing a heartbreaker of a crop
Saffron is expensive and labour-intensive — but they’re making a go of it
Breathe in the heady, earthy, unmistakable scent of saffron and the mind conjures visions of bustling spice souks, exotic tagines of lamb and pomegranate, date palms silhouetted against a desert sunset, and … small town, Ontario?
About 90 minutes east of Toronto, the tiny village of Warkworth — population 1,116 — is home to one of Canada’s only saffron producers, True Saffron, which also happens to be one of the best in the world — Grade 1 — according to the International Organization for Standardization Criteria (ISO).
Saffron is an ancient spice; a cave in Iraq still bears 50,000year-old saffron pigment on the walls, and, costing over $27,000 per pound, tiny, potent saffron threads are the world’s most expensive spice, second only to vanilla. Like vanilla, which is the seed pod of an orchid flower, saffron is part of the reproductive anatomy of the saffron crocus (Crocus sativus).
It’s expensive because it’s incredibly labour intensive, harvested and prepared by hand; taking up to 440,000 stigmas to make one kilogram of saffron; 30 mg of fresh saffron will dry to about 7 mg, and each acre of land can only produce about two kilograms.
While 90 per cent of the world’s saffron is produced in Iran, many other countries in the Mediterranean, Asia, Europe and North America produce small amounts.
Martin Albert and Eric Charbonneau are actors and voiceover artists who, in 2009, traded Toronto apartment living for a home on six idyllic acres in the country.
“We wanted to buy but didn’t want to settle for a tiny condo,” recalls Albert.
Even in a little postage stamp yard attached to his apartment above vintage shop, Gadabout, on Queen Street East in Leslieville, he always managed to raise more produce than he and Charbonneau could eat on their own; at one point, he had 108 species of perennials in that tiny yard.
Albert’s love of gardening took root when he was 20, working in theatre at Stratford.
“My artistic director at the time asked me to plant 500 tulip bulbs. I didn’t want to do it, but he said he’d pay me $20 an hour and I didn’t want to say no to my artistic director either. So I did it and forgot about it, until, the next spring, he said, ‘Look!’, and they were all up and that was it, I was hooked.”
In 2016 Albert started thinking about saffron, so they made a pilgrimage of sorts, to a farmer in Notre-Dame-de-Montauban, Quebec, who had been successfully raising and selling saffron. They went during the summer, then back again in the fall to learn how to harvest and trim, and, not one for half-measures, upon their return, Albert put in an order for 50,000 saffron crocus bulbs. They found an acre of land to rent just outside town, and got busy planting.
That proved to be the easy part.
Unlike the spring crocus most gardeners are familiar with, saffron crocuses bloom in fall — anytime from mid-October through mid-November, but it has been known to grow in December, too.
“Saffron doesn’t care about your schedule; it has a mind of its own. It can bloom from under two inches of snow!” Albert said.
Spring and summer are spent weeding between the rows; making sure the precious bulbs don’t have to compete for light, water, or nutrients. With luck, the parent plants are happy and healthy enough to produce tiny bulbils or offshoots. In October, they start watching the field for signs of life. The flowering peaks around Halloween, which seems appropriate as growing saffron is a scary way to try to make a living.
By the second year, a field of saffron crocus should double its production, assuming of course, it’s happy and some mysterious foe doesn’t wipe it out. Saffron can be a heartbreaker. Those first 50,000 bulbs were lost to something — disease, predation — Albert doesn’t know, so they moved to another rented field and planted 15,000 new bulbs. These too succumbed to something. This season, they are working at a much smaller scale, with just 8,000 bulbs in fresh soil. Which is why folks aren’t invited to visit, the way folks can visit lavender fields or goat farms.
“The field has to be kept secret,” says Albert. “Between mice and deer, the last thing I need is some kid on a dirt bike tearing the place up, or people trampling the bulbs.”
To harvest their one acre, it takes four people snipping flowers and filling baskets in the field — without losing count — then eight more around the table, trimming the saffron filaments away from the flower. Each flower has three stigmas which, once dry, become the threads of saffron. Some producers pluck the stigmas from the flowers, but not Albert.
“We use tiny clippers to trim out the stamens just above where it goes from yellow to red. Other producers include the yellow part — called the styles — we don’t, so our process is much slower, more labour intensive, and we lose more of the weight the way we trim, but our product is better.”
It’s a fine balancing act; picking as much as you can without picking so much that it can’t be processed in time. Bringing the flowers in is the easy part; there is a 24 to 36 hour window to pick the flowers before they start wilting in the field. Mercifully, they don’t all emerge at once, so intensive picking can take place every day for about two weeks. But once the flower is off the plant, the saffron stigmas are losing quality. It’s a daily race against the clock.
“The quality of the saffron is all in the way you trim it and dry it,” says Albert. They developed a proprietary system of drying that is at once gentle and fast, allowing the stigmas to retain the most colour, fragrance — known in the business as safranal — and flavour. After the drying process, in which 80 to 90 per cent of the moisture is extracted in a matter of minutes, the saffron threads are sealed away in a dark, airtight container to mature for 30 days, curing the bright red hue and fantastic perfume.
And while the price of True Saffron is a hefty $60 per gram, the duo aren’t getting rich any time soon. “We’re not making a profit yet,” says Albert. In fact, he doesn’t think it’s something that can be done in Canada on a commercially viable scale.
“I hate to say this, but imported saffron will always be less expensive, because they don’t have the same labour laws, and in some places, adulteration is common.” Safflower — a very inexpensive red flower — or even dyed corn silk, can be used to bulk up a saffron shipment.
For Albert and Charbonneau, it’s a labour of love and it’s all about the experience. Both actors are still working; they built a home recording studio for their busy voice-over careers, and this allows them to focus on sharing their prize spice with a few select chefs.
“We love partnerships with creative chefs,” says Albert. “Backhouse in Niagara-on-theLake, Sper here in Warkworth, Kinsip House of Fine Spirits, a distillery in Bloomfield, Prince Edward County, crafts a liqueur with our saffron.” The couple enjoy experimenting and collaborating with locals in the kitchen, making jellies, mustards, hot sauces, infused maple syrup, vinegars, and in Warkworth, multi award-winning chocolatier, Angela Roest, of Centre and Main Chocolate Co. uses True Saffron in its raw state — not dried — for an even fresher flavour when blended with rich, white chocolate.
“We only do it for the love of saffron, and we do it all organically,” says Albert. “It’s backbreaking and unpredictable so we will transition out of this one day.”