Saffron: The Story of the World’s Most Expensive Spice

Walking through the spice aisle of a grocery store in 2024, one selection stands out among the rest: saffron. At Whole Foods, 0.5g of “Hand-Harvested Saffron Threads” sells for $8. In other words, it’s expensive. It’s pricey even on internet: one website offers just ten tablespoons (ten grams) of saffron for $120.

The irony of the Whole Foods saffron is that all saffron must be hand harvested from the Crocus sativus plant, a flower that blooms purple and blue petals in the fall. Saffron is expensive not because it’s difficult to grow, but because of the labor and tedious timing necessary to extract it from the flower. The prized reddish-orange “stigmas” stem from the middle of the plant a few weeks after the flower blooms, and they must be harvested at mid-morning, when the flower is fully open to the Sun.

One gardening website describes the process of harvesting saffron as something that should be done with tweezers at a kitchen table. For centuries, saffron has been a prized dye, spice, and scent—and the harvesting process has not changed much. According to a New Zealand study discussed by William C. Waterhouse,

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