Mongra Grade Saffron, and What the Other Names Mean
Two completely different systems are in use, one traditional and one laboratory. Sellers mix them deliberately.
Two completely different systems are in use for grading saffron, one traditional and one laboratory.
Sellers mix them, and the mixture is where the confusion lives.
System one: what part of the stigma
The traditional Kashmiri names describe the physical cut. What part of the flower ended up in the tin.
- Mongra is the deep-red stigma tips only, separated from the yellow style.
- Lacha includes the red part plus some of the yellow style still attached.
- Zarda, also called Gucchi, is the whole stigma including the full yellow portion.
Each step down includes more yellow style. The style is part of the flower, so this is not adulteration. It is simply less of the part that carries the colour and aroma, and more of the part that does not.
That is why Mongra costs more per gram. You are buying a higher proportion of the working material, and the sorting that produces it throws away weight the seller could otherwise have sold.
The separation is done by hand, one flower at a time. Each crocus carries three stigmas, so a kilogram of Mongra takes roughly 150,000 flowers and more than a hundred hours of sorting.
Why the tip matters
The red stigma tip is where the compounds sit. Crocin for colour, picrocrocin for taste, safranal for aroma.
Weight made up of yellow style is weight that does not do much in your pan. Buy a gram of Zarda and a gram of Mongra and you have bought two different amounts of working saffron, whatever the scale says.
This is also why cheap saffron often looks like a bargain and cooks like a disappointment. Nothing was faked. The ratio was different.
Against Lacha, Mongra gives 20-30% more colour per gram. In a pot of Kahwa or a Zafrani Pulao that is a deep gold against a pale yellow tint.
Ours is Mongra, tips only, and the tins are on the products page.
System two: the laboratory categories
ISO 3632 is a separate axis entirely. It sorts saffron into categories by measured chemistry rather than by which part of the flower was used.
Category I requires, roughly, crocin at a minimum around 190 for filaments, picrocrocin above 70, safranal between 20 and 50, and moisture at 12 percent maximum. Published sources quote the crocin floor as both 190 and 200, because filament and powder thresholds differ.
The key point is that this system does not care what the cut is called. It measures what is there.
The two systems are not interchangeable
A cut name tells you what part of the flower is in the tin. A category tells you how the contents tested.
You can have Mongra that tests as Category I. You can, in principle, have Mongra that tests lower, if it was dried badly or stored badly or is simply from a weaker crop. The cut does not guarantee the chemistry, because drying and storage happen after the sorting.
It works the other way too. A lower cut with a lot of style in it is carrying dead weight that a chemical test on the whole sample will notice.
This is why a serious answer to "how good is this saffron" needs both. The cut, and the three numbers.
Where Negin fits
Negin is an Iranian and Afghan trade grade: whole, thick red stigmas cut with no yellow style, often with the three threads still joined. Super Negin is a further selection of the longest and thickest.
Neither is an ISO category and neither is a Kashmiri grade. Kashmir uses Mongra and Lacha. Spain has a third vocabulary again, set out in what origin actually tells you.
A listing saying "Super Negin Kashmiri Mongra" is stacking two regions' vocabularies, which usually describes a look rather than an origin.
"Super Negin Mongra Category I"
You will see strings like that on listings, and it is worth recognising what is happening.
Three grading vocabularies have been stacked into one phrase. Two of them describe roughly the same thing from different traditions, and the third is a laboratory result. Stacking them looks like three separate guarantees. It is closer to one and a half.
It is not necessarily dishonest. It is imprecise in a direction that flatters the product, which is the most common kind of imprecision in this market.
Powder is a separate question
None of the cut names in this article survive grinding, because a cut is a visible fact about a thread and a powder has none. We sell whole stigmas only, and saffron powder against threads sets out what you give up, what you gain, and what a powder seller would have to show you.
Why the systems got mixed
The two vocabularies come from different places and were never designed to sit together.
The cut names are old, local and descriptive. They come from people sorting stigmas by hand and needing a word for what was in each pile. The ISO categories are recent, international and analytical. They come from laboratories needing a comparable measure for trade.
Sellers reach for both because each answers a question the other cannot, and because more grading words look like more assurance. The result is listings where the vocabulary is doing marketing work rather than describing anything.
What to ask instead
Skip the adjectives and ask four things:
- Is this stigma tips only, or does it include the style?
- Which laboratory tested it?
- What were the crocin, picrocrocin and safranal values?
- What is the lot number on this tin?
Those four answers describe the product completely. Any grade name is a shorthand for some part of them, and shorthand is where the room to mislead lives.