Kashmiri, Iranian and Spanish Saffron: What Origin Actually Tells You
The quality comparison between Kashmiri, Iranian and Spanish saffron does not survive being checked. What origin does tell you is which grading vocabulary you are reading.
Kashmiri, Iranian, Spanish. Three labels, and the question everyone asks is which one is best.
We sell one of them. So read our answer with that in front of you, and know that the question does not survive being checked anyway.
Our conclusion, at the top where you can weigh it
We grow saffron in Pampore and we sell it. Any article from us ranking the three origins is marketing in a lab coat, so here is where this ends up before you read the argument.
Origin is a weak predictor of quality. It is a strong predictor of price, of vocabulary, and of the supply chain a tin came down.
What tells you the quality of the saffron in your hand is the lab report on that lot. Not the country on the label, and not ours either.
Iran grows most of the world's saffron
The FAO puts Iran at 85 to 90 percent of world production.
FAO's own heritage-site page for the qanat-based saffron system in Gonabad says over 90 percent. We are not going to pick whichever number flatters this page. The honest version is that Iran grows the overwhelming majority, and the same organisation reports the exact share differently in two places.
That is the setting for everything below. Most saffron in the world is Iranian, and a great deal of it is very good.
The quality comparison does not survive checking
We went looking for crocin ranges by origin so this article could put them side by side. We are not going to publish any, and the reason is worth more than the table would have been.
The figures that circulate come almost entirely from sellers. They disagree with each other, and each one disagrees in the direction of whoever published it.
The published research does not support the comparison either. A 2021 metabolomics study examined saffron from Greece, Italy, Morocco, Iran, India, Afghanistan and Kashmir, and reported that the crocins were not among the compounds that significantly differentiated the samples. It found differences between origins. Crocin was not where they sat.
So the number people argue about in origin comparisons is not the number that separates these origins, at least not in the work that went looking.
What Spain actually is
Spain is one of the largest exporters of saffron in the world and it is nowhere near one of the largest growers. Both things are true at once, because a large share of what leaves Spain arrived in Spain first.
This is not a rumour with a grudge behind it. A 2016 study in Food Chemistry fingerprinted saffron by liquid chromatography and high resolution mass spectrometry, and separated, on chemistry alone, saffron grown and packed in Spain under the protected designation from saffron packed in Spain of unknown origin and sold as Spanish saffron.
Read what that does and does not say. It does not identify where the unknown-origin material was grown. It says that "Spanish saffron" on a label covers at least two different things, and that a laboratory can tell them apart when a shelf cannot.
If the shape of that is familiar, it is the same argument we make about Kashmir, arriving from another country. This is not a Kashmiri problem or a Spanish one. It is what happens anywhere a place name is worth more per gram than the saffron is.
Three vocabularies that do not convert
Each producing region grades saffron in its own language, and the languages describe different things.
- Kashmir uses Mongra, Lacha and Zarda. These describe the cut: how much of the yellow style is in the tin alongside the red stigma.
- Iran uses Sargol, Negin and Pushal, which describe the cut and the appearance of the thread together.
- The Spanish trade uses Coupe, Mancha, Rio and Sierra, ordered by colouring power.
None of these converts into another. A Coupe is not a Mongra with a Spanish accent. Our article on grade names sets out the Kashmiri system and where Negin actually belongs.
The Spanish protected designation has no grades at all
This is the part that surprised us, and it is the most useful thing on this page.
Azafrán de La Mancha is a protected designation of origin. We read its specification. It does not define Coupe, or Rio, or Sierra. Those words do not appear in it, except where Rio and Sierra turn up inside the names of towns in the growing area.
What the PDO sets is a single standard rather than a ladder: colouring power above 200, aromatic power above 20, bitter power above 70, moisture and volatile matter below 11 percent, extraneous matter at or below 0.5 percent, and a minimum stigma to style length ratio of 2 to 1. Analysis follows UNE-ISO 3632-2.
So Coupe and Sierra are trade language, and Selecto is a shop label. Neither is the protected designation. A tin can carry any of those words and carry no PDO at all.
Two numbers that are not the numbers you think
The figures in that specification look like figures you have seen elsewhere. They are not the same claims, and confusing them is the easiest mistake to make on this subject.
The PDO's colouring power floor of 200 is the PDO's own threshold for its own saffron. ISO 3632 Category I is a separate standard with its own floor, which published summaries give as either 190 or 200 for filaments, for reasons set out here. Two numbers can be near each other and still be answering different questions.
The moisture limits differ outright. The PDO requires below 11 percent. ISO 3632 allows up to 12. Spanish PDO saffron is held to a tighter moisture limit than the international standard asks for, and that is a real difference rather than a marketing one.
The same criticism lands on us
A listing reading "Super Negin Kashmiri Mongra" stacks an Iranian trade grade, a region and a Kashmiri cut into one phrase, and our grade names article takes that apart at length. The identical move happens with Spanish vocabulary. It also happens with ours, and we are not exempt because we wrote the criticism.
We call our saffron Mongra. That word describes a cut, stigma tips with the yellow style removed. It is accurate, and it is not a quality certificate. It does not tell you our crocin figure. It does not tell you which laboratory. It does not tell you the lot number on the tin in front of you.
What origin does tell you
Origin is not useless. It is just not a measure of quality.
- Which grading vocabulary the seller is working in, and therefore which questions will make sense to them.
- Roughly what you should expect to pay, which is its own subject.
- How much of the stuff exists. Kashmir's growing area is small and shrinking, and the arithmetic is unforgiving.
- Whether a legal protection exists and what it actually covers, which for Kashmir is GI No. 635.
Not one of those is "this tin is better than that tin". All of them are worth knowing before you spend.
The short version
Iran grows most of the world's saffron and much of it is excellent. Spain exports far more than it grows. Kashmir grows very little of the world total and has a great deal more sold under its name than it can possibly produce.
The origin on a tin tells you which vocabulary you are reading and roughly what you will pay. It does not tell you what is inside the tin.
For that there are three questions, and they work in every country on this page including ours. Which laboratory tested it. What were the three numbers. What is the lot number.