What Is This The Most Expensive Spice In The World? | The Spice Trail | Absolute History

be scattering pieces of colored plastic in our feeders. You never know exactly, but why would they do that? Because these materials are very, very cheap and therefore pure saffron is very

expensive

, so

this

is very simple, but some of the fakes are so sophisticated and made from plants that are chemically al

most

identical to saffron that Only through DNA testing can Professor Perez and his team distinguish between the fake and the real thing. If Marcel is doing now it is the correct DNA fingerprint that suffers from the DNA fingerprint, we should do something practical in terms of our approaches to practical science, so we were trying to help because it is our duty, all

this

has to be done, otherwise we will not be sure that we have suffered. for the next four thousand years, but counterfeiting not only affects the saffron trade, it has a knock-on effect wherever the

spice

is used.

Manolo sir is a celebrity chef who is passionate about real saffron, so it is used quite well, so this is This is completely chemical in the opinion of the menorah. Saffron powder can and will never be a substitute for real La Mancha saffron for fermentation.loss gross intentions of missdella floor secondly suggested an authority from France here in this to zero in a camuto feeding of emotional dogs oh, come on Fran, so here is this wonderful manalo he described it as a kind of broth, but it is like a stew in reality, it is

absolute

ly thick with meat and smells incredible between Sir David knotek humidity Aramis a la Loire of the state and as a consequence Dexter memories Antilles, not these things about making this lawsuit, no, and the surprising thing is that from all that cooking you really smell the saffron coming out or not, measuring again.

I promise you that I will never use turmeric instead of saffron. The saffron

trail

runs from the Atlas Mountains in Morocco to the plains of Spain and beyond into La Mancha. The joyful celebrations of the saffron harvest mask a harsh truth. Fake saffron threatens the livelihoods of communities around the

world

. Saffron is grown all over the

world

, but there are people willing to fight to maintain the integrity of the world's

most

expensive

spice

. The Moors left their mark here in Spain, influencing both food and architecture, but by the end of the 15th century Moorish power had waned.

King Ferdinand and Queen Isabella ruled a newly united Spain after expelling the Moors, they also wanted to extend their influence to lands beyond their borders. It was they who sponsored the explorations that would find a completely new world and a new species hitherto completely unknown in Europe. The Spanish fleet was sent west in The search for the legendary Spice Islands went completely in the wrong direction. They failed to find the Spice Islands, but they did discover the lands that would become known as America, and with them came a whole new source of exotic flavors. This coast of Mexico is where one of the most infamous Spanish invaders landed in 1519 and Hernán Cortés was the man who had his eye on a spice fortune.

The people who lived here in Qui Winston City looked at his arrival with suspicion. These ancient ruins are not Aztec or Mayan. They are actually Totanac and it was the Totanacs who totally dominated this region of Mexico before and during the time that Cortés first arrived here, it was the Totanacs of this city who were among the first to be aware of Cortés' arrival because when he did come here he anchored his ships on that little rock there the people that Cortés met upon his arrival here with the keepers of an exotic spice totally unknown to Europeans all the Arab traders who had kept Europe's taste buds tingling For centuries with spices like pepper, cinnamon and nutmeg, this was something completely new.

It was vanilla. Totanac formed and cured vanilla as medicine and perfume for their temples and Totanaca cities. Thus, it spread along the entire coast of Veracruz, one of the largest was here. In the very heart of the vanilla growing area, this town, El Tajín, was once an important center of Totanac where vanilla would have been used as currency. It had enormous value even back then, largely because the Totanac believed it was sacred and that's why there once lived a princess called the Morning Star. and she was so beautiful and pure of spirit that it was decreed that she should never be possessed by a mortal man now unfortunately a young man named runningdear ignored that decree he fell madly in love with her and she clearly fell in love with him because they ran away together the high priests were furious and chased them and when they found them they killed them immediately and in the place where their blood was spilled a plant grew, you guessed it, a vanilla vine and when the beans ripened, it was considered that the smell was so exquisite that it could only be the embodiment of the pure spirit of the princess, don't forget that next time you have a bowl of ice cream nearby is the city of nut claw, it is the center of the vanilla growing business in Mexico and Some of the people who live here are direct descendants of Totanac from the tribe with which Cortez met Vania, the real one, not long ago, these streets were covered in vanilla.

This film shot on PAP antlers in 1923 shows vanilla pods left to dry in the sun. So famous was the city for its sweet vanilla aroma that Pop Antler became known as the city that perfumed the world. Just a few miles from PAP Antler are the lush rainforests where vanilla still grows today. José Luis Hernández has been growing vanilla all his life and he is an enthusiast of the original totanac ways of growing the spice is this LaPlante c'est la vie right? I just had no idea it was going to look like this it looks like a crazy primitive creeper it's amazing that's

what

he can't either Nikki yeah I'm not telling you, these are the beans, look, this is

what

it looked like for hundreds of years, all the way back to the 19th century. .

Vanilla could only grow in this region and this is the reason why a small insect unique to this part of the world is called Mel Epona. B and is the only pollinator of the vanilla flower, this CM endemic to Mexico % of Mexican is a melatonin insect, this is a quesadilla tradition. Nail from the flower recycling sector, so when the flower comes out, the little B, then you pollinate the flower and then the flower dies and the fruit starts to grow. I mean, I see that vanilla takes a long time to grow from the appearance of the first flower to the harvest of the vanilla pod.

It takes nine months. I arrived after the flowering season, so I don't expect to be able to see a vanilla flower. The flora is one day. Alright. It's about to come. See. Enter. But this is completely out of season. tomorrow and a half of steel Yakubu much Elias alternative love and do you think it could bloom tomorrow see you Vienna you will call me I feel like I've had a morning of complete revelation Who would have guessed that it has to be pollinated by one in particular? little species of bee and only then can those beans grow what is without a doubt is that vanilla is definitely Mexican in fat it is definitely totally comes from this region it is

absolute

ly rooted here and I feel that I have actually come to the same birthplace of vanilla thirty meters from the ground in asta pop of five totanac men about to participate in a spectacular ritual it is a call to their gods to help ensure a good vanilla harvest now they are doing the fertility dance we are a kind of ritual we dance with their fertility god a long time ago, when there was a great drought here and it looked like the entire vanilla crop was going to be devastated, which of course would have destroyed the region, so some Tonot men got together and said: well, what do we have to do? to make it rain we need to do something spectacular to inspire our fertility God to make it rain and this is what they came up with the Spanish invader Cortés would have been the first European to witness this spectacle but he had his eyes set on something higher prize the legend of El Dorado spoke of untold amounts of gold and Cortés was determined to find it and headed inland in search of the most powerful ruler of Mexico Moctezuma the king of the Aztecs and Moctezuma received Cortés with a drink that he considered suitable for a king was chocolate with cocoa flavored with our old friend vanilla and Cortés became the first European to taste the most aromatic spice.

Cortés wasted no time in sending this exotic spice back to Spain without knowing that it had been introduced to Europe with a flavor that today has become ubiquitous and enormously popular throughout the world tanned bonito or kiria Lafleur. It really is such an amazing color, it looks like fresh, you know, that's impulse, it's extraordinary luck to see a vanilla orchid bloom out of season, but if the secret of the success of vanilla cultivation is due to little Mel Epona. That only exists here. How is it possible for vanilla to grow outside of Mexico? Well, this talk is why his name was obviously Edmund and in 1841 he was a 12 year old slave boy living on a farm in Réunion. then, a French colony in the Indian Ocean, just off the coast of Madagascar, now, at that time, his teacher, like so many others, was desperately trying to grow vanilla; the vines would grow beautifully in warm tropical climates like that, but what they couldn't get happened was for them to bloom regularly, well one day Edmund was wandering around his master's property when he came across a vanilla flower and somehow discovered that if you played with it in a certain way you could pollinate it and it worked, it produced He managed to figure out how to pollinate it and that's how he did it.

Are you going to pollinate this manatee? José Luis uses a wood chip just as Edmund Alveus did to remove a membrane before pollinating the plant. José Luis brushes the pollen on the tip of the stick through the stigma to fertilize the flower a sign a little swallow me yes like balloons yes yes time yes so what José does is basically the work of the bee and he thought of the male and female parts of plant. together so that it is now fertilized. I can't believe how lucky we were to discover how hand-pollinating vanilla was a breakthrough, but it was the beginning of the end of Mexico's monopoly on the world's supply of the spice in less than a hundred years. the island of Madagascar produced more vanilla than Mexico now just over 1% of the world's vanilla comes from Mexico Norma Gaia runs one of the oldest vanilla companies in the country here, after months of curing the vanilla it is classified according to quality , we have a storage here in these boxes grab my great-grandfather we use the same system the best vanilla beans are valued for their rich flavor aroma and quantity of vanillin oil this is you can see its crystals we can see something very good these are crystals it is a lot of vanillin content, then it is the vanillin content that makes it valuable, isn't it?

I mean, it smells like it doesn't smell like any vanilla I've ever smelled before, no, it smells like it smells like alcohol. I feel a little drunk just smelling it, but what I don't understand mom is why are you only producing a fraction of the world's vanilla because people who don't know about vanilla ice cream from Mexico and vanilla grows here in the area from Tanakh, so most of the natural vanilla comes out of Mexico, does that mean that basically people like the touch of the farmers? Traditional vanilla growers have stopped growing, yes, so it seems that not only have Mexicans lost interest in vanilla, but the world's own traders have as well. resorted to other countries with lower labor costs to acquire the spice Madagascar and Indonesia have become V places for vanilla Mexico has been left behind José Manuel Rodríguez is a vanilla exporter very aware of the seriousness of the situation.

Is there a danger that Can Mexican vanilla acquire the spice? Unfortunately, I would have to say yes, if things don't change, if the producers, the farmers, remain disillusioned with what they get for their green vanilla and the low level of the world market remains so low that they will simply stop producing it, but still There are I hope that José is part of a new wave of Mexicans hoping to convince a growing gourmet market that all the work involved in producing the original Mexican vanilla really makes it a product worth rediscovering, like saffron, which is among the most labor-intensive crops in the world.

Approximately 18 months of care from the point of pollination to the dried and cured finished spice when you smell and touch the vanilla. If you have been in contact with other pinellas, most of the time you directly recognize the quality, but again it is a question. What lies behind our vanilla is not just the production of a spice, it is the origin of everything that is behind all that knowledge of thousands of years. I'll try to let you know that this is not just vanilla, this is Mexican vanilla. is the vanilla from which the worldHe fell in love and that seems to be the point at which the art of vanilla production is so important to the Totanac lifestyle.

Losing him would mean the disappearance of an essential part of his heritage and it smells delicious, Willy, so how do we do it? the new vanilla enthusiasts spread the word to know that I'm on my way to one of the biggest cities in the world so I'm staying very early this morning with the indefatigable Don José at the wheel everything is fine everything is fine and that's great because We have a very long trip ahead of us of six to eight hours to get to Mexico City and it is a long way from here. 22 million people live, work and eat in and around Mexico City and in one of its best restaurants. is trying to excite the taste buds of some of its most discerning citizens with a little help from vanilla, of course, Gerardo Vásquez, the chef of this restaurant, is known for reintroducing to Mexicans the ingredients that Mexico gave to the world, But what I need to ask you.

As for vanilla, we have lost our touch with tradition and ingredients. The volcano has always been expensive for people in Mexico to sell rather than eat. Yes, of course, it became very popular in Europe and states around the world. It became so precious. Here I am trying to find out everything about vanilla and I have to confess that if you are out there I will send you something, that's okay and I hope you like the flavor that most of us associate with vanilla, it may be little more than a candy. spice but vanilla has a very complicated flavor and Gerardo uses it in both sweet and savory dishes oh that incredible smell this is feeling you know a lot you can't tell me bananas in there this person has a lot I love everything tiny black yes, it's vanilla, this banana It's so delicious.

Parado may be making strides in cosmopolitan Mexico City, but it will take more than a few a la carte recipes to create a whole new demand for real totanac Fenella Master is here I'm a student - bye Nia where is Nene put me to work put me to work here in a very different type of cuisine. It is a group of Totanaca women who are part of a movement that keeps alive the traditional uses of ingredients like vanilla. They call themselves women of smoke and their leader Marta is determined to make sure Let these culinary skills and recipes be passed down to a new generation, so toast the money too, these roasted cocoa beans and vanilla pods are the key ingredients of probably the most historically significant drink in Mexico, like the one the Aztecs gave it. to Cortés, it is the drink that Cortés drank for the first time with Montezuma, the drink that sealed the fate of Mexico five hundred years ago was a sweet taste for Cortés but a bitter moment for Mexico within three years Montezuma was dead and Spain had effectively conquered the country that is vanilla oh, you need a little with the main common test of vnh load that what they are really called license of the woman SS da ha ha I see SO we that what what thing Nommos with the hands of l'alma Esposito so the hot chocolate is ready it smells amazing it doesn't smell like hot chocolate you and I know it smells like basically an entire bar was melted into this pact, it just turns into a bit of high collar hospitality, here's to that.

I am ending my journey with the people who know this spice better than anyone, the people who were original growers of a bean that became known around the world is a unique product with a culture and

history

as rich and unusual as its flavor there are many here in Mexico we would love to see vanilla production return to its former glory years, there is Jurado the chef, the new generation of merchants and producers, but the most important thing is the people of totanac, the original people of vanilla, They are farmers and people like Marta who believe that keeping the totanac culture alive could ensure a future for Mexican vanilla and who knows maybe.

Someday we will be able to walk through our own supermarkets and choose a vanilla bean that proudly says product of Mexico on its label.