Saffron is mountain village’s spice of life

It takes the stigmas from about 130 flowers for a gram of saffron swissinfo.ch

It is mid-October, and the saffron harvest in the village of Mund has begun.

This bucolic village lying at 1,200 metres above sea level is the only place north of the Alps where the precious spice flourishes.

The high peaks surrounding the village of Mund are covered in a fresh blanket of snow.

Yet despite the drop in temperature, the saffron flowers have pushed through the sandy soil overnight, carpeting the tiny garden plots below Mund in lilac blossoms.

In the clear light of an early autumn morning, the sun gives the moss on the stone-tiled roofs a luxuriant sheen.

The plump tomatoes in the vegetable patches between the wooden houses are a luminous red, and the elderberries an intoxicating deep ruby. Families will keep the tomatoes for their own consumption and make marmalade from the elderberries.

But it is the saffron that takes pride of place, since it links the people of Mund most strongly to their past.

It has been 25 years since the villagers founded a saffron guild to save a tradition which dates back in Mund to the 14th century.

At about SFr12 ($10) a gram, saffron is worth more than gold yet no person in Mund has ever become rich from saffron, and the cultivation of the plant nearly died out here in the 1970s. But since the guild was founded in 1979, the saffron fields have grown to cover 16,000 square metres. They have put the village on the map.

Saffron drink

There is something special about the villages in this part of canton Valais. Zermatt has the Matterhorn, Visperterminen boasts Europe’s highest vineyards and Mund is in the record books as the most northerly place in Europe where saffron flourishes.

Its reputation drew Jürgen Rohmeder and his wife Margret to Mund from Bavaria. A pharmacist by trade, Rohmeder took to making an aperitif from saffron imported from Iran, until he heard a report on Mund.

“I got some saffron [from Mund], examined it and found it was better than any other saffron in the world!”

He was so impressed that the whole family packed up and moved here, got their own fields, joined the guild and started producing an aperitif made from Mund saffron.

Small yield

“You have to pick 130 flowers to get one gram,” Margret says before bending
down to pluck a few flowers from her plot of land. She harvests the saffron before the flowers open.

“It’s all done by families working together in the fields. Children come, the grandparents come and they take them home to pluck out the stigmas [which yield the saffron powder],” she continues.

Margret has a piece of paper attached to a clipboard on which she counts each flower. But everyone has his or her own method.

“I ask them sometimes ‘how do you keep track?’ They say they count them, and when they have a hundred they pick up a pebble and put it in their pocket. Then they count another hundred and pick up another pebble. And when they’re finished, they count the pebbles, and that’s how they know how many they have.”

“It’s a very simple system – stones – but I write it all down.” As Margret finishes her field, a couple descend across the lilac fields with baskets in hand.

Unlike Margret, they believe they must wait until the flowers have opened before picking them.

Still life

In the village above, the alleys are deserted. It is like a still-life painting. Ancient ladders cling haphazardly to the sides of old grain sheds, now sheltering the odd sheep or motorbike.

A bent basketball hoop droops from the door of a barn, and there is a woodpile under every staircase. It may not look like it, but this is, according to the villagers, the busiest time of year.

“Saffron is good for Mund, because it attracts tourists,” says Madlen Imstepf in the local shop – the only place you can buy the village’s saffron products.

The shop sells saffron pasta, bottles of Rohmeder’s aperitif, bread and small jars of saffron stigmas. Yet Imstepf says the bread is sold out for the day, and the pure saffron will not be available before November.

She says demand exceeds supply especially since little of the approximately three kilos harvested each year leaves Mund. Most is used in meals at home, served up in various dishes at the village restaurants or given to family and friends.

Recipes

At the “Salwald” restaurant high above the village, Martha Schnydrig is stirring a large pot of bubbling risotto and adds a pinch of freshly ground saffron.

“Very many people come here to eat saffron dishes,” she says. The Schnydrig family has its own saffron fields but has to buy from other villagers to keep saffron dishes, including fondue, on the menu for the six months of the year the restaurant is open.

As she picks another few flowers, Margret Rohmeder explains that the people of Mund give nicknames to the saffron stigmas, which say it all.

“The ones with four stigmas are ‘princesses’, the ones with five are ‘queens’ and the ones with six are called ’empresses’.”

swissinfo, Dale Bechtel in Mund

Key facts

Saffron, or “crocus sativus”, belongs to the Iris family.
The stigmas from about 130 flowers are required for one gram.
Mund is the most northerly place the plant is grown in Europe.
Spain and Iran account for 80 per cent of the world’s production – about 800 tons a year.

In brief

Saffron was introduced to Switzerland in the 14th century and was cultivated in many parts of the country.

It is only found today in the village of Mund in canton Valais.

Saffron from Mund has this year been granted an AOC (appellation d’origine contrôlée) label, assurance of its place of origin.