Yeah, no, I totally agree. I like that. So what would you say a definition of a spice or an herb is because some people might just think that it's pepper and salt or oregano. Yeah.

So there's a little bit of a distinction between spices and herbs. Generally, it's pretty arbitrary. Call it, call it anything you want ultimately. But generally a spice is an herb, I should start with an herb is the leafy green part of a plant. So we're talking about basil or oregano or cilantro or something like that, the leafy green part of the plant that's been dried. And a spice is everything else. So turmeric or ginger are the rhizome dried on ground cinnamon is is the inner bark of a tree. Pepper corns are the fruit of a climbing vine. They grow in little bunches kind of like grapes. Actually the fruit and the pit where you get the heat, the the piperine what makes black pepper spicy comes from the pit. And all the other flavor comes from the dried fruit that's wrapped around the pit so. Okay. Black pepper, the wrinkled skin of a black pepper corn is essentially a raisin that's that's dried up and shriveled around the pit. Used to be the fruit and is I mean is the fruit but changes color it oxidizes and even when we're talking about leaf spices like bay leaves. That's that sort of a spice as opposed to a leafy

green herb. Okay.

And what do you think is the most unique spice that you've

seen. They're all so different right we're talking about a lot of different plants and different processes. I think, you know, especially from a business perspective, we have a we're a public benefit corporation so we have two social missions or a double side social mission. One connecting small farmers with high value markets. And that's one is educating Americans about spices and where they come from and how they're grown. And we see the strongest response to explaining where the really familiar spices come from. You know, they're rare, unique, really interesting plants as I'm sure you know, and that's certainly true in spices but the ones that people seem to get the most excited about are are honestly cinnamon and chili flakes and black pepper. And so we're talking about a daily basis without without thinking about where they come from or the sourcing and the process behind them how they're grown. So getting people to taste our royal cinnamon which is an heirloom species it's very from Vietnam but very rarely exported. Whoa. Just I mean just blows people's minds. This is a tree bark and second of all it tastes so much spicier and sweeter than any other cinnamon you've you've had most most people in the US. And that that really that really surprises people as well. And the other thing I mean the other thing I'll say on the definition of spices and uniqueness is that the definition changes and has always changed that sugar for for thousands of years was considered

a spice.

It was hard to produce it was just another flavor that you would add to a dish like you would add spiciness heat or tartness or savoriness from other ingredients you would add sweetness from sugar. And it really wasn't until the 1600s and colonialization and slavery and industrialization in Europe. And so we're transitioned from being a spice to being kind of the commodity that we know today. So we're always experimenting with new new spices we carry a couple of seaweeds. Well as seasonings as spices. We are always working with our partner farmers to see where there's waste or where there's where there are things that they are not selling in their agricultural process that they could be selling. So the leaves of the cinnamon tree. Tastes great you can use them like a Bailey. They're great in tea they're great in rice or beans or liquid. So we carry cinnamon tree leaves from the cooperative that we work with in Santa Barbara and Tanzania. Wow. So there's there's always, you know, there's some creativity in that definition of a spice. Yeah.

Quickly can you explain the chili flake thing.

Chili's are one of very few spices that are native to the Americas. So, our ladies are native to a range from Mexico to northern South America. Going back many thousands of years. They were brought to to Europe by Columbus himself on on his return voyage from his first trip to the Caribbean. But people had never tasted, you know, Europeans have never tasted chilies before. So any any chilies used in Indian cooking and Thai cooking, you know, all of the cuisines that love chili peppers. That's all fairly recent introduction. They didn't have chili peppers prior to the 1600s. Wow. But there's something that we love right as a species about that capsaicin feeling that that heat on our tongue. That people just picked up wherever they landed. And there, I think partially maybe you probably know more about this than I do, but the way that chilies propagate. Is is very fluid. And so depending on where they're planted and how the how the pollination is happening and all kinds of other factors. They they evolved very quickly. And so that's what we have so many different varieties of chilies because it's very. Context based very based on the environment where they're being grown and the way that it is handling them too. So there's a million different flavor profiles, heat levels levels of fruitiness. All kinds of other factors and there are, I think there are only three. I'm remembering that correctly three species of chilies and most of them come from most of them are one species capsicum and

new. Oh, whoa. Okay. I didn't know there was so little, but then we create so many because they all kind of taste different based on the grow patterns.

Yeah. Yeah. The species, you know, there are some flavor sort of flavor notes that you find in each species. There's a caption and capsicum, and blanking on the third one, roughly like a Caribbean chili. Okay. And a South American chili. Okay. But all of those other so you could get a lot of flavor differences even within a single species. Most of the chilies that we eat on a daily basis are capsicum and new them. Okay. And they can taste wildly different from each other even even just being the same species. Yeah. Wow. Yeah, that's really

cool then. And what kind of things do you offer with burlap and barrel then what are like your top sellers, things like that.

Our focus is always on better versions of spices that people in the US are generally already familiar with partially just because that's what's easier to sell. We always have some other kind of wonky, more esoteric spices that I'm excited about, but, but honestly our best sellers are cinnamon and black pepper and chili flakes and paprika and turmeric and garlic powder and the things that, that people are already using because it makes such a difference as it does for any to use a better version of those. Okay. The difference between a crappy red delicious apple from the supermarket that doesn't taste like anything and an apple from a local orchard or a, you know, a real apple. Yeah, real apple. Yes. Huge flavor difference that I think people don't realize exists in spices.

Yeah, no, I think it's very underrated and I wish more people would, I guess, realize that that spices aren't just like something that lasts forever in a cabinet. So, can you explain how people can keep their spices to last longer? How even long are you supposed to keep them and.

Yeah, that's a great question. We typically recommend that that you use your spices within a year. Okay. They, they're not getting better with age. Let's put it back. They don't age. The strongest flavor, the best flavor is always going to be the closest to the harvest. Most big spice companies are buying and stockpiling spices for years. So when you buy spices at the supermarket, they're easily two or three years old off. So at that point, it kind of doesn't matter. They're not going to get much worse. They're already pretty bad. But still, my recommendation is always buy spices from a small company, a company that knows their supply chains that can tell you not just the manufacturing date, which is what you can see usually printed on a jar at the supermarket, the harvest date, because that's really thing is how long since since it was harvested and how long since it was dried. So we work with our partner farmers. We buy often we buy, we pre pay them before the harvest so that we get the spices right at the harvest that sort of the peak freshness. I think right right away. So we're starting the clock earlier than most spice companies in terms of in terms of the dried product. So it's our our spices are always going to be stronger flavored because of that freshness, as well as the variety and all the other factors that I mentioned. So I suggest having your spices out somewhere where you'll see them people get all tied in knots about exposure to heat and exposure to light and for sure those can reduce the shelf life. But the most important thing is that you're using them if it fits in the back of the cupboard, even if it's perfectly stored, it's still going to it's still going to degrade in quality over time. So put them somewhere where you see them put them somewhere where you can sort of within arms reach cook with them ease. And I think the other part of this is also just being a little more experimental and how you cook with spices. If there's a new spice that you're trying to understand or learn how to use. Add it into something that you already like to cook added it into a recipe that you're already familiar with so you can see how the flavors change. So you can you can start with just a little bit and teach yourself about cooking with different spices you can also obviously look up there millions of recipes and other ways to learn with new spices but I find that just something simple like tomato sauce. Add a little cardamom or add a little cinnamon or add a little saffron or add something that you may not have cooked with before and see how see what it does to sort of a familiar and simpler flavor

profile. And do you sell like the whole piece and the ground up or how do you recommend people going about that.

Yeah, it's also a really good question. We sell a mix. We sell quite a few whole spices, some of which are packed in grinders in pepper grinders so you can buy in a pepper grinder you can buy coriander in a pepper grinder whole spices will always last longer than ground spices for sure. But ground spices are often easier to cook with so it's a little bit of a trade off. Are you looking for convenience something you can just sort of sprinkle in as you're cooking or do you like the process of grinding whole spices as

you're cooking. Got it. And how do you how do you think about the bulk things that like a grocery store are those restocked more often than the middle

isles or how you're using the spices or how much you need. If you only need a tiny quantity of the bulk jars are the best way to go because then you don't have a full almost full jar sitting around for years that you use. But I would say that anything packed in a bulk jar is going to is going to go stale faster because there's just more exposure to the air every time somebody opens that jar a little bit of oil from that spice evaporates out. So it's it's a little bit of a trade off. Okay, okay.

I like that. So, let's see. And then single origin. What does that technically

mean. Yeah, it's a good question. It wasn't really a term that had existed in spices before we decided to call our company that. But it means that we're making a very intentional decision about where something comes from. So, there are lots of places in the world that grow black pepper. Very two black peppers from two different places because we've made a really careful choice about those two places and the each place tastes different makes the black pepper taste different. Unlike cinnamon and some of the other spices we've been talking about black peppers all one species, no matter where it's grown it's all the same species. And diversity within that but really what you're tasting is, you know, like in wine or in coffee you're tasting the terroir you're tasting the land you're tasting the climate. And so we have a sort of semi wild black pepper from Zanzibar. Okay. Little island in the Indian Ocean off the east coast of Africa. It's by by kind of a standard definition it's sort of the wrong environment for black pepper. So it's too sandy there's too much drainage it's too hot it's too windy. But the result is a very intense super spicy kind of citrusy black. Really cool. And then the other black pepper that we have is from a very small regenerative farm in Vietnam. Okay. Two heirloom varieties that have been mixed together because of the farmers sort of preferences one he feels like has a better aroma one has a better flavor and so he mixes them together. Okay. Armor blend of two variety and the black pepper corns are intercropped there with coffee. Where he's really primarily a coffee farmer but coffee is best when it's shade grown and the black pepper vines climb up the shade trees that he's planted to protect the coffee. Innovative.

Yeah, it's very cool.

And very so very different processes in both places. Yeah, it's a very different flavored. Pepper corn where the Vietnamese one is is pretty savory kind of fruity kind of ginger. You just get very different flavors from from different growing conditions.