A wide-ranging debate, but a simple reality: spices have a harvesting time.
In fact, spices are flowers, bark, buds, roots and other leaves, parts of plants that are harvested at a very specific time, which varies according to the plant species. Unfortunately, when you buy a spice from a retailer, especially a supermarket, you don't know when it was harvested, and that's when you should logically start counting the age of your spice...
Even more complex is when you buy a blend of spices (such as the very horrible couscous blend whose brand(s) I won't mention). Composed notably of coriander, cumin and fennel, you have no traceability on these products and even less on their harvest date. It's important to understand that the world of spices, just like the world of tea or coffee, is controlled by a few large agri-food groups who prefer to analyze their operating margins rather than the quality of the products they buy... Let's not forget that these same companies can buy peppercorns for less than a dollar a metric ton... something to ponder and analyze after watching the superb France 5 report on pepper.
In short, to each his own, ours is not.
As far as the shelf life of our spices is concerned, we only buy products from the current harvest, or of course from the previous year when the new season has not yet been harvested. Take citrus peel, for example: harvesting takes place in January-February, so we use the previous year's peel, and it's only in March-April of the year of harvest that we can offer the current year for sale.
In general, whole spices have a best-before date (BBD) or rather a minimum durability date (MDD) of 36 months when sold on the European market. They contain volatile compounds such as eugenol (cloves), thymol (thyme) or a-terpenyl acetate(cardamom), and as time goes by, these compounds escape and the spice loses its quality.
Ground spices and spice blends such as Indian curry or ras-el-hanout often have the same DDM of 36 months, which is an aberration when you consider that most spices and blends are pulverized to obtain very fine powders; yet the fineness of these powders induces extremely rapid oxidation due to ambient light and air.
We therefore recommend storing for a maximum of twelve months, away from light and air and in a dry place.
If you'd like to make a clean sweep of your spices and discover our made-to-order spice blends, click here.
