Smart Mouth: Switzerland’s sweet saffron

Hunched over on the steep slope, I pinch the ruddy crocus stigmas, the tips of the flowers’ pistils, as delicately as possible, trying not to lose my balance and tumble down into the valley. It takes 390 of these stigmas, gathered by hand from 130 crocus sativus flowers, to produce one gram of saffron.

This, however, isn’t Iran or Spain, countries known for their bountiful saffron fields. The Matterhorn rises in the distance. I’m in tiny Mund, Switzerland, a town tucked between Geneva and Zermatt in the Aletsch Glacier range, the birthplace of the Rhone River and the unlikely home of these precious purple flowers.

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• A sweet Swiss crop
• Details: Saffron in Mund, Switzerland

The region was designated a UNESCO World Heritage site in 2001 for its stunning Alpine beauty. Although I grew up in Geneva, a mere two hours’ drive from Mund, I’d never seen saffron cultivated in these high altitudes until I stumbled upon a risotto recipe that demanded Swiss saffron. My antennae sprang up.

With a few phone calls to Swiss chefs and the Mund city hall, I soon learned that saffron was harvested in the Mund area as long ago as the 14th century. Then, in the 1950s, as industrialization spread throughout Switzerland, farmers gradually abandoned the crop. But when state authorities decided in 1979 to build a road through what remained of the saffron fields, hundreds of villagers rebelled. Led by the village priest, Erwin Jossen, they rose up to protect the crucial four acres historically under cultivation. More important, their fervor reignited the tradition of saffron farming in the area.

So how did the precious threads get from Asia to Switzerland?

Many civilizations claim to have discovered the red spice, but its origins probably lie in ancient Greece or Anatolia, where it was first cultivated 3,000 years ago. During the Middle Ages, Arabian botanists and cooks brought saffron, already common in Middle Eastern cuisine, to Spain.

Says former Mund mayor Leo Albert, who let me pick the stigmas from the crocuses in his field, “We read in a medieval treatise that mercenaries on their way back to Switzerland brought saffron from Italy through the Simplon Pass, braving the strict customs laws of the times. They hid crocus bulbs in their long hair, risking death if discovered.”

Mund has 529 residents today, and 60 of them own a piece of the saffron fields in parcels ranging from 376 to 2,368 square feet.

“We formed an old-fashioned guild in 1979,” Albert explains. “New bulbs were ordered from Kashmir and Turkey. Plans were drawn. Year after year, the amount of cultivated land grew, and more inhabitants got involved.”

By 2004, the guild had obtained an AOC, or Appellation d’Origine Controlee, the stamp of approval from the Swiss government, and the official Mund saffron was born.

Saffron is created by drying and crushing the three threads that grow inside the crocus flower. Last year’s harvest yielded a grand total of about nine pounds — a small amount, perhaps, but enough to reenergize a village and put it on the international foodie map.