Share our passion and our commitment

The spice trade is ancient, as is the term 'kruidenier' (grocer), in French épicier. While we now think of a grocer as the seller of all kinds of foodstuffs, in the Middle Ages it was a 'cudener', a merchant who sold medicinal herbs and spices. Druggists, apothecaries avant la lettre.

In the sixteenth century, the grocer became more than that, when the trade in spices from the 'East' took off. Nowadays, you hardly see any shops specializing in herbs and spices anymore. Especially on the internet, you see these kinds of shopkeepers selling a wider assortment, such as grains and nuts.

To professionally run a shop as specialized as ours, you really need to be passionate. Why? Because you choose to sell products that are relatively unknown in a market dictated by price rather than, to a certain extent, quality. That is simply the reality. For a few euros, you can buy a ready-made (disposable) in any store. pepper grinderA little with peppercorns, but what are you actually buying?

This is unfortunately not reserved for pepper. Caught off guard by the A visually stunning image of the Moroccan souk, where spices stand piled high and spread their tangle of aromas, now you also see the rise of scoopable spices at markets. Where they come from, how they have been treated, how fresh they are, does not seem to interest the consumer? Does the Does the average consumer still know how a specific spice is supposed to smell and taste?

Perhaps naive, but with our peppershop - depeperwinkel - We hope to guide consumers on our own journey through the world of spices. We are not afraid to put a lot of time into this, both with the explanations on the website and with our tastings.

An important topic in our store is sustainability. That is more than just the production method. Sustainability is also with respect for biodiversity. That is where our passion is rooted: the realization that the earth does not benefit from monocultures, and neither do we – consumers. Monocultures are a direct threat to food security – look at the diseases affecting olive trees in Italy and banana trees all over the world – and are increasingly pushing us in a direction we should not want: the plant as a universal industrial semi-finished product.

What could be more beautiful than plant varieties that thrive in their natural habitat, cultivated in a culture rooted in the living and eating habits of a community? That is the message we wish to convey, hence our unusual, wide assortment. The price reflects the cost of producing or gathering a spice in this way, in stark contrast to industrially produced spices. Taste and smell the difference for yourself!