Forest cloves

A clove is the unopened flower bud of the clove tree. Our forest cloves come from cultivation in the rainforest in the nature reserve. Lake Periyar National Park in India. The cultivation is therefore organic – semi-wild – and the harvesting method 'spotless', resulting in a fresh reddish-brown head that you can crush between your fingers. And extraordinarily aromatic!

Stock item - temporarily unavailable - we have been able to offer cloves, a spicy clove from Zanzibar in our assortment

Cloves come from Syzygium aromaticum, a tree that originally grew only in the Moluccas, especially in the sultanates of the North Moluccas (Maluku Utara).

The clove tree is a 10-15 meter tall tree that bears cream-colored flowers, which turn red during flowering. However, this usually does not happen, because before the flowers open, the buds are picked to be dried into what we call cloves.

The tree bears flowers for the first time in the fourth to as many as the seventh year and can live to be eighty years old. The buds are picked manually by experienced pickers. The timing of the harvest is crucial; the buds must be perfectly round and already beginning to change color. As soon as a bud opens, it becomes unusable as a spice.

The Portuguese discovered the clove location in 1424, long before the Dutch asserted their supremacy in the Moluccas and seized the clove trade by force. Using methods that cannot withstand the light of day, they managed to have cultivation restricted to the island of Ambon in the Central Moluccas. Nowhere else in the world did the clove tree grow.

The Banda Massacre, now 400 years ago, is commemorated annually on May 8. The West Frisian Museum looks back on it. online.

Despite all the precautions taken by the Dutch, the Frenchman Pierre Poivre (no, not a joke) succeeded in 1770 in siphoning planting material from the Moluccas and planting it on the French tropical island of Saint Mauritius off the coast of Africa. In doing so, he succeeded in breaking the VOC's monopoly on clove cultivation. Today, cloves are grown all over the world, and Indonesia is the absolute world leader with plantations on Sulawesi and Java. Cultivation in the Moluccas is of minor significance.

Our Premium Siputih cloves have a thousand-pound weight of 100 grams (one thousand buds per ounce) and are of very high quality. They are dried in such a way that the stem is thoroughly dry, but the reddish-brown bud has remained quite soft. You can easily remove it from the stem and crush it between your fingers. The exuberant aroma tells the rest.

Scent and taste

The clove aroma comes from the pungent-tasting eugenol, and combines excellently with spices and herbs that also contain eugenol, such as nutmeg, allspice, and cinnamon, pepper, vanilla (eugenol is the raw material for the production of vanillin), basil and star anise.

Usage

Cloves are suitable for sweet and savory dishes, in baked goods and desserts as well as in roasts and stews, in sour meat dishes and curries, and in sauerkraut, red cabbage, and mulled wine, of course. Many famous spice blends contain cloves.

Features:

• 100% dried flower buds of Sygyzium aromaticum
• foraging - hand-picked

Assortment

• available in glass (45 grams) and stand-up pouch (no test tubes)
  
• Larger quantities on request

Gift packaging

• The glass jar is available in tasteful gift packaging consisting of a cube box filled with black tissue paper.
• For an overview of our gift packaging, please refer to the gift packaging section.

General advice

• Store cloves in a dark, dry, and cool place.
  

Save:

• save your cloves in sealed packaging
• preferably store in a dark, dry and cool place
• best before June 2027 (06-2027)
• This expiration date is an indication.

Batch number

The batch number helps us trace which supply an item originated from. It is listed on the packing slip and the invoice.