If you are looking to buy the best cloves in India, without any doubt you could bet on the Kanyakumari clove variety which is a geographically indicated Clove produce. They are strong in aroma, flavour and houses strong presence of volatile oils. Geographically indicated is about the peculiarities the produce from this region has. Now does you need to go all the way to Kanyakumari to get it, of course not! all you need to do is to click on the link and get your purchase done, in a few days time the product is at your doorstep.
Generally not many claim to have Kanyakumari cloves, primarily because the most batches of Cloves used across India is directly imported from Indonesia, the native place of cloves. The import generally is based on price and no quality which will definitely reflect when compared. But there is a story how the native of Indonesia found a new home in India, in Kanyakumari.
In the early sixteenth century, portuguese reach the archipelagos around modern day Indonesia - The Moluccas Islands. They identify clove as a spice abundant there and keep the origins of cloves a secret. They made a lot of money brining back these cloves back home in Lisbon. They guarded the treasure secret. Not very late the Dutch and even the British found the origins and the secrets behind the Clove trade, and the monopoly was about the collapse. The Portuguese found it very difficult to resist to the hands of the Dutch. Meanwhile the British smuggled Clove saplings from the Islands and took it to the East India Company gardens in Courtallam, in Tamil Nadu.
They It took some years for the sampling to bud into a tree. Under the initiative of the company many clove plantations were formed, mostly towards the South. It took a while for everyone to recognise that, a combination of an elevation and the soothing salty sea breeze together made up the best combination for the best produce of cloves. Of course the fertile loam soil of the Western Ghats also played an important role. That was how, cloves from Southernmost India gained its reputation of being the best cloves from India, in fact the world, in terms of certain important properties like that of volatile oils.
At BBS Spices Malabari, we solely source single estate produce to maintain the quality as well as to bring uniformity across clove bathes that are primarily sold in the retail markets. The masalas and culinary preparations made out of Kanyakumari cloves would be a class apart, as they have better strength in Aroma because of better concentration of Clove oils.