Cinnamon

Many folks mistakenly think that cassia and cinnamon are the same but while closely related they are not interchangeable. Cassia is cultivated primarily in China and Indonesia and has a reddish-brown coloring while the taste is pungently sweet. While cinnamon (which is Cinnamomum zeylanicum) is harvested from Sri Lanka and India and has more of a tan coloring and a milder taste. In America cassia is the more preferred with its more intense flavor and coloring.

There are several types of Cassia – Korintje Cassia is a thick quill cinnamon and Batavia which is a thinner quill cinnamon. Korintje, which is considered by many to be the superior variety, is grown at a higher altitude than the Batavian and has a more intense cinnamon flavor with a sharper reddish brown appearance. There are many species of cassia (depending on who one believes - somewhere between 50 and 250 varieties have been reported), including C.aromaticumfrom China, C. burmanniigrown in Indonesia, and C. loureiriiwhich which is harvested in Vietnam or Saigon. Our Vietnam Cassia cinnamon has a much stronger almost spicy sweet flavor and is preferred by cinnamon aficionados over other types of cinnamon or cassia. For many years the Europeans believed that the best cinnamon or “The True Cinnamon” was the variety more commonly known as Ceylon cinnamon which hails from Sri Lanka and is known for its softer quill, tan coloring and very mild taste.

Cinnamon is harvested by scraping out the inside pulp of this evergreen and the resulting quill pieces or cinnamon sticks are then separated for grading and drying based on their size, color and quality. The broken trimmings and smaller pieces are sold as cinnamon chips or are used in the making of cinnamon oil. The grading process of cinnamon is based on quality. Grade A cinnamon features the highest oil content and subsequently has the most intense flavor and aroma. Additionally quills that are harvested as Grade A cinnamon must be at least one meter in length and are taken from the main trunk of the tree and not the branches. Our customers have made our certified organic cinnamon more popular than our non-organic varieties