Nutmeg and Mace

When we were on route to Victoria to visit the chocolate factory, we drove through Gouyave (pronounced gwauv) and noticed they had a nutmeg factory that needed to be visited...so we did!

We went back the next week and were lucky to meet a nice lady on the street who was selling spices. She very graciously offered to help us find our way to the factory. After we bought some things from her, we signed up for the guided tour and were thankful we did.

The little town of Gouyave has the main nutmeg factory for the entire island but there are two other small plants in other locations that bring their raw materials here for processing and shipping. They have about 100 people working in the Gouyave factory and the place is busy! Their products are shipped all over the world.

Nutmeg and mace are two of the main spice exports of Grenada and they come from the same fruit. The trees bear nutmeg fruit, nutmeg spice (the inner seed of the tree), as well as mace, a less common spice that is made from the dried red outer shell of the nut. This is the only tree in the world which is the source of two distinct spices.

Our tour guide was careful to make sure we understood the steps for the basic nutmeg production process; pick the fruit; save the outside (meat) of the fruit for jams and jellies and other products; remove the inner core and let the red mace spice dry; remove the red mace spice from outside the core when it has dried; and then let the remaining inner shell dry for another 6 to 8 weeks before they crack the brown shell open to reveal the nut that we use as nutmeg spice. It is then dumped into water baths and sorted based on whether it floats.

The mace spice gets a separate sort based on three quality grades: #1 used to flavour savory and sweet foods – restaurant quality; #2 is for seasoning deli meats like pepperoni; #3 is used in production of cosmetics / nail polish.

The hard outer brown shell is being removed from the inner nutmeg nut and sorted by women (done after the mace had been removed / peeled in a separate operation on the 2nd floor of the factory). In this photo, shells go in one bag (to be used for mulch and /or for use as gravel on driveways), and the nut spice in another to head into the "floating" process. The inner nuts are collected in burlap bags that weigh 145 pounds, and are then lifted and dumped into a vat of water to determine which ones are good quality (those that sink) and which are not (those that float). The sinkers are used for making spice and the floaters are used for cosmetics. The floaters are scooped off and dumped into drying racks and the sinkers are gently handled and dried / rotated so they can eventually be placed on the market for spice.

You can see the dust in the air... the two chutes from the ceiling are delivering cracked nuts into each hopper. The ladies separate the shells from the nuts. The ladies working here get paid EC$12 for each 145 pound bag they can fill with nuts (no shell remaining)...

Drying racks

Dried nuts are prepared for shipment to places all over the world. Burlap sacks are "inked" / labeled for their destination using heavy black ink wiped across destination templates.

Bags are hand stitched with big needles and heavy burlap yarn once they are filled.

Definitely worth a visit while in Grenada. Buy some nutmeg jam or other great stuff on the way out the door!