Saffron Grading & Quality
Saffron is graded two completely different ways, and only one of them is measurable. ISO 3632 grades it chemically in a laboratory — extra class, Category I, II, III. Trade terms like Super Negin grade it by appearance, and no standards body audits them. Learn to read the first and treat the second as description.
This is the part of buying saffron that everything else rests on. If you can tell a measured grade from a marketing one, you can judge any jar on the market in about thirty seconds.
Start with the laboratory numbers
Three figures define saffron: crocin for colour, picrocrocin for taste, safranal for aroma. They are read on a spectrophotometer and reported as absorbance values. Our guide to reading a saffron lab report explains what each number means, what good looks like, and why an unusually high safranal figure is a defect rather than a boast.
The grade ceiling moved in 2025
Until July 2025 Category I was the top of the ISO scale. It no longer is — a tier called extra class now sits above it, requiring crocin of at least 230, picrocrocin at least 80 and safranal at least 30. Most saffron sold in the United States is still labelled against the old ceiling, and some against a table withdrawn fifteen years ago.
Where trade names fit
Super Negin, Negin, Sargol and Pushal describe thread shape and how much yellow style was removed. They are useful shorthand and they tell you nothing about potency. What Super Negin actually means sets out the difference and why the two systems are independent — a beautifully cut thread can test mid-range, and a plainer one can test at the top.
What we can currently prove
We publish our testing status honestly rather than claiming a grade we have not yet documented. The current position is on our lab report page, and the reasoning behind how we describe our own saffron is on Our Saffron.
