In case you haven’t noticed, Baltimore doesn’t really experience fall. It’s hot, hot, hot, then it rains, and then it is cold, cold, cold. Then it gets hot again just to make you sweat. Essentially, Baltimore enjoys laughing at your inability to dress appropriately for its constantly changing weather. However, once all of this passes and we get some cool, crisp days, something amazing happens. Dust from a factory meanders south and wafts through the streets and homes of Baltimore and its surrounding suburbs.
This dust isn’t ground stone from some local quarry or carcinogens from NIH laboratories. This dust flavoring the Baltimorean air is a delightful mixture of ground spices from the McCormick’s spice plant in Hunt Valley.
Now, McCormick is an international company, so you should be aware, at least, of its spice production superiority. I don’t just say this because they produce the greatest spice known to mankind, Old Bay, but because it is a subjective fact.
McCormick has a long history in Baltimore that runs almost one and a quarter centuries long. In fact, McCormick started out where all great companies start out: in a basement. Willoughby M. McCormick started out making syrups, fruit juices and root beer. He sold his wares door to door with the motto “Make the best — someone will buy it.” Well, duh. And let me tell you something, they are the tastiest spices I’ve ever experienced in the olfactory sense. They aren’t too shabby orally, either.
Since its creation, McCormick has been on the forefront of spicy innovation. In 1910 they implemented the teabag, one of the first tea producers to do so. In 1938, C.P. McCormick, Willoughby’s nephew, developed a new way to sterilize spices without sapping their flavor.
Over the next 72 years, McCormick goes on an awesome rampage of acquiring other companies and products. Over the years it has purchased some of the most recognizable names in the culinary spice world. Do you know, Zatarains? Yep, owned by Mickeys. And no, that is not a real nickname. I made it up. That Thai Kitchen line that has awesome coconut milk? McCormick’s. Essentially anything and everything that is a delicious cooking aid is owned by McCormick. Oh, and the next time you use Lawry Seasoning salt, think of McCormicks.
Michael, I get it, you say. I understand that you have some sort of philia for spices and McCormick, but what does that have to do with me? I’ll tell you, dear reader. It’s Baltimore’s closest approximation to fall. That means that the humidity that we suffer during the summer and most of spring has dissipated, for the most part.
Essentially, we have cooler, drier days and that allows for the ground spices to wend their way down to Baltimore and make the air taste delicious.
It’s like Emeril Lagassi bammed the air with fall spices and pumpkins.
Just imagine, though, just how delicious the air would smell back in 1988, the year before McCormick moved out to Hunt Valley and Sparks, Maryland. I hear tell, for I was sadly not born, that the whole city smelled just like a Baltimorean’s kitchen.
