The Untold Backstory of Warm Winter Spices Like Nutmeg and Cinnamon

There’s a story I used to tell in my marketing keynotes about the early popularity of cinnamon. Spice traders hundreds of years ago, wanted to inflate the price they could charge for cinnamon so they created an elaborate story about a fierce bird known as the cinnamologus that had to be tamed in order to harvest the fragrant sticks (the cinnamon) it used for its nest. Over time, the story was proved to be fabricated — but it turns out it’s just one of several unusual backstories for “winter spices” that are so popular this time of year.

Nutmeg is another one, whose true origin story features colonizers, islands in Indonesia and the true story of how the North American city of “New Amsterdam” founded by the Dutch was traded to Britain in a bid to control the world’s nutmeg supply. That traded city, as you might know, was later renamed “Manhattan” It’s a fun winter time story that you can watch and share with family in this short National Geographic video about the “Nutmeg War” that played a central role in the history of America’s most famous city.