We long for a time in America when autumn arrived quietly.

Leaves changed color. People put on sweaters. Somebody woefully dragged a rusty rake out of the garage. Pumpkins sat harmlessly on porches awaiting either a carving knife or eventual destruction from the neighborhood jackals.

Then came the Pumpkin Spice Latte. And everything went entirely off the rails.

Today, pumpkin spice is less a flavor than a seasonal occupation force. It arrives while swimming pools are still open and proceeds to infiltrate coffee, cereal, cookies, yogurt, candles, dog treats, air fresheners and whatever other defenseless consumer products happen to be standing nearby.

But the strange thing is this:

Starbucks didn’t invent pumpkin spice.

Not even close.

Ye old pumpkin trail actually begins hundreds of years earlier, involves America’s first cookbook, a Baltimore spice company, some people eating pumpkin pie in a laboratory, and eventually hundreds of millions of cups of coffee.

So grab something caffeinated...We’re diving into the sorted and steamy past of the Pumpkin Latte.

1796: The "Pompkin" Conspiracy

Our first suspect is a woman named Amelia Simmons.

In 1796, Simmons published American Cookery, widely recognized as the first known cookbook written by an American and published in the United States.

Inside were recipes for something she called “pompkin.”

And the ingredients should sound suspiciously familiar.

As the ⁠Smithsonian explains in its history of pumpkin spice, early editions of American Cookery included pumpkin pie recipes using combinations of mace, nutmeg, ginger and allspice.

In other words, more than 200 years before anybody walked into a coffee shop and ordered a PSL, Americans were already combining pumpkin with the warm spices we now associate with pumpkin spice.

The latte had not yet arrived. But the DNA was there...Waiting like a nefarious rascal on your porch, ready to thoroughly bludgeon your favorite orange carved gourd with a baseball bat on Halloween night.

1934: Somebody Puts It in a Jar

Now jump forward nearly 140 years.

By this point Americans were buying individual containers of cinnamon, ginger, nutmeg and allspice and measuring them into pies like civilized people.

McCormick, the spice company, apparently looked at this situation and thought, "Why are we making everyone do all this incredibly difficult work?"

According to ⁠McCormick’s official history of Pumpkin Pie Spice, the company introduced its Pumpkin Pie Spice in 1934.

The blend contained cinnamon, ginger, nutmeg and allspice.

Notice something important here. There is no pumpkin in Pumpkin Pie Spice. This is the great misunderstanding at the center of the entire pumpkin spice universe.

“Pumpkin spice” originally meant the spices you put inside a pumpkin pie, not your favorite large orange gourd that had somehow been "Gandalf'ed" into spice.

McCormick had essentially taken an old American flavor combination and put it into one convenient container.

A fuse had been lit. It would take almost 70 years to reach the espresso machine.

2003: Enter the Liquid Lab

Now we truly arrive at the scene of the crime.

Seattle. 2003.

Starbucks had already found success with seasonal beverages, and like any villainous corporate enterprise hell-bent on world domination, the saucy mermaid wanted another one, this time for fall.

So a small product development team stealthily gathered inside a weirdly secure research and development dungeon at Starbucks headquarters known as the Liquid Lab.

Yes. "The Liquid Lab" is an actual thing.

According to ⁠Starbucks’ history of the Pumpkin Spice Latte, the development team began experimenting with ideas for an autumn espresso drink.

And then somebody did something slightly insane. They ate pumpkin pie. Then they drank espresso.

Pie --> Espresso... Pie --> Espresso...

The idea was to figure out which flavors from pumpkin pie worked particularly well with coffee.

This is sometimes how history happens. Not with a scientific calculation gone mad. Occasionally, it’s just a bunch of caffeinated people standing around a laboratory feeding on pie.

Pumpkin Wasn’t Even Supposed to Win

Here’s where the story gets better.

Pumpkin wasn’t necessarily the obvious choice.

Peter Dukes, who led development of the drink, later recalled that the team had been considering several fall beverage concepts. Pumpkin was unusual, particularly as a flavor to combine with espresso.

And unusual turned out to be exactly what they needed.

The team spent about three months developing the drink, eventually landing on a pumpkin spice sauce with cinnamon, clove and nutmeg, combined with espresso and steamed milk, then topped with whipped cream and pumpkin pie spices.

You can hear the people who actually developed the drink tell the story in ⁠Starbucks’ oral history of the PSL.

Even the name took some work. The team kicked around several possibilities before settling on Pumpkin Spice Latte. P-S-L. Three letters that would eventually become unavoidable, and later, much like Thanos, "inevitable."

The Experiment Escapes the Laboratory

Starbucks tested the new drink in 100 stores in Vancouver, British Columbia, and Washington, D.C., in 2003.

Something happened... People went out of their minds.

According to ⁠Starbucks’ official PSL history, the company knew within about a week that it had a winner.

The following year, in 2004, the Pumpkin Spice Latte rolled out across the United States and Canada.

Godzilla was loose. And They were hell-bent on global domination.

Then America Completely Lost Control of the Situation

What followed was no longer simply a coffee trend.

It became a seasonal ritual.

By the drink’s 10th anniversary, Starbucks says its baristas had already made more than 200 million Pumpkin Spice Lattes.

There had even been a brief pumpkin spice panic in 2012, when demand caused some Starbucks stores to temporarily run out of the flavoring. News organizations covered the shortage. People freaked. Civilization nearly crumbled, yet miraculously survived.

Barely.

The PSL went on to become Starbucks’ most popular seasonal beverage, a distinction the company ⁠still gives the drink more than two decades after its introduction.

And somewhere along the way, the Pumpkin Spice Latte stopped being merely something people drank.

It became a signal that Fall has arrived (Or at least tmarketing departments have decided fall is here).

One Small Problem: There Wasn’t Actually Pumpkin in It

For years, another curious fact lurked inside the Pumpkin Spice Latte.

There wasn’t any trace of pumpkin in the recipe.

Remember our lesson from 1934. Pumpkin spice doesn’t necessarily mean pumpkin. It means the spices traditionally associated with pumpkin pie. But in 2015, Starbucks changed the recipe and added actual pumpkin puree.

Starbucks confirms the change in its ⁠oral history of the PSL, and today the company actually works with farmers growing kabocha pumpkins that are turned into puree for its pumpkin spice sauce.

Yes, there are actual PSL pumpkins.

In fact, Starbucks recently documented ⁠the entire journey of those pumpkins from a farm in the Walla Walla Valley to the processing plant. We had achieved peak pumpkin.

Then Pumpkin Spice Became Bigger Than Pumpkin

This is where things get genuinely strange.

Pumpkin spice escaped from coffee and spread like Buffalo Grass to infiltrate every oriface of your cupboard and linen closet.

• Cereal
• Cookies
• Creamers
• Beer
• Ramen
• Yogurt
• Candy
• Candles
• Soap
• Dog treats and dog shampoo.
• Trash bags.

Even Spam got involved.

This is not a joke.

According to ⁠Associated Press reporting using NielsenIQ data, annual U.S. sales of pumpkin-flavored grocery products reached $802.5 million in the 12 months ending in July 2023.

And that figure didn’t include coffee-shop and restaurant purchases.

At that point we were no longer dealing with a beverage. We were dealing with an economy of a small Carribean island.

Then Pumpkin Spice Started Defiling August

For years, pumpkin spice at least had the common decency to wait for something resembling autumn. Things got weird.

Google looked at years of search data for the Pumpkin Spice Latte and discovered that, through 2017, interest behaved more or less rationally. Searches surged during the traditional fall season.

Then the calendar started slipping.

According to ⁠Google’s analysis of Pumpkin Spice Latte search trends, since 2018 search interest in “Pumpkin Spice Latte” has peaked in August.

August! A month in which much of New Jersey is approximately the temperature of the surface of Mercury.

The pumpkin spice industrial complex no longer waits for fall. It SUMMONS fall.

2022: The Dictionary Surrenders

Eventually even the English language had to acknowledge what had happened.

In 2022, pumpkin spice officially joined the dictionary.

Merriam-Webster added the term during a large update of new words and meanings, defining it as the familiar spice mixture typically containing cinnamon, nutmeg, ginger, cloves and often allspice.

Think about that journey:

• 1796: Amelia Simmons publishes American pumpkin recipes seasoned with warm spices.
• 1934: McCormick puts Pumpkin Pie Spice into a jar.
• 2003: Starbucks employees eat pumpkin pie and sip espresso inside something called the Liquid Lab.
• 2004: The PSL rolls out across the United States and Canada.
• 2012: A temporary shortage causes an actual pumpkin spice panic.
• 2013: Starbucks passes 200 million PSLs sold.
• 2015: Actual pumpkin finally enters the Pumpkin Spice Latte.
• 2022: Pumpkin spice enters the dictionary.

And now here we are.

So Why Does This THING Have Such a Hold on Us?

Probably because the Pumpkin Spice Latte isn’t really selling pumpkin.

It’s selling September. Or at least the September that exists in our heads.

Cool mornings. Sweaters. Changing leaves. Football. First Day of School. Halloween approaching. The first cold night when you suddenly remember where you put your jacket last spring.

The smell of cinnamon, nutmeg, ginger and cloves has been associated with American autumn cooking for generations.

The genius of the Pumpkin Spice Latte was taking all of those associations and stuffing them into something you could carry around in a paper cup.

You weren’t just buying coffee. You were buying the feeling that summer was over.

Even if it was 87 degrees outside.

Which Brings Us to Cedar Bean’s

We understand the madness.

We participate in the madness.

But around here, there is one important rule: Pumpkin spice season does not begin because somebody corporate knucklehead flips a marketing switch in August.

It begins when we say it begins.

Because after more than two centuries of pumpkin pie, nearly a century of commercially blended Pumpkin Pie Spice, and more than two decades of Pumpkin Spice Lattes, somebody has to maintain order.

And apparently that responsibility has fallen to a coffee shop in Cedar Grove, New Jersey.

So welcome back, pumpkin spice. It's freakin' FALL. The leaves can start changing now.

It’s not Pumpkin Spice Season till WE say it is.