The Spice Diva is in the little purple building at Main Street Market in Charlottesville, Virginia. We opened in November, 2011. We offer you the finest and most flavorful spices, salt, peppers, herb teas in bulk and exquisite extracts. Our products are ground within a week of shipping and never treated with pesticides. All of our dried spices are Kosher. The herb teas we carry are superb with many interesting layers of flavors. One of them was prepared especially for the Dalai Lama.
The best thing about walking into our shop is the wonderful smell that transports you to exotic parts of the world. We invite you to be creative and are here to help you with ideas to enhance your enjoyment of the seasonings. Our website features a weekly recipe as well, to highlight one spice or a combination of spices. We have several professional chefs who will be assisting us by providing their original recipes. Organic spices may be ordered by special request.
In addition to our edible products, we feature the work of local artisans who make implements to grind and serve spices.
The decor and logo of The Spice Diva is based upon batik textile designs produced by Zambian women who have been organized by Doctors Without Borders to export their handicrafts. Each month, The Spice Diva will make a contribution to these women to thank them for our success.
If you would care to purchase these textiles, please inform us and we will assist you in that as well.
Our Founder
The Spice Diva was founded by Phyllis Hunter and her family. A native of Texas, she was an opera singer for many years, having sung in opera houses in the U S and Europe. You can take the diva out of the opera, but she never stops being a diva. She taught singing after moving to Virginia Beach from New York to marry attorney, Wil Harville. They have three sons – Jeremy, a chef in Kauai, Sam, a Coast Guardsman, stationed in West Palm Beach, Florida (poor thing!), and Lucas, a cyclist, attending Lees McRae College in North Carolina. Phyllis co-founded the Virginia Art Song Society which operated for many years to bring singing opportunities and great artist master classes to Virginia. She had a brief career selling Jaguars, Porsches and Audis and will always love fast cars. She is a very messy gourmet cook and Wil is her bartender, cleanup crew (no easy task), best food taster and supporter. Wil, a William and Mary and Washington and Lee Law graduate is in a general law practice with attorney, Stuart Salmon. Wil and Phyllis moved to Afton, in July of 2011, after 27 years in Virginia Beach, because they love the mountains and the vibrant, exciting local food and cultural scene in Charlottesville – and the fact that you can take your dogs to Sunday brunch on the Mall. The Spice Diva has been a family idea and a family project since its founding. Even the dogs and the birds helped out.