Vanilla what is it made of

The difference has to do with how each one is made—and knowing the difference might just save you some money. Vanilla comes from a tropical orchid, native to Mexico but now cultivated in various equatorial regions, including Central America, Africa, and the South Pacific. Indeed, more than 80 percent of the world's vanilla comes from Madagascar.

Because so much of it comes from just one place, the world's supply of vanilla is thus highly vulnerable to monsoons and other local weather events, as well as disease. The vanilla orchid grows on a vine, and on vanilla farms, each vine needs its own tree to grow on. It can take up to three years for a vine to reach maturity and begin to flower. And when it does, the flower blooms for just one day. Moreover, the vanilla blossom must be pollinated by hand, on the precise day that it blooms.

As you can imagine, this is a highly labor-intensive process. Successful pollination of one flower results in a single 6- to 8-inch pod which takes 8 to 9 months to ripen, whereupon it is harvested.

The next step is curing the beans, which starts by blanching them, or briefly immersing them in hot but not boiling water, which halts the ripening process and activates an enzyme that starts the development of the bean's characteristic vanilla flavor. After this, the beans are tightly rolled in wool blankets and stored in a dark, airtight container, in a process known as sweating, which is really a process of fermentation. The energy released by fermentation keeps the pods warm and moist.

The blankets are unrolled and laid in the sun each day, then rerolled at the end of the day. This process is repeated for up to two months, after which the beans are removed from their wrapping and air-dried for another 3 to 4 weeks. The final step in curing, known as conditioning, involves wrapping the dried beans tightly in wax paper and sealing them in a closed box. This process takes at least one additional month, although it is often performed in conjunction with shipping since the beans' journey from Africa to the Atlantic coast of the United States can take 6 to 8 weeks.

Thus, from the flowering plant to shipment of the cured beans, the process has taken 12 to 14 months. Note that the labor practices at a vanilla orchard, including the use of child labor and unfair working conditions, are beyond the scope of this article, to say nothing of the environmental impact thereof, but readers who are so inclined can investigate further.

Once the beans arrive at the extraction facility, they are ground into small pieces, exposing the seeds inside the pod, which contain the various volatile essential oils that produce the distinctive flavors and aromas of pure vanilla. Share Tweet Email. Read This Next Wild parakeets have taken a liking to London. Animals Wild Cities Wild parakeets have taken a liking to London Love them or hate them, there's no denying their growing numbers have added an explosion of color to the city's streets.

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