Pure Vanilla, with its wide range of flavour profiles, can be applied to a vast array of products.  It is one of the most widely used flavours in the world, particularly in ice cream. It finds its way into sauces in Mexico and cookies in Sweden. Vanilla flavours fruits in Polynesia and perfumes colognes in Paris. Anywhere there is a need for a mellow accent that compliments sweet and savoury, plain and fancy, vanilla is there.

Vanilla beans are the exquisite pod-like fruit of the vanilla orchid flower - curiously scentless.  There are more than 50 varieties of the vanilla orchid, however, only three produce the delicious fruit connoisseurs crave.  Vanilla is the only edible fruit in the orchid family.

 The vanilla flower opens only one day a year and must be hand pollinated to produce a pod, requiring a labour intensive three to six month curing process to develop full flavour. About 5 pounds of harvested pods produce only one pound of cured pods.

 Today's vanilla beans are grown in four main areas of the world, Madagascar, Indonesia, Tahiti and Mexico. Each region produces vanilla beans with distinctive characteristics and attributes. 

Types of Vanilla Beans 

* The Madagascar Bourbon Vanilla - grown in Madagascar, bourbon applies to the Bourbon Islands;
considered to be the highest quality pure vanilla available, described as having a creamy, sweet, smooth, mellow flavour.

* Tahitian Vanilla Bean – a fatter bean, more moist than the Mexican or Bourbon, but possessing a singular floral sweetness. - grown from a different genus of vanilla orchid, this vanilla is flowery and fruity, anisic and smooth-many vanilla experts have developed a fierce loyalty to this rare and costly bean.

* Mexican Vanilla - by general consensus, considered the bean of choice by vanilla connoisseurs worldwide.- a moist, thin-skinned bean of superb aroma and flavour - but difficult to procure. - - - described as creamy, sweet, smooth and spicy.

* The Java Vanilla - grown in the island Java in Indonesia– sweet, spicy flavour.