Grand Cru Bourbon Vanilla Beans Grade A Bourbon vanilla beans, 20–23 cm, from Papua, Indonesia

This is the bean you know.

Dark, supple, fragrant. But this is not how its life began.

A year ago, it was green.

No colour. No scent. Just a pod on a vine in Papua, Indonesia.

Its story begins with an orchid.

Vanilla is the fruit of a climbing orchid. Every bean begins as one of its flowers.

The flower opens for a single morning.

By afternoon it has closed. Before it does, our growers pollinate it by hand.

All the while, the vine climbs.

Clinging to the bark of its host tree, it reaches for the light.

Its roots stay close to the surface.

There they feed on the leaves that fall from the tree above.

Below lies volcanic ground.

Ash, worn down over centuries into a dark, crumbly earth.

Rich, and never waterlogged.

The soil holds water without staying wet, and carries the minerals a slow-growing vine depends on.

Then, nine months.

The pod reaches its full length within weeks. It spends the rest of that time filling: with seeds, and with the compound the cure will one day turn into vanillin.

The tip turns yellow.

The pod is ripe. It is picked by hand, still green and barely scented. The vanilla has not yet arrived.

Now comes the slow part.

Ten to twelve weeks, none of it rushed. This is where the flavour is made.

First, a night in teak.

A brief bath of hot water wakes the pod. Then it sweats overnight in teakwood barrels, a step that is our own.

Then, sun and shade.

Out into the sun, back into the shade, day after day, until the pod is supple, glossy and deep brown.

At last, it rests.

Once its aroma has settled, every bean is graded by hand, and every batch is numbered back to its farm.

Few people ever look this closely.

Here is what matters.

In the kitchens of Zuma, Oberoi and Mövenpick

01 Length

20–23 cm

Tip to tip, about 6 g.
A longer bean holds more seeds, and more to work with.

02 Stem

Picked by hand.

Look at the tip. That curve marks where the bean held to the vine:
the signature of Vanilla planifolia, perfectly cured.

03 Surface

Whole. Dark. Supple.

Not a split, not a scar.
Every bean is inspected by hand before it is sealed.

04 Frost

Look for the crystals.

Fine vanillin crystals can rise to the surface.
They are not mould. They are part of the bean.

05 Flexibility

Supple, never brittle.

This batch measures 30–35% moisture in the laboratory:
enough to bend without breaking.

06 Aroma

Held in the sheen.

The bean’s natural sheen carries its aroma.
This batch measures 2.2–3.5% vanillin in the laboratory.

Papua batch · laboratory tested

The note everyone knows.

Vanillin: 2.2 to 3.5% of every bean, measured batch by batch.

But it is not alone.

Hundreds of other aroma compounds stand behind it. These are the ones you will taste.