From flower to bean
Why real vanilla takes a year.
A fresh green pod smells of nothing. Everything you love about vanilla is made by hand, step by step, over many months. Scroll down and watch the bean change colour.
- 01 · Flowering season
A flower for one morning
Vanilla is an orchid. Each pale yellow flower opens for a single morning and closes by the afternoon. If nothing happens, it simply falls.
- 02 · Early morning
Pollinated by hand
Far from its home in Mexico, almost no insect does this job. So the family walks the rows at sunrise and pollinates every flower by hand, with a thin bamboo stick.
- 03 · Month 1 to 9
Nine months of growing
A pollinated flower becomes a green pod. It hangs on the vine for around nine months, in the half shade of the dadap trees the vines climb on.
- 04 · Harvest
Picked when the tip turns yellow
A pod is ready when its tip starts to turn yellow. Picked too early, it never gets its full taste. So the pods are picked one by one, not all at once.
- 05 · Weeks of curing
Sweating and sun
Fresh vanilla has no smell at all. The pods are wrapped to sweat, then laid out in the sun for a few hours a day and wrapped again. Slowly they turn brown, soft and fragrant.
- 06 · Months later
Rested, sorted, packed
After drying, the beans rest so the flavour can settle. Then Gustu sorts them by length, counts them into bags and seals each one at home.
At home
Getting the most out of one bean.
01
Split and scrape
Lay the bean flat, cut it open lengthwise with the tip of a knife and scrape out the tiny black seeds. That is where most of the flavour sits.
02
Use the pod twice
Never throw the empty pod away. Warm it in milk or cream, then dry it and push it into a jar of sugar. A week later you have vanilla sugar.
03
Keep it dark and closed
Store beans in a closed glass jar or their sealed bag, in a cool, dark cupboard. Not in the fridge: they dry out or get mouldy there.