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Historical Notes
 According to legend, when Hernandez Cortez landed on the coast of Mexico on 4 March 1519, in a location he named La Villa Rica de Vera Cruz ('the beautiful city of the true cross'), the Totonac people greeted him with gifts and food, including some flavoured with vanilla, a hitherto unknown spice.
Vanilla became widespread at the end of the 19th century, with the adoption of a method of artificial pollination (first discovered by Edmond Albius, a plantation worker from Reunion) and a more effective curing technique (known as the Bourbon curing method).
Nowadays, vanilla is cultivated in the islands of Madagascar, Mauritius and Reunion, as well as in Indonesia, most Pacific Islands and Latin America.
Other countries are also entering this market.
Over the years, vanilla has experienced remarkable market instability, mostly due to the occurrence of political turmoil and climatic events, like the hurricane that struck Madagascar, one of the world’s major vanilla producers, in 1970 and again in 2003. As a result, the international price of vanilla has gone through a series of ups and downs ranging from as little as 20 to over 450 USD/Kg. Unfortunately, the high price rises have always been stifled by a concurrent drop of demand, as most buyers then opt for the more economic vanillin, a less expensive synthetic substitute.
A few botanical and agronomic remarks
Vanilla is an orchid, a member of the largest family of flowering plants in the world that includes about 150 varieties, although only two types, Vanilla tahitensis and Vanilla fragrans, are used commercially. Vanilla is the seedpod of either Vanilla Tahitensis or Vanilla fragrans (also known as Vanilla planifolia), a climbing vine, which is characterized by linear fleshy leaves, individually attached at nodes along the stem in alternate directions. Aerial roots are produced from each node, which cling to the surface of a training stake, usually a post or a tree.
Vanilla is not particularly demanding in terms of soil conditions. It prefers slightly acid, well-drained, friable soils, but with reasonable water retention capacity.
The roots of the vanilla plant do not grow into the ground, but they need a ‘mulch’ to provide shade, nourishment and moisture. The ideal mulch for vanilla is a dry, inert compost, such as coconut husks, coconut stumps, dry leaves and grass, rotten decaying timber, aged cocoa shells and other organic matter.
Vanilla flourishes in partial shade, but its branches require light and air in order to produce flowers and fruit. The yellow-green flowers develop, in spikes of 15 to 20 or more, from the leaf axil.
Self-pollination is practically impossible and some form of external input is almost always required, eg a large arthropod or hummingbird. As a consequence, human intervention is necessary in specialized plantations to ensure a timely and appropriate insemination of the flowers.
After insemination, the capsules take about 9 months to reach ripeness.
After cropping, the complete curing cycle of the capsules takes about 120 days.
The vanilla of Venui Vanilla
 Over the years, Venui Vanilla has perfected a cultivation system, as well as a processing and curing methodology, which represent the ultimate in vanilla production. Venui Vanilla has achieved such excellence not simply in terms of its final product quality, but also by leading the way as a model producers’ organization and through its commitment to equitable trade.
In particular, Venui Vanilla has developed a slow-curing process that, although sophisticated in its sequence, is tailor-made for limited quantities of raw material and can easily be adopted by small farmers. In developing the process, Venui Vanilla carried out an extensive number of tests to ensure a final product with a high content of vanillin.
The processing and curing methodology devised enables Venui Vanilla to offer a range of vanilla products besides its high-quality vanilla capsules, including an alcohol-based essence, a very fine powder and, through a slow-maceration process, based on the rediscovery of ancient recipes, a sugar-based extract in the form of paste.
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