Vanilla is Still Sweet in Mexico and Abroad

Though other countries produce more beans, vanilla still thrives as a crop in its land of origin.

BY FLORENCE FABRICANT

Dessert menus often highlight vanilla from Tahiti or Madagascar, but vanilla's roots lie in Mexico.

In the town square of Papantla, a hilly little city in the state of Veracruz that is rarely on tourist itineraries, vanilla vendors sell whole beans, vanilla extracts, liqueurs and perfumes, and even bracelets, crosses and amulets woven of vanilla beans.

''In this part of Mexico, vanilla has mystic properties,'' said Victor Vallejo, who met me for breakfast overlooking the square. ''It's in our culture.'' Vallejo has vanilla plantations nearby and recently retired as the director of the Veracruz Vanilla Council, a trade group.

The original habitat of vanilla, like that of chocolate, once stretched from Mexico south to Venezuela, in wooded and jungle areas, and it was only after the arrival of Europeans that the rest of the world learned of it. This is the heart of the vanilla region.

Vanilla, V. planifolia or V. fragrans, the seed pod of a delicate climbing orchid, is still grown on land that was inhabited and cultivated by the Totonacs. They were forced to pay tribute in thousands of vanilla beans to the Aztecs, who used the vanilla to season their chocolate.

Descendants of the Totonacs still grow vanilla, or xanath, as it is called in their language. Many authorities, including the Larousse Gastronomique, contend that the world's finest vanilla comes from Mexico.

BEAN BUSINESS

But don't expect bargains here. Even in Papantla's market square, beans are about $2 each, cheaper than in New York, where they are about $5, but not cheap.

That's because vanilla is costlier and more precious than ever.

''The wholesale price of vanilla beans has increased from about $40 a kilogram to more than $500,'' or $227 a pound, said Matt Nielsen, a vice president of Nielsen-Massey, a company in Waukegan, Ill., that has specialized in vanilla since 1907.

Eli Zabar, who uses pure vanilla extract in ice cream and baking at his stores on the Upper East Side of Manhattan, estimated that his annual cost of vanilla has soared to nearly $100,000.

America consumes well over half the world's vanilla, importing 2.5 million pounds of beans in 2002. Vanilla is still the favorite ice cream flavor in the United States.

The price leap is a result of a worldwide vanilla shortage over the last three years or so. It is not expected to begin easing until the end of this year.

In April 2000, cyclones in Madagascar, which grows about 60 percent of the world's vanilla and sets the price, destroyed about a third of the vanilla vines in that country.

The vines have been replanted, but it takes at least four years for the whitish-green orchids to bloom on a new plant and to develop the all-important seedpod, which looks like a robust string bean.

There were weather losses in Indonesia, where vanilla is also cultivated. Not enough is grown elsewhere, in Tahiti, Uganda and India, to pick up the slack.

And in Mexico, which accounts for about 10 percent of the world's vanilla, there were serious floods in 1999. The decline in production actually began decades ago, as farmers turned from vanilla to the Gulf Coast oil industry. ''Today, there are about 2,000 growers here,'' Vallejo said. ``Sixty years ago, there were 30,000 families.''

Lucrative cattle-ranching also led to the cutting of the forests needed by the vanilla plants. But recently, Mexico's major vanilla producers have started to develop methods to revive the industry and increase production while maintaining quality.

Vallejo has experimental greenhouses in which the vanilla vines are trained on tall, closely spaced bamboo stakes. And in the nearby town of Gutierrez Zamora, at Gaya Vai-Mex, an old vanilla company, the vines are being grown on orange, cedar and other types of trees. The vines, which are bromeliads and use the trees or stakes only for support, not nourishment, are actually rooted in the soil.

Norma Gaya, the director of the company, which was started more than 100 years ago by her great-grandfather, a Tuscan immigrant, said she sells 95 percent of her production to the United States, mostly to Nielsen-Massey. ''I could sell much, much more if I had it,'' she said. ''I am trying to convince the Totonac farmers to grow vanilla on their orange trees.'' There are 250,000 acres of orange trees in the Veracruz area.

DELICATE PROCESS

Gaya insists that Mexico must not compromise the quality of its vanilla. Leaving the pods on the vines as long as possible helps develop better flavor. This year, instead of starting the picking in mid-November, the growers waited until mid-December. Sometimes, vanilla can be picked as late as February, when the beans begin to turn from green to gold.

After mature seedpods are picked, they are heated to keep them from sprouting, then dried in the sun. They become the dark, slender, leathery but intoxicatingly fragrant vanilla beans that contain thousands of almost microscopic black seeds.

To grow the beans, the flowers must be pollinated by hand, and the beans are also picked by hand. The whole labor-intensive process accounts, in great measure, for the price of vanilla.

The most prized vanilla beans have a light coating of tiny vanillin crystals, or givre, from the French term for hoarfrost, which intensifies the flavor and aroma.

Mexico had a monopoly on vanilla cultivation until the mid-19th century, when the French propagated cuttings on some islands in the Indian Ocean, including Madagascar, where it is usually called bourbon vanilla.

In Mexico the plants depended on a special kind of bee, the melipona, for pollination. Madagascar had none of these bees, so the French figured out how to hand-pollinate the flowers. Cultivated vanilla no longer relies on bees, even in Mexico.

Because of the French connection and the limited supply of Mexican vanilla, pastry chefs tend to prefer bourbon vanilla. It is full-bodied but a little less spicy, without the hints of cinnamon and coffee that distinguish the flavor of the Mexican kind.

Tahitian vanilla has a stronger fragrance and is often used for perfume. Indonesian vanilla is mass-produced and less prized.

It takes about a pound of cured vanilla beans to make a gallon of pure vanilla extract. Because of the cost, impostors have proliferated. Artificial vanilla was developed in 1875, but it only suggests the flavor of the real thing.

Tourists in Mexico pick up big, cheap bottles of vanilla with caramel color and chemicals and no more than 1 percent real vanilla. And those tiny black flecks in the ice cream? They can be recaptured after making extract, by which time they have no flavor, or even manufactured without using any vanilla at all.

Fortunately for home cooks, even at its costliest vanilla is used sparingly. In most recipes the extract is added by the teaspoon, usually at the end of a recipe so the heat does not dissipate the volatile alcohol in the mixture, which must be about 30 percent. Vanilla beans are usually split and the seeds scraped out. The bean pods can be used to infuse a sauce or to bury in sugar to make vanilla sugar.

MELLOW FLAVOR

Though vanilla is used mostly for confectionary and baking, its mellow flavor and perfume can also enhance savory dishes. Larousse Gastronomique suggests that a trace of vanilla can season fish soups, steamed mussels and creamed vegetables. One famous recipe from Alain Senderens, the Michelin three-star chef, is for lobster in a beurre blanc with a touch of vanilla, which enhances the sweetness of the lobster.

A little vanilla can smooth any rough edges in a salad dressing and will also cut the acidity of a tomato sauce.

In Mexico, vanilla seasons many desserts. It is sometimes used to elevate chicken and seafood dishes. Richard Sandoval, the chef at Maya and Pampano, adds it to a corn sauce with crab cakes. Zarela Martinez balances the vinegar in a sauce for chicken with it. Patricia Quintana, who owns Izote, a restaurant in Mexico City, and whose father has a ranch in vanilla country, is generous with the extract in a shrimp sauté.

Vanilla is always added to hot chocolate in Mexico and to most chocolate confections everywhere.

''You can't have good chocolate without vanilla,'' Nielsen said. But, of course, the Aztecs knew that.

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