Why is vanilla so expensive?
Vanilla is expensive because the orchid flowers must be pollinated by hand, the pods take months to grow and cure, and most comes from one country, Madagascar, where storms and theft affect supply.
Each vanilla flower blooms for only a few hours on a single day and must be pollinated by hand outside Mexico. After pollination, the pods take about nine months to mature, then several more months to cure. All this labor makes vanilla the second most expensive spice after saffron.
About 80 percent of the world's natural vanilla comes from Madagascar. Cyclones there can destroy crops and cause prices to soar. Between 2017 and 2018, prices rose to around 600 dollars per kilogram, more than the price of silver by weight at the time. Farmers sometimes harvest early or guard their vines at night because of theft.
Natural or artificial
Because natural vanilla is costly, most vanilla flavor in ice cream, cookies and drinks is made with synthetic vanillin, which is far cheaper. Less than 1 percent of vanilla flavoring used worldwide comes from real vanilla beans.
Did You Know?
Vanilla prices have since fallen from their record highs, but they still change greatly depending on weather and harvests in Madagascar.