South American Explorer

The story of this precious plant is anything but plain and boring. Corinne Vella follows its trail.

 

Spanish conquistadors are credited with the discovery of vanilla, but Central American Indians discovered it first. If legend is to be believed, the Aztec emperor Montezuma himself introduced the taste to the Spaniards in 1520 when he offered a gilded tortoiseshell goblet of xocoatl (made from the pulverised seeds of the cacao tree) and vanilla to conquistador Hernando Cortés.

 

However, it was Bernal Diaz, a lower ranking officer, who first noticed and documented vanilla, when he saw Montezuma drinking it with xocoatl.

The Indians called ground vanilla beans tlilxochitl, from the word ‘tlilli’ for ‘black’ –

a reference to the colour of the vanilla bean when it is cured and bursting with flavour. The plant is endemic to the tropical forests of Central America in what are now known as eastern Mexico, Guatemala, Belize and Honduras. It was probably the Totonacs, prior to the Aztec period (1200-1500AD), who discovered its flavour and attempted to grow the plant formally, rather than jealously guarding its flowering vines in the wild.

 

Vanilla vines moved from Mexico through Europe to the Indian Ocean and to the South Sea islands, carried by a current of horticultural curiosity and commercial interest. From Mexico, the Spaniards took vanilla beans back home and, in the later part of the 16^th century, set up factories for manufacturing vanilla flavoured chocolate, but it was many years later that beans were successfully cultivated outside the lush forests of Central America.

 

There had been many attempts to grow vanilla vines in various parts of Europe.

 

However, they had met with mixed success and the appearance of flowers on the vine was virtually unknown. When in 1806 or 1807, a single vanilla orchid appeared on the vine in a greenhouse in London belonging to Charles Greville, it was recorded as a momentous event. The European growers did not yet know that the vanilla orchid could be fertilised naturally only by a particular type of bee found in the vines’ native region. Meanwhile, vanilla beans had to be brought into Europe and North America from Mexico, and remained a rare treat for the privileged few.

 

In the era of the three-way struggle between Britain, France and Holland for control of the sea trading routes to the Orient, vanilla arrived in the Indian Ocean. Cuttings from vines growing in the Dutch controlled Moluccas were smuggled out in the late 18^th century to French controlled Bourbon (Réunion) by Pierre Poivre, a missionary turned ambitious horticulturist. The plants died, deliberately poisoned by someone paid by the Dutch East India Company. Poivre smuggled out a second lot, but they did not fare well. It was only 50 years later that the planters of Bourbon were finally able to grow vanilla vines on their island. In a quirky twist of fortune, those were plants donated by the Jardin des Plantes in Paris, which had been grown from cuttings from the vine that had flowered in Charles Greville’s garden.

 

Vanilla beans proved elusive for another twenty years or so, until one day in 1841 when the Bourbon planter Bellier-Beaumont found two growing on his single vine.

 

One of his slave boys, Edmond, claimed to have fertilised the flower by hand. The claim was disputed, particularly by the Parisian botanist Jean-Michel Richard who said he had discovered the technique himself and demonstrated it when he was in Bourbon. Bellier-Beaumont campaigned on behalf of Edmond and the historical record was eventually set straight by a story published in Album de l’île de Réunion. The use of le geste d’Edmond spread throughout the vanilla farming industry and is still used today.

 

In the late nineteenth century, 80% of the vanilla imported into Europe came from the French colonies in the Indian Ocean and the South Pacific. By the beginning of the 20^th century, Madagascar had outstripped Mexico, Réunion, Comoros and Tahiti in supplying the world market and the island now produces half the world’s exports.

 

 Mexico, the home of xa’nat and once the sole supplier of one of the world’s most precious commodities, has been left trailing. Sixty years ago it exported four hundred tonnes of cured beans. Now it produces a tenth of that amount. That fact’s enough to make Montezuma seek his revenge.

 

 

VANILLA FACTS:

 

• According to Vanilla Queen Patricia Rain (www.vanilla.com), vanilla was first brought to America by Thomas Jefferson in the late 18^th century. His recipe for vanilla ice cream is now held in the USA’s Library of Congress.

 

• There are 150 types of vanilla, but only Bourbon and Tahitian are used commercially. Real vanilla contains around 400 hundred components, which give it its rich and complex flavour. Most of the vanilla flavouring in foods comes from vanillin, which occurs naturally but can be and is, made artificially.

 

• Vanilla has become a byword for ‘plain and boring’, but the industry that produces it is shot through with intrigue and skulduggery. Vanilla vines grow on supporting trees in forest plantations that are difficult to guard, so the ripening beans are easily and readily stolen. In subsistence economies where even a few dollars are worth stealing for, desperate thieves will kill for just a few beans.

 

Corinne Vella works in media and communications services. Travel writing is one of her favourite tasks.