Quick answer: a Bourbon vanilla bean is expensive for four reasons that add up. Every flower is pollinated by hand, one at a time. The bean takes about nine months to ripen on the vine. It takes four to five kilos of green vanilla to obtain one kilo of cured beans. And then curing and ageing take several more months. Everything added to the price after that is middlemen.
We write from the very start of the chain: our family grows vanilla in the SAVA region, in the north-east of Madagascar. Here is, step by step, what you are paying for when you buy a vanilla bean.
One flower, one single morning, one hand
Vanilla is an orchid. Outside its native Mexico, the insect that pollinates it does not exist. Ever since the technique devised by Edmond Albius in 1841, every flower has therefore been married by hand: the rostellum is pushed aside with a bamboo point and the pollen is brought into contact with the stigma.
The flower opens for one single morning and closes again the same day. If nobody comes by that morning, it drops and there will be no bean. During the weeks of flowering, someone therefore walks the plots every day, vine by vine. The gesture takes a few seconds, is repeated hundreds of times each morning, and is done at first light, before the heat rises.
This is the first real cost of vanilla: no machine can do this work. What you are paying for at this moment is human time.
Nine months on the vine, with no guarantee
Once pollinated, the bean swells and then ripens slowly: allow about nine months before harvest. Nine months during which a cyclone can flatten the plot, a disease can attack the vine, or the harvest can leave before we get to it.
Theft of green vanilla is a daily reality in Madagascar. Families mark their beans with a sign specific to the plantation and watch over the plots at night before cutting. This guarding has a cost that shows on no label.
The harvest, finally, is not done in one go: we pass through again and again, picking only the beans that have reached maturity. A bean cut too early will never develop its aroma.
Four to five kilos of green for one kilo of beans
This is the most decisive figure, and almost nobody has it in mind. The green vanilla that leaves the plantation smells of nothing: it is full of water, and its aroma is still asleep in its precursors.
It has to be blanched in hot water, which kills the bean and triggers the enzymatic reactions that release the vanillin. Then comes sweating in boxes, then weeks of alternating drying, in the sun in the morning and in the shade in the afternoon. The water leaves, the aromatic matter concentrates.
At the end of this journey, four to five kilos of freshly picked green vanilla yield no more than one kilo of cured beans. In other words, behind one kilo of black beans there are four to five kilos that had to be pollinated, watched over, picked, carried, blanched and dried.
Ageing: time is a cost
Once drying is complete, the beans go into trunks lined with greaseproof paper for several months. They are opened, aired, any that are going mouldy are set aside, and they are put back. This is where the aroma builds, with its notes of prune, cocoa and wood.
Then comes sorting by size, a job in its own right: this is what separates an 11 cm bean from a 19 cm bean. In our lots, S measures 10 to 12 cm, M 13 to 15 cm, L 16 to 18 cm and XL 19 to 20 cm. Every bean is measured and put in its place.
Between the morning flower and the bean ready to ship, a year and a half easily goes by. All that time the goods sit, guarded and turned: stock that costs money before it earns any.
Then the stacking of middlemen
Once the bean is ready, the conventional route is a long one. A collector goes round the villages. A curer works the lots. A licensed exporter takes over. A European importer receives the goods. A wholesaler stores them, a packer puts them in tubes, a distributor lists them, a shop sells them.
None of these links is illegitimate: each has real costs and a risk to carry. But with every hand that touches the lot, the price rises, and the grower is paid only at the first link, once. It is this mechanism, more than scarcity, that explains why a bean that left the SAVA reaches the shelf at several times its starting price.
What selling direct changes
Our family grows, cures, sorts and ships. Between the vine and your parcel there is no collector, no third-party exporter, no wholesaler, no packer. Here is what that comes to in euros, on our price list as of 3 September 2026, for our Bourbon vanilla beans from Madagascar:
| Size | 1 bean | Lot of 100 | Price per bean in the lot |
|---|---|---|---|
| S · 10 to 12 cm | 1,90 € | 59,90 € | 0,60 € |
| M · 13 to 15 cm | 2,50 € | 80,90 € | 0,81 € |
| L · 16 to 18 cm | 3,90 € | 119,90 € | 1,20 € |
| XL · 19 to 20 cm | 4,90 € | 164,90 € | 1,65 € |
By the kilo, the same vanilla is 189 € in size M and 248 € in size L. These prices cover growing, pollination, ripening, curing, ageing, sorting, quality control and shipping. They fund no intermediary margin, because there is none. Artisans, restaurants and retailers will find volumes and terms on our trade page.
Comparing two vanilla prices without getting it wrong
Three precautions avoid most unpleasant surprises.
Compare like size with like. An 11 cm bean and a 19 cm bean are not the same product, nor the same amount of matter. On our own price list, the gap runs from 1,90 € to 4,90 € per bean. A price quoted without a length tells you nothing.
Look at weight as much as count. An over-dried bean, thin and brittle, weighs less and flavours less than a supple, fleshy bean of the same length. This is the criterion we go into in choosing your Bourbon vanilla well.
Be wary of a price that no longer makes sense. Below a certain threshold, you are no longer buying culinary vanilla but split, over-dried or extraction-grade beans. Useful in industry, they have no place in a crème anglaise.
So, expensive or not?
An M bean at 0,81 € each in a lot of one hundred is the price of a flower pollinated by hand one morning, of nine months of ripening, of five kilos of green become one kilo, of several months in a trunk and of a journey all the way to France.
Seen this way, vanilla is not an expensive product: it is a slow one. What you pay for is almost never raw material; it is time, care and agricultural risk. The only item you can honestly act on is the number of hands between the plantation and yours.
Frequently asked questions
Why does the price of vanilla move so much from one year to the next?
Because world production is highly concentrated, in one region and one season. A cyclone over the SAVA during flowering cuts into the following harvest and prices rise for everyone; two good harvests in a row bring them back down. It is an agricultural commodity: it follows the sky.
Is a cheaper bean necessarily a worse one?
No. A small, well-aged size is excellent for infusing in milk or a syrup, and logically costs less than an XL. What matters is suppleness, appearance and aroma, not length alone. A low price is only worrying when it comes with a brittle, dull, odourless bean.
How many beans do you need for everyday use?
One bean flavours about one litre of cream, milk or ice-cream base. For regular use, a lot of ten beans works out noticeably cheaper per bean than buying singly, provided you store it well: our guide to storage and preparation explains how to keep beans supple for months.
Going further
Find all our beans in the Bourbon vanilla collection, and our other in-depth articles in the great Spice Wiki.
