Quick answer: a vanilla grade is not a tasting note, it is a sorting category. It classifies the bean by moisture, appearance and length. Gourmet Grade A holds 30% to 38% moisture, stays whole, with no split bean in the lot, and splits cleanly under a knife. TK, which the trade also writes Rouge TK, is capped at 32% moisture and counts roughly half already split beans. Rouge US/EUR is capped at 30% and goes to extraction. Cuts are pieces, 18% at most. The wetter and the more intact the grade, the more it costs per kilo, and the greater the share of that kilo that is water.
A grade is a basket, not a verdict
Sorting is done on tables, by hand, after the conditioning stage. The bean passes through the fingers: it is bent, smelled, laid against a wooden rule, and it falls into one of four baskets. The grade is the name of that basket. Nothing more.
This matters, because the word “grade” suggests a hierarchy of flavour. It is nothing of the kind. A Rouge bean cut from the same vine, on the same day, as its Gourmet neighbour carries the same vanilla. It simply opened as it ripened, or lost a few more points of moisture on the drying racks. What changes is what you can do with it, and therefore what it is worth.
Our family grows in the SAVA region, in north-eastern Madagascar, and six to eight months pass between harvest and sale. Scalding in hot water, sweating in chests, drying in the morning sun and then in the shade, months of conditioning in chests. The grade is decided only at the end of that chain, once the bean has stopped moving.
Gourmet Grade A: the bean you split
Moisture of 30% to 38%, vanillin of 1.4% to 3%, and no split bean in the lot. Uniform dark brown, supple enough to wrap around a finger without breaking, slightly oily to the touch.
It is the only grade that stands up to the pastry chef's gesture: you split it end to end with a knife, scrape out the caviar, then return the empty bean to infuse. A bean that is too dry tears under the blade and keeps its caviar inside.
At retail, our sizes follow length: S from 10 to 12 cm, M from 13 to 15 cm, L from 16 to 18 cm, XL from 19 to 20 cm. Length adds no aroma per gram, it adds comfort and material per bean. On our Bourbon vanilla beans page, a single bean runs from €1.90 in S to €4.90 in XL, and the kilo from €165 in S to €284 in XL. The same product, sorted differently.
One point few people make: at 34% moisture, a kilo of Gourmet holds around 340 g of water. You are paying for that water. And you are right to pay for it, because it is what makes the bean splittable and what carries its suppleness. But you should know it before you compare two prices per kilo.
TK: drier, and half of it split
Moisture of 32% at most, vanillin of 1.4% to 3%, and roughly half the lot split along its length. TK is a trade abbreviation, also written Rouge TK, and we know of no official meaning for it worth repeating.
TK still bends, but it cracks sooner, and the split changes the work: a bean that is already open gives its caviar to the liquid without your having to split it. It is the choice of artisan ice cream makers and biscuit bakers, for infusion in cream and milk, for extract, syrup, powder and sugar.
Its appeal is also arithmetic. At equal length, a TK bean weighs less than a Gourmet because it carries less water. A kilo of TK therefore holds more beans, and more aromatic dry matter, for a lower price per kilo at the same tier. For a workshop that infuses or macerates, it is very often the best value in the catalogue. For a pastry chef splitting a whole bean in front of the customer, it is not: that calls for Gourmet.
Rouge: the extraction bean
Moisture of 30% at most, vanillin of 1.4% to 3%. Red-brown to mahogany, often lighter in colour, and here too roughly half the beans are split.
A bean opens because it was left to ripen a little longer on the vine. That is an accident of the calendar, not a fault in the growing. It has exactly the aroma of its neighbours. It simply can no longer be presented in a glass tube.
Rouge is the standard of extract workshops and laboratories: alcoholic extracts, syrups, vanilla sugars, macerations, ice creams. It is the grade that delivers aroma at the best cost when appearance does not come into it. At the same tier, its price per kilo sits well below TK.
Cuts: the pieces
Pieces. Short sections, broken beans, ends. Moisture of 18% at most, so distinctly drier than the other three grades, and vanillin of 0.8% to 1.8%, below the range of whole beans.
Use: industrial extraction, powder, large volume maceration. It is the lowest price per kilo of the four, and there is nothing to sort on arrival, all of it is usable material. It is also the grade to buy on analysis rather than by eye. Ours come out of our own sorting and ship in numbered 25 kg woven sacks with their laboratory analysis: vanillin by HPLC, moisture by Karl Fischer.
Comparing grades without getting it wrong
The classic mistake is to line up four prices per kilo and pick the lowest. The right calculation is the price of the aroma, not the price of the material.
Three habits. One: always bring it back to dry weight, by deducting the stated moisture. Two: ask whether the job demands a whole, intact bean, because if it does the debate is closed, it will be Gourmet, the only grade with no split bean. Three: for infusions and extracts, test a dosage on one litre before committing to a whole tier, because the difference in yield between grades shows up after a single night of maceration.
A word on vocabulary for anyone buying on the international market: the correct English term is a vanilla bean. Not a pod, and certainly not a clove, which is another spice entirely. An offer that announces “cloves” is not talking about vanilla, it is talking about clove, where the word is finally the right one.
What we sell, and in what form
In whole Bourbon beans, at retail we sell only Gourmet Grade A, sized S, M, L or XL. That is a deliberate choice: someone buying five beans wants to be able to split them. The Bourbon vanilla collection brings together these beans and everything that comes from them: extract, powder, sugar and caviar. It also holds Pompona vanilla, which is a different species and does not read on this grading scale.
TK, Rouge and Cuts are volume grades, gathered on our vanilla by the kilo page. The tiers do not start in the same place: Gourmet from 1 kg, TK and Rouge from 5 kg, Cuts by 25 kg sacks. Every lot travels numbered, with its laboratory analysis, vanillin by HPLC and moisture by Karl Fischer, its phytosanitary certificate and its certificate of origin, in line with the NF ISO 5565-2 standard.
To go further, two useful reads: choosing your Bourbon vanilla well, which sets out what to look for by hand and by nose, and storing and preparing beans, because a badly stored Gourmet loses its moisture and quickly becomes impossible to split cleanly. The rest of our guides are filed in the Wiki.
Frequently asked questions
Does Gourmet Grade A taste better than TK?
No, not at equal dry matter. The vanilla is the same, from the same vines, and both grades show the same vanillin range, 1.4% to 3%. Gourmet is better for one precise use, the one where you split the bean and scrape out the caviar. For an infused cream or an extract, a well chosen TK gives an equivalent result, often for less, and its already split beans infuse faster still.
How can you tell whether a bean really is at 30% moisture?
The serious measurement is instrumental: in the laboratory, water content is determined by Karl Fischer, and that is the figure we publish for every lot. The gravimetric route, weighing a sample then drying it to constant mass, gives the same order of magnitude. By hand you get only an estimate: a bean that wraps around your finger without marking or cracking is in the upper range, a bean that cracks as you wrap it has dropped lower. Insist on the lot figure in writing for any purchase by the kilo.
Can you buy Rouge or Cuts in small quantities?
No, these are volume grades: Rouge starts at 5 kg and Cuts are sold by 25 kg sacks. For a small quantity, there are two routes. Ask for a sample from the vanilla by the kilo page, stating your use, maceration, powder or infusion, and the annual volume you have in mind. Or start by testing Gourmet by weight on the shop, in 250 g or 500 g. We point you to the least expensive grade that does the job, not to the dearest.
