No one appreciates plain vanilla...
Posted on Wed, May. 04, 2005
Fans of vanilla have reason to cheer latest news on price
By JANE SNOW Knight Ridder Newspapers
AKRON, Ohio — All it took to make us appreciate plain old vanilla was a couple of cyclones, an oil boom and political unrest. By the time vanilla extract prices peaked in December at $4 to $10 an ounce, the tropical spice seemed downright exotic. But hold onto your recipes, because happy days for vanilla lovers are almost here again. Vanilla extract soon may be inexpensive enough to bathe in — or to at least make a batch of homemade cream soda or a double vanilla pound cake. “Prices started coming down in February,” said Jim Trout, vice president of merchandising and sales for the Fred W. Albrecht Grocery Co., parent firm of Acme stores. Predictions in December of a lush 2005 harvest in Madagascar, the world’s top producer of vanilla, helped drive down the price. Unprecedented harvests worldwide are expected this year, which should send the wholesale price of vanilla beans through the floor. “This is the first year (since 1999) we have more than enough — roughly double what the world consumes,” said Rick Brownell, who frequently visits the vanilla-growing regions of the world as vice president of vanilla products for Virginia Dare, a leading supplier of vanilla to manufacturers. So far, retail prices have dropped only about 20 percent in local stores. That’s still a relief to shoppers, who were paying about $8 for a 2-ounce bottle of McCormick’s at the height of the vanilla madness. The boutique brands cost even more. The same size bottle of McCormick’s was $4.99 a year ago. Vanilla-bean prices started rising five years ago, after a cyclone knocked out electricity and washed out roads in Madagascar. Buyers panicked and drove up wholesale prices before learning just 15 percent of the crop was lost. The damage to the market had already been done. “Prices doubled overnight,” Brownell said. The slack could not be taken up by Mexico, where many of the jungles that harbored vanilla orchids have been cleared by oil speculators in the last decade. Strong demand for vanilla, a contentious election in Madagascar and another cyclone contributed to the vanilla shortage worldwide. As prices rose, demand began to drop. At the same time, vanilla cultivation began or increased in other tropical countries, such as Papua New Guinea, Uganda, India, Costa Rica and Colombia. Many new vines will produce vanilla beans for the first time this year. Retail prices should continue to fall in the coming months if they follow wholesale prices, which have out-and-out crashed. Wholesale bean prices are down almost 90 percent from their peak in December 2003, Brownell said. Don’t look for that big of a drop yet in supermarket prices. The retail price “went up gradually and probably will come down gradually, too,” said Laurie Harrsen, director of public relations for McCormick & Co., the world’s largest buyer of vanilla beans. “We’re still sitting on vanilla beans from the shortage that were paid for at a very high rate.” Bargains can already be found on extracts made by smaller companies that have a quicker turnover. Prices of extracts sold by the Vanilla Co., an Internet mail order company ( www.vanilla.com), have dropped 50 percent this year, said company owner and vanilla cookbook author Patricia Rain. Whether Americans ever again will enjoy a wide variety of products made with real vanilla is up in the air, though. Most home bakers will probably switch back from imitation to real vanilla as the price drops, but food manufacturers may not. They have learned to make do with imitation vanilla or smaller amounts of real vanilla, and the savings are attractive. “Demand has fallen off by probably half worldwide,” Brownell said. “They’re either using less, trying to make it go further, or they’re using imitation.” Nothing beats the flavor of real vanilla, though. Just ask home bakers who made do at Christmas time with the half-vanilla, half-imitation extract introduced by McCormick last year as a temporary solution to the vanilla shortage. Not even McCormick claims it tastes like the real thing. The company will phase out the product this year, Harrsen said. Inexpensive substitutes shouldn’t be necessary for at least a few years. The new vines planted in Papua New Guinea and elsewhere will continue to produce for six to eight years, Brownell said. Even if demand returns to pre-1999 levels, vanilla should be plentiful for years to come.
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