Vanilla tahitensis from Papua New Guinea

A floral, spicy, singular vanilla

Mild and intensely floral, this vanilla develops notes of tropical flowers and anise, with a chocolatey and slightly spicy background.

Less rich in vanillin than planifolia, it wins you over with its complexity and finesse rather than its power.

It expresses itself particularly well in cold infusions: in a crème anglaise, milk, a syrup or a spirit, in order to preserve its naturally aniseed and sweet aromatic molecules.

Ideal for delicate desserts, a chantilly cream, a whipped ganache or a fruit dessert, where you are looking for fragrance more than raw intensity.

Another reading of vanilla

The Tahitensis variety stands out for the natural presence of aniseed molecules (anisyl alcohol, anisic acid, anisyl acetate), almost absent in planifolia.

On the other hand, it contains less vanillin, which gives it a more floral, airier, less linear profile.

Here we find the X. Tahitensis variety, native to French Polynesia, introduced to Papua New Guinea. While the genetics are the same, terroir and preparation shape a different expression.

Born on a preserved land

A humid, hot, intensely green land.

The vanilla grows in a still wild, hard-to-reach environment, where some tribes still live in rhythm with nature. Little tourism, little infrastructure: it is a preserved, almost raw territory.

This dense tropical climate and this biodiversity give birth to an expressive vanilla, with a more pronounced chocolatey and spicy dimension than its Polynesian cousin.

Processing and maturation

In Papua New Guinea, the ripe beans are scalded after harvest, plunged for a few minutes into hot water to start the enzymatic process.

This is followed by several days of sweating and fermentation, which develop the first aromatic notes characteristic of the region.

Drying then alternates between shade and sun for several months, until supple, concentrated and structured beans are obtained.