Grade A, or we don't sell it.
Nilla Vanilla started with a simple frustration: almost everything sold as “vanilla” in South Africa is cut, blended, or stretched with cheaper Grade B beans and synthetic vanillin before it ever reaches a shelf. We sell one thing — real, Grade A Madagascan vanilla, sourced directly from the farmer who grows it — and we sell it the same way every time, because that consistency is the entire point.
Grade A beans are the more attractive of the two — at least in the sense that they're free from imperfections. They're dark, chocolatey brown in colour and may exude reddish hues on occasion. They're mostly uniform in size and visibly oily, plump from a moisture level usually around 30% or more.
Grade B beans, on the other hand, are skinny and dry to the touch, with a moisture level around 20%. Because they're so dry, they're more likely to split or crack when you try to bend them. Grade B is what ends up in most bulk extract — it's cheaper to buy in, so the flavour gets made up elsewhere. We don't stock it, in any form.
“Gourmet” or “extraction” grade is really just Grade B by another name — bought at a discount for factories that are extracting vanillin out of the pod rather than selling the pod itself. When a jar or bottle doesn't say Grade A on the label, this is usually what's actually inside it.
After you've experienced the world's finest premium quality Grade A pods from Nilla Vanilla, we're confident you won't want to buy them anywhere else.
Every batch is graded once by hand at origin in Madagascar, checked again on arrival in South Africa before it's accepted into stock, and inspected a third time as it's weighed and packed for your order. If a batch doesn't meet Grade A on any of those three checks, it doesn't go out under our name — batch after batch, no exceptions.
In July 2022, Daily Maverick profiled Nilla Vanilla, covering how we source fresh, hand-pollinated Grade A pods directly from a small farmer in the forest hills of northern Madagascar. Fresh pods, cured the traditional Bourbon way, are flown in every two weeks — plump and packed with seeds, a world apart from the brittle, dried-out beans sold in most retail shops. It's the kind of direct-from-farm sourcing most vanilla brands can only claim, and exactly why we're able to guarantee Grade A, batch after batch.
Read “Madagascar's vanilla, pods of desire” on Daily Maverick →Curious exactly how a pod gets from that farm to your kitchen? See our full five-stage process →