Pompona Vanilla is an extremely rare species of vanilla, and ours is wild-harvested in the Peruvian Amazon. You've never had vanilla like this before. The DIY Vanilla Extract Kit contains chopped-up, vine-ripened split pods, perfect for making your own vanilla extract. The jar contains 10 grams of chopped vanilla, with room to add 100ml of your favorite spirit.
Fill the jar with the vodka, whiskey or rum and let it infuse for at least two weeks, but it only gets better with time. Top off frequently, and use as you'd use any other vanilla extract.
Highlights
Moyobamba, Peruvian Amazon
Sun-dried during the day, cured in wooden boxes overnight
Vanilla pompona pods
Dried Cherry • Chocolate • Dark Rum
Cooking tips
- Add to pastries, cheesecakes, bread pudding, and meringues
- Mix into hot chocolate and cocktails
- Drizzle over pancakes and into coffee
- Citrus Upside-Down Cake
- Sweet Mesquite Pecans
SOURCING
If a regular vanilla pod is like a string bean, Pompona Vanilla is like a sugar snap — bigger, fatter, sweeter and fuller of flavor.
These incredibly rare, wild (literally and figuratively) pods come from the Peruvian Amazon. Wild vanilla is virtually unheard of, and impossible outside of vanilla's native range (from Mexico to northern South America).
Vanilla orchids are only pollinated by a couple of species of bee, which only live in the Americas. All commercial Vanilla planifolia (most of which is grown in Madagascar) has to be hand-pollinated by the farmer once per year when the flowers bloom for just 3-5 hours.
Pompona Vanilla is pollinated by a single species called the dilemma orchid bee (amazing), and is then either picked green and cured by hand by 3 foragers over about 6 weeks, or ripened and split on the vine.
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United StatesEasy to use and excellent flavor!
The Wild Pompona Vanilla Extract kit is super easy to use. Just add your preferred spirit and let sit for a few weeks. Makes a great gift! When my partner and I got it last year we used vodka, this year we used whiskey, which gave it a slightly richer flavor. Both ways it's fantastic!
United StatesLovely but flawed design
This vanilla is wonderful but, like other reviewers, the container is a leaky mess and I'm losing extract and spices each time I open it. I won't buy this again until B&B switches to a liquid friendly vessel.
United StatesSmells good and tastes OK but the bottle doesn't work well
I followed the directions for making vanilla from the beans that were sent to me BUT no matter what I did, no matter how careful I was, every time I opened the bottle, it leaked all over the place. The vanilla that I created tasted OK but I probably wouldn't buy this again.
United StatesThe most incredible smelling vanilla
This vanilla smells beyond incredible. My extract has only been sitting for a week and already it smells so fragrant. I spilled a drop while opening the jar to smell it and I tried it and it already tastes awesome. I can't wait for it to get stronger as it sits! I took everyones comments about the jars, and my own experience using an empty B&B spice jar to hold vinegar once, to heart and swapped the provided jar for a 4 oz mason jar. Nice tight seal for the lid, plus room for a little more vodka to make a larger amount of extract. I dumped the beans out into the mason jar, scraped out all the seeds I could with a spoon, then rinsed the B&B jar with vodka and poured it into the mason jar to get the seeds I missed. I was able to get most of them into the mason jar like this. I didn't want to waste any, this vanilla is definitely precious!
United StatesHaven’t tried yet
I’m anxious to try this vanilla, but I don’t use alcohol, so I have to get some food-grade glycerin to make the extract. The vanilla pods I bought a while back worked fine, ground up for some duck confit so I think these will be fine as well.
Supermarket
Fair Trade