At the beginning of June 2025 I stopped by the Parisian boutique of my very good friend, master chocolatier Jean-Philippe Casteuble (fifilapraline.com). I came by at a good time because it just so happened that a young man, a sales representative recently hired by a company specializing in very rare ingredients from the Island of Madagascar, was standing at the counter giving out samples of honey - honey of passion fruit, lychee and something else that has now escaped me.
I enjoyed tasting the honeys when JP (Jean-Philippe) said "Justin, you missed seeing his vanilla!". Right then the young man, pulled out the biggest vanilla bean that I have ever seen in my life - almost 30 centimeters long (just under an imperial foot).
Though I was about to fly back to the USA in a couple of days, and didn't plan on traveling back to Paris from home in the suburbs before leaving the country, I decided I couldn't leave France without bringing back some of those vanilla beans.
These beans are slightly smaller than the specimen Paul (the young man) showed me initially, but they are still at least 4 times the weight of the vanilla beans commonly found (3-5 grams), weighing in at a whopping 20g each (at minimum), and measuring 20 to 25 cm long (8-10in, approximately).
Check out the pictures that compare these vanilla beans to commonly found ones!
