Almost $1300 worth of Madagascar Vanilla bean.
"Wait, how much?!"
We have always chosen the highest quality ingredients we can source for our Deliciousness and never compromised on our recipes. But this year, this year was a year of a brief moment of second guessing that commitment.
We experienced a shocker this year in rounding up our ingredients for the yearly production of Colorado Whiskey Peach Deliciousness, our flagship, and to date, the most loved of all flavors. The always expensive ingredient of fresh Madagascar Vanilla bean, which was originally $65 a pound when we started 5 years ago and suddenly rose to $180 a pound last year...was clocking in from $355-$960 a pound depending on source. 6 to 15x the price we had based our costs on.
But why?
Rumors of blight, climate change causing crop failure, and disease all swirled. But NPR uncovered the biggest reason. Supply and demand.
We as consumers have started to change our eating habits and expectations for quality food to nourish our bodies, we have started to shift our dollars to foods with honest ingredients. The real reason vanilla beans from Madagascar sky rocketed, and other growing regions flat sold out of their beans, is that big brands like Breyers and Nestle and Hershey's, due to consumer demand, have switched back from using artificial vanilla, to the real deal, natures own slow grown natural vanilla. And in Madagascar beans case, not just slow grown and hand picked, cured and packed, but hand pollinated. Every single flower, hand pollinated by a person. Please read the entire article NPR published. Here. It's a good thing right, that big brands are returning to natural ingredients instead of filling with corn syrup and chemicals? Yes, it is. Except consumer demands/trends change quickly, but crop propagation doesn't. Simply put..all the farms and wild harvesters that went out of business when large companies cut costs by replacing their goods with artificially produced vanilla need time to react to this shift in demand. So for now, this is a world shortage of our beloved vanilla bean and the price is what it is.
Honor the ingredients, honor the recipe
When faced with this reality we recognized our own responsibility to not just honor the ingredients but to honor our recipes. So, we didn't change a thing. No alternations. Whiskey Peach is the same Whiskey Peach it's always been. It's just a little bit more expensive this year. We hope you understand and think it's still worth the slight increase in cost. We simply couldn't absorb the increase this year like we did last year. But knowing that we are continuing to support an economy of worldwide agriculture and true real honest ingredients is satisfying.
Every jar of Colorado Whiskey Peach Deliciousness, packed with organic fresh peaches from Paonia, Colorado from our respected partners First Fruits Organic and Osito Orchards, fresh vanilla bean, crafted whiskey from Laws, and pure non-GMO cane sugar is a gem of sunshine and good foods for your enjoyment.
Thank you ever so much for the support.
xo,
Maura g of RedCamper
*Vanilla bean photo compliments of our bean supplier Beanilla.
MG – Check out MSNBC’s “The Profit” and watch the episode about the Bodhi Leaf Coffee Traders. Interesting!