Bourbon vanilla, the history of a name

The name Bourbon has accompanied Indian Ocean vanilla for so long that it passes for self-evident. It carries a dated history all the same, one that begins with the christening of an island and continues in the quotation columns of French ports. Following it gives the name its true reach.

An island taken in the name of the king

The island already bore a Portuguese name, Mascareigne, inherited from Pedro Mascarenhas. French navigators were still using it in the early 17th century. France gained a foothold there in stages. The episode that concerns us plays out from Fort-Dauphin, in Madagascar.

Étienne de Flacourt, who ran the French concession, wanted possession of that neighbouring island confirmed. He instructed captain Roger Le Bourg, aboard the Saint-Laurent, to sail there. The first time, the captain passed well clear of it. Flacourt noted that he had steered off course to excuse himself from the task.

So Flacourt sent the ship back, this time with a formal order. The historian A. Malotet, working in 1898 on Flacourt's papers, reports what followed¹.

The account reads in 2 roles. Flacourt gives the name, Le Bourg carries out the taking of possession. The institutional portal devoted to the history and memory of slavery on La Reunion puts it this way, in 1649 Flacourt, from Fort-Dauphin, names it île Bourbon¹⁶. He justified that choice by the goodness and fertility of the island. The captain carries the act onto the coast, in the name of the king. The common account readily hands the name to the sovereign himself.

The date calls for caution. Malotet places this sentence between two dated markers, June 1649 on one side, a document of 18 February 1650 on the other, the Saint-Laurent sailing again on 19 February. The year 1649 is the one commonly read and it remains consistent with the thread of the text.

Bourbon, the name of a reigning house

The same work sheds light on the choice of name 22 pages further on. Flacourt, describing the submission of a defeated chief, requires him to acknowledge « Louis de Bourbon as his king, his lord and his master »¹.

Bourbon names a reigning family first. The expedition lays on the island the name of the house in power, as was then done for newly recognised lands. The name would pass from a dynasty to an island, then from an island to a commodity. The reign of Louis XIV, when vanilla reaches Paris, would thus leave its patronymic to a pod it knew at the time from Mexico.

1846, the name enters the quotations

200 years later, the name has left geography for bookkeeping. On 26 May 1846, the Bordeaux newspaper L'Indicateur published, under the heading « Sales at Le Havre, 23 May », the report of the auctions held on that exchange². The column runs through the colonial commodities, Louisiana cotton, Mobile cotton, Havana sugar, Haiti coffee, New Orleans hides, Carolina rice. In the middle, vanilla.

These are auction prices. The ratio with vanillon, which is Vanilla pompona, exceeds 5. Buyers in 1846 already hold these materials to be distinct. On what these registers cover today, see Planifolia, Tahitensis, Pompona.

The sugar supplies the decisive element. Bourbon works as a colonial trade prefix of origin, applied to sugar as to vanilla, exactly as one wrote Havana or Carolina in the same column. The name files a provenance in a market table.

1871, an entry in a catalogue

25 years later, the name has reached the advertising pages. The Soupe house, at 21 rue Neuve-Saint-Merry in Paris, had its notice inserted in a treatise on winemaking. It addresses distillers and confectioners. Its notice lists distilled waters, essences and curaçaos. 2 entries suffice to file its vanilla offer³.

This page is an advertisement, bought by the house and inserted in the work. Its value lies precisely there, it shows the vocabulary of a seller addressing professionals. The name has become an entry in a catalogue.

1899, the professional description

By the end of the century, the name carries a complete physical description. The Journal des confiseurs, glaciers, chocolatiers of 1 November 1899 devotes to vanilla a passage addressed to exactly the readership these pages have in view today. It describes the sweating on a woollen blanket, the oven stage at 140 degrees Fahrenheit, the coating with cashew oil or melted cocoa butter, then 2 months of sun and the sorting⁴. On preparation as we conduct it, see our savoir-faire.

The sentence sets a clear equivalence. Bourbon, in 1899, means La Reunion. The text confirms it at once by giving the other islands their own rank, since « the vanilla of the Island of Mauritius and that of the Seychelles Islands are of inferior quality to that of the Island of Bourbon »⁴.

The same article gives the orders of magnitude of its day. Production on La Reunion reaches 175,000 kilos. Mexican production, which stood at 700,000 pods in 1866, reaches 20 million pods. It also describes the frauds of the time, with doctored pods slipped into the middle of bundles and a frosting obtained with acid, which invites close examination of the pods in the middle of a bundle. The frost born of the pod itself is the subject of a page of its own.

1910, Bourbon and Madagascar on two lines

The Journal d'agriculture tropicale of 1910 completes the movement. The name is an entry in a table there. That table says something the usage of today has erased⁵.

Bourbon, the Comoros with Madagascar, the Seychelles, Mexico and Tahiti occupy distinct quotation lines. The January issue files them the same way, writing this time « Comoros, Mayotte ». The campaign commentaries speak the same language. The writer notes that « Bourbon vanillas are only just beginning to arrive » and that 2/3 of the harvest is already dealt « between 25 and 32 according to merit, taken at Bourbon ». The sentence that follows opens another paragraph, « On the Madagascar side, the first lots have also made their appearance »⁵.

Quality is read inside the name, since the price list files grades and averages under a single entry, with prices varying according to merit. The name keeps in 1910 the meaning it had in 1846, that of one precise island. The same volume also quotes Bourbon geranium at 27 to 28 fr. and reports a small arrival of vetiver from Bourbon, the prefix remaining what it was, an indication of provenance applied to everything coming off that island.

A price list separates what is quoted separately. These columns therefore establish a quotation practice, the everyday language of the time having been able to remain looser. The constancy of the division over more than 60 years is telling all the same.

How the word widened

Between the price list of 1910 and present usage, the word changed perimeter. Today, Bourbon commonly designates the Planifolia vanillas of Madagascar, the Comoros and La Reunion. The date of that shift is still being sought.

One date circulates everywhere. In 2004, the geographer Judith Klein writes that the Bourbon variety « corresponds to a denomination created in 1964 »⁷. She sets the sentence down as it stands. Her bibliography refers to Jumelle in 1914 then to Bois in 1934, both far earlier. The online encyclopedia and the sales pages then take it up hand to hand.

The Journal officiel, for its part, carries the word on Malagasy pods before that date. On 30 June 1960, in the Assemblée nationale, the deputy Frédéric de Villeneuve pleads for the productions of La Reunion and puts the question to the minister of State¹¹.

4 years before the date that circulates, the word therefore already accompanies the vanilla of Madagascar, widely enough for a deputy to make it a matter for the floor. Commercial usage is in place before 1964.

1964 remains a pivotal year all the same, but for another reason. A protocol is signed in March between the Comoros, La Reunion and Madagascar, « to stagger deliveries and halt the fall in prices », according to the report read to the Assemblée on 22 October that year¹². A Senate report of 1967 says the same in the same terms, speaking this time of staggering sales¹⁷. The 3 producers of the Indian Ocean organise their market.

The context is known. A floor price raised to 15 US dollars a kilo for the 1962 crop had brought on the crisis of 1963, Malagasy exports falling from 639 to 292 tonnes. In February 1964, the conference of Saint-Denis de La Reunion brings together the representatives of the 3 neighbouring producing countries of the Indian Ocean, Madagascar, the Comoros and La Reunion, which decide to harmonise their commercial policy on vanilla, setting prices and quotas¹⁸.

A first conference follows at Tananarive, the same year, bringing together this time the producing countries of the Indian Ocean with the representatives of importers and users. It concludes on a floor selling price of 10.20 US dollars a kilo FOB for export from Madagascar, slightly different prices for La Reunion and the Comoros, purchase commitments from American importers and the promise of a promotional campaign for the natural product in the United States¹⁸.

The same year, American regulation shifts. On 22 December 1964, the Federal Register publishes the recast of the rules applying to frozen desserts, which separates vanilla flavour from artificial flavour and sets an effective date at 180 days¹³. The deadline is postponed, then fixed at 31 December 1965¹⁴. Jennings places in 1965 the commercial turning point that follows, demand for pods rising again⁶.

A protocol then brings together in January 1966 Madagascar, the Comoros and La Reunion to allocate export quotas towards the United States and towards Europe⁶. These documents speak of deliveries, quotas, prices and markets. The vocabulary of denominations remains foreign to them. None of the sources we have been able to consult establishes, however, the creation in 1964 of a label or a denomination « Vanille Bourbon ».

The law brings its own texts. The French decree of 20 May 1966, still in force, defines vanilla by its botany and by its mode of preparation⁹. The protected geographical indication registered on 27 August 2021 is called Vanille de l'île de La Réunion and delimits 8 communes on the windward coast¹⁰. It protects that denomination for the Reunionese area and its specification. It does not protect the word Bourbon across the Indian Ocean. These texts name a plant and an island. The word Bourbon, for its part, lives in usage.

The oldest normative trace at our disposal for a widened Bourbon dates from 1999. The ISO 5565-1 standard notes then, in its scope, that this vanilla « is commercially known under various names associated with its geographical origin, namely: Bourbon vanilla (from Madagascar, the Comoros and Reunion), Indonesia, Mexico, Tonga, India, China, Uganda »⁸. It is a note, recording a usage of the trade. Earlier editions exist, ISO 3493 of 1976 and ISO 5565 of 1982, withdrawn since then and whose text is not accessible to us.

The standard also frames the species. Its specifications cover Vanilla fragrans alone, synonym of Vanilla planifolia. The name Bourbon therefore attaches to that species in the normative text that writes it.

Standardised vocabulary takes up the same reading 15 years later. ISO 3493 of 2014, which sets the terms of the trade, places Vanilla planifolia among the species commercially known under various names associated with geographical origin, such as Bourbon, Indonesia and Mexico¹⁵. The 2 standards do not draw up exactly the same list. They agree on the point that concerns us, Bourbon there is a trade denomination attached to a provenance.

What the name carries

Bourbon names a heritage and a provenance. A reigning house, an island taken in the name of the king, then 150 years of trade registers where the word designates La Reunion. The usage of the 20th century then extends it to the wide Indian Ocean basin, where the SAVA holds first place today.

Reading a vanilla therefore begins after the name. The quotations of 1910 said as much in their own way, filing grades and averages under a single entry. Today that reading is conducted lot by lot, harvest maturity, preparation, robe, suppleness, raw aroma, behaviour in infusion. Time takes a part in it that the trade of the 19th century knew nothing of, that of long maturation.

This is the work we carry out in Madagascar, terroir by terroir, to open to the world terroirs that the trade is only just beginning to name. For what follows, explore our terroirs, the pollination gesture that opens every pod, as well as the arrival of vanilla at Bourbon and then in Madagascar.