Micro-Climate Blog: Because Heritage Isn’t Remotely Plain Vanilla

By Marcy Rockman, Lifting Rocks Climate and Heritage Consulting, for the SHA Climate Heritage Initiative

Flavor, memory, and words are all connected here. The tropics where vanilla beans are warming and being hit by stronger and longer-lasting cyclones, which is making their cultivation more difficult. And the forests that host the vanilla-bearing orchids are being cut down for other purposes, reducing the already small regions from which vanilla can be naturally produced. A visit to a grocery store shows that vanilla flavor can be produced synthetically, but this article asks the question that will be asked by ice cream lovers, bakers, and nearly everyone else – can artificial vanilla truly stand in for the scent and flavor of real vanilla?

I’m particularly struck by the phrasing at the start of the closing paragraph- “It would be a pity to lose these soothing, warm sensations to something chemically made and one-dimensional, while the real deal gets relegated to the memory bins of an older generation.” Pity feels the wrong word here. To me it denies the depth of experiences with which vanilla is interwoven – which are tangible, intangible, and natural heritage all brought together,  the grief of losing a species, and utterly misses our own role and complicity in the forces that are removing vanilla plants from our world. I won’t go on a full rant about “solastalgia” here, but I will note that, again to me, this word doesn’t do the job either. A word that begins with the sounds and concept of comfort does not convey what is happening. I don’t know what word would work, the ending of -cide may be a place to start. One of the things that archaeologists do is assess both what exists in a place and what doesn’t or is no longer there. So I am bringing that lens here.

Featured Link: https://www.nytimes.com/2024/08/04/opinion/vanilla-cooking-climate-change.html

For a listing of all blog posts in this series, visit our Climate Heritage Initiative page.

Photo credit: Illustration of a vanilla bean pod by Scott Semler and shared at link above.