Our Wal-Marts in Houston carry authentic Mexican vanilla----it's called "La Vencedora" and the label informs that it is natural vanilla concentrated product of Mexico, winner of the Diploma of Honor Gold Medal, First Prize. 31.78 fluid oz. or 940ml. I found it in the Mexican food section. It's very good!! Maybe you can contact WalMart.

I'm not sure if the vanilla extract I have is imitation, I'm pretty sure it isn't. When I was younger, I smelled the vanilla and it smelled so good, so I took a little swag of it. I discovered then just because something smells good doesn't mean it tastes good.

Isn't that the truth! Wow, I can't imagine just taking a big drink of vanilla. Blech!

I've never tasted vanilla straight but only use the real thing. It was really costly a few years ago because of typhoons hurting the plants in Madagascar - a huge producer of vanilla beans. Besides that vanilla is costly because of the huge time factor it takes to extract the essence in the alcohol.

Hey Mama, how long do you soak the beans? I've read that it takes like 9 months to get the extract out of the beans.

Doesn't that take like 9 months to do?