This is Amazonian vanilla, which Alex Atala brought to yesterday's conference on "Seeds: Cultivating the Future of Flavor."
The conference, at Stone Barns, brought together many of the world's greatest chefs and was astonishingly instructive. As soon as I've had a moment to go through all my notes, I'll post about it.
But here's a small taste. Alex Atala brought these extraordinary vanilla pods along, as an example of the sort of diversity found in Brazil. I put the peach there for a size comparison; they're the most enormous pods I've ever seen. The fragrance was intense - a bit of cinnamon, a bit floral, very vanilla - and I think every chef in the room wished he could get his hands on some.