I would have though by now, there would be hothouses and greenhouses aplenty devoted to growing the Vanilla Bean. Maybe Vanilla is like the Coffee Bean, in that it is difficult to artificially reconstruct the conditions readily available in nature, albeit in limited quantities.
The richest vanilla I have tasted was bought at a crowded bazaar market in Cap Hatien, Haiti. Its beans are wild grown and collected by mountain natives. The cured beans are hard, black and deeply shriveled. The taste is the essence of exotic.