Just a heads up, even though it's not from either vendor, but Five Pawns, though very expensive, has very good ingredients, and one of their line-up "Absolute Pin" has the anise/black licorice/absinthe flavor.
I tried it and liked it (not a huge anise fan but I like a little bit of it) but a couple seconds after I exhaled my mouth just got swamped with the anise flavor. If you're looking for best ingredients, then you could always work from the top down price-wise

I'd suggest MBV though-- Don't know enough about ecblend but at least with mbv, it's fast and if you buy the $15, they'll send you a freebie to try. Plus, I'm pretty sure MBV has one of the largest community-threads here which is fun to keep up with.