Corti Brothers Newsletter for Fall 2002   Page 2  

 PEABERRY COFFEE FROM NEW GUINEA'S SIGRI ESTATE 

Since Corti Brothers sells coffee, but does not consider itself a coffee merchant, we have never before offered coffee in our newsletter. Coffee is the world's second greatest commodity next to oil and we feel that this business is best left to specialist experts. However, we have a coffee that was discovered by Rick Mindermann of our staff that is especially pleasing: SIGRI ESTATE PEABERRY from Papua New Guinea.

The Sigri plantation is located in the Wahgi Valley in the Western Highland Province of Papua New Guinea. It was established in the 1950s and rapidly gained a reputation for producing the finest arabica coffee in that country. For more than 20 years, Sigri Estate, at almost 5,200 feet above sea level, with perfect climate and rainfall, has been internationally recognized as producing a coffee equal to the world's best. All of its coffee is hand picked and inspected, wet processed, and sun dried.

Peaberry beans are a natural sport in coffee beans, usually associated with Hawaii's Kona coffee or Tanzanian coffee from Africa. A normal coffee cherry (the name of the coffee fruit) contains two flat sided beans. In 4- 6% of all coffee cherries, the peaberry occurs when the coffee flower is singularly pollinated, creating one rounded bean rather than two flat sided ones. The peaberry matures with the nutrient flow intended for two coffee beans and has been found to have a higher oil content as well as higher levels of essential minerals. In short, it is a more flavorful coffee bean. Peaberry is famous for its rich, chocolate-y flavor with a sweet, mellow taste.

MONASTERY CREAMED HONEY was found by Donal Smith of our wine department while on vacation. He liked it, brought back a sample, we liked it and now stock it. It is produced by a community of cloistered Cistercian nuns at their monastery in northern California. Making creamed honey fits into this community's life style of "Ora et Labora," prayer and work.

The Cistercians are a religious order of the Roman Catholic church founded in 1098 and has been its most important order for the dissemination of both faith and agriculture in Europe. They take their name from Citeaux, 24 kilometers south of Dijon, France, where the order was founded. Citeaux, is from the Latin "cis tertium lapidem miliarium,"or "just this side of the third milestone." Most of the great vineyards in Burgundy and Germany owe their beginnings to the Cistercians. The sites of Clos de Vougeot and Kloster Eberbach are just two examples of Cistercian properties and are also excellent examples of Cistercian architecture.

Creamed honey is finely granulated honey that has had carefully controlled crystallization. Much smoother than naturally granulated honey, it has the texture of soft butter. All honey can be creamed; but honey, light in color and flavor, yet high in glucose, makes the best creamed honey. The simple granulation heating process also produces a thin layer of air bubbles which remain on the honey surface, looking like, and called, "frosting."

In our last newsletter I featured Tyrrell's Vat 1 Semillon, an established icon of a uniquely Australian white wine from the Hunter Valley. In my opinion, Semillon is the great Australian white wine. I am not alone in this thinking. Most of the world's renowned wine writers have voiced similar, if not identical, notions. Here is another Tyrrell's wine, a very limited production reserve wine, which has never before been bottled separately. It is TYRRELL'S RESERVE HVD SEMILLON 1995.

RESERVE HVD SEMILLON is a unique, limited release from a single vineyard, Hunter Valley Distillery vineyard, which was planted in 1908 for the production of distilling material for fortified wine production. Leased to Penfolds in 1932, purchased by them in 1949, and subsequently bought by Tyrrell's in 1982, this is an unirrigated, ungrafted, original vine Semillon vineyard on light sandy soil. The 1995, a cool, dry, light yielding vintage, with a 40% crop loss due to drought, was handpicked in February, cool fermented in stainless steel, racked off lees, and then bottled. Normally entering as part of the blend for Tyrrell's Vat 1 Semillon, only one other vintage, the 1999, has been bottled separately. The 1999 wine will not be released until at least 2006.

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