Pine
Also known as: pine cones, nobilis pine
The needles, young shoots, buds, cones, and resin of pine trees (genus Pinus), used in beverages for their resinous, green, balsamic aromatics. Across cultures pine has flavored resinated wines, brewed beers, infused teas, and fermented soft drinks.
How pine is prepared
Pine resin is added to fermenting wine must; needles, buds, and shoots are boiled or infused for teas and beers; young spring tips are foraged for modern ales, gins, and carbonated soft drinks. Pine has also served as a source of vitamin C in traditional medicinal brews.
Kvass
A bread-beer-style ferment made by steeping grain in hot (not boiled) water and fermenting with a sourdough starter, producing bready, brioche-like notes and minimal alcohol.
In depth
Resinated wine of the ancient Mediterranean
The oldest documented use of pine in beverages is the practice of flavoring wine with its resin, a tradition associated above all with Greece and surviving today as retsina. In antiquity, before airtight glass containers existed, wine jars such as amphorae were sealed with pine resin (commonly from the Aleppo pine) to keep out air and slow spoilage; the resin inevitably perfumed the wine with its piney, balsamic aroma. Roman agricultural writers of the first century recorded the practice in detail, describing which resins suited sealing or blending into the must, with one author noting that the finest wines were better left unresinated. When the Romans adopted wooden barrels from the third century onward, the technical need for resin faded, yet the taste itself endured in the eastern, Byzantine regions, where a strong, pungent resinated style remained popular long after the western empire abandoned it. Modern retsina is made like ordinary white or rosé wine, with small pieces of pine resin added during fermentation and removed at racking, though far less resin is used now and the flavor tends to be gentler than in earlier centuries.[1]
Evergreen brews of northern Europe and colonial North America
In the colder reaches of the Northern Hemisphere, the buds, needles, and shoots of pines and their close relatives the spruces were brewed into beverages valued both as refreshment and as medicine. Because the fresh spring growth of many pines and spruces is naturally rich in vitamin C, these evergreen drinks served as a remedy against scurvy during winters without fresh fruit. The practice was known among Indigenous peoples of North America and may also have been brewed in Scandinavia. European explorers learned of it in the sixteenth century, and the British Royal Navy adopted evergreen-needle beer during eighteenth-century voyages, carrying the custom across the Pacific. Recipes from the eighteenth century combined molasses, hops, and an essence of evergreen, fermented in a cask for about a week. Today such drinks are usually made with spruce, but pine tips remain part of the same broad foraging tradition, and contemporary craft brewers and distillers in North America again use foraged pine and spruce tips to flavor seasonal ales and gins.[2]
Pine needle tea in East Asia
In East Asia, and especially in Korea, the needles of pine trees are infused to make a herbal tea. The tea brewed from Korean red pine or Manchurian red pine is known as solip-cha, while that made from the needles of Korean pine carries the names jannip-cha or baegyeop-cha. Needles are traditionally harvested in winter from younger trees grown in sunny, southeast-facing locations. One preparation simply steeps fresh or dried needles—trimmed of their sharp tips—in hot water over low heat, with honey or sugar added to soften the tea's astringency. A second method ferments the trimmed needles in a sugar solution left in the sun for a week or more, after which the liquid is strained off and served cold. The needles of various North American pines, including Eastern white pine, loblolly, Virginia, and longleaf pines, are likewise used to make pine needle tea.[3]
Pine in fermented bread and grain drinks
In the bread- and grain-based fermented drinks of eastern Europe, pine and other coniferous berries occasionally entered the brewer's repertoire as flavoring and bittering agents. Kvass, a cloudy, lightly alcoholic ferment made principally from rye bread or rye flour and malt, has long been brewed in countless regional variations, with berries, fruits, and herbs added to the basic mash. In Lithuania, where the drink is called gira, traditional rural makers in some districts simmered juniper or rowan berries through several changes of water before fermenting the liquid for several days, illustrating how coniferous and wild botanicals were folded into these grain ferments. Such drinks show pine's wider role within the foraged, woodland flavorings that characterize the fermented beverages of northern and eastern Europe.[4]
Pine in modern craft and soft drinks
Pine has returned to prominence in contemporary beverage making, both as a foraged flavoring for craft alcoholic drinks and as the basis of soft drinks. Modern brewers add pine or spruce tips to barley-based beers in the manner of historic gruit, while distillers infuse spring-harvested conifer tips into gin. Lighter, more citrus-like character comes from the bright green new growth gathered before the needles harden, whereas older material yields a more resinous, woody taste. In parts of Canada, evergreen-flavored beverages survive both as genuine fermented brews made by a few small producers and as carbonated, often non-alcoholic sodas. This revival fits within the broader present-day interest in foraged, natural, and historically inspired flavors, in which pine's green, balsamic aromatics are prized for their distinctly foresty signature.[2]
References
- [1]EncyclopediaRetsina — Wikipedia↑§1
- [2]EncyclopediaSpruce beer — Wikipedia↑§2↑§5
- [3]EncyclopediaPine needle tea — Wikipedia↑§3
- [4]EncyclopediaKvass — Wikipedia↑§4