Producing Pine Nuts in Marlborough

An innovative Blenheim company is producing high value pine nuts from a plantation based in the Wairau Valley.

Pine nuts are the edible seed of pine trees. About 20 species of pine produce seeds large enough to be worth harvesting. In other pines the seeds are also edible, but are too small to be of notable value as a human food.

Pine nuts have been eaten in Europe and Asia for over six thousand years. They are frequently added to a range of dishes. Italians call them pinoli. They are an essential component of pesto sauce and the upsurge in the popularity of this sauce over the last 20 years has increased the visibility of the nut in America, primarily on the West Coast.

Pine nuts are also used in the cuisine of Spain, Italy and Mexico as well as Middle Eastern cuisine.

Lee Paterson is a 25% shareholder and manager in a Marlborough based company that grows Pinus Pinea, a Mediterranean variety of pine tree that yields commercial quantities of pine nuts for local and export markets.

In a simple form the cones are harvested, the kernels extracted and the seeds removed from the kernels.

Lee says it all started around 18 years ago when one of the forestry managers he was working for was asking about growing pine nut trees. He asked Lee if he would be able to plant and grow the trees with a view to harvesting the cones and producing pine nuts. Lee was up for a challenge and said “of course I can”… although he didn’t know the first thing about them.

20 years ago the land in this part of the Wairau Valley wasn’t worth much and the idea was to generate an income off land which could be bought reasonably cheaply. Since then land values have escalated as more and more farmland has been converted into grape country.

Lee says it took 10 years to get pine cones and then work out if they could harvest and extract the pine nuts and then find out if there was a viable market. They discovered there was a willing market and they’ve subsequently planted 400,000 trees to get the scale they need.

The company sells about 1 ton in New Zealand and the rest are taken by Spain. Lee says there’s no problem selling them.

Throughout Europe and Middle East the pine nuts used are traditionally from the Stone Pine. They are easily distinguished from the Asian pine nuts by their more slender shape and more even flesh, but Asian pine nuts are also used, especially in cheaper preparations. There are also species in North America and United States.

Lee says the pinea pines are really hardy and more robust than the radiata pine. The trees will produce from 5 years on and continue producing for up to 200 years. He says they are no good as timber.

The high sunshine hours in Marlborough make an ideal environment for pinenuts, and that teamed with the quality of the soils make the area ideally suited for the pinoli trees.

Feedback from European markets is that the locally produced nuts are very good and that the production achieved locally exceeds what is achieved locally.

Pine nuts contain 10-34% protein depending on the species, with stone pine having the highest content.

Each tree produces around 10 to 30 cones per year – there’s roughly 100 seeds in each pinecone. It takes around 65 pine cones to make a kilo.

When first extracted from the pine cone, the seeds are covered with a hard shell (seed coat), thin in some species, thick in others. The nutrition is stored in the embryo in the centre. Although a nut in the culinary sense, in the botanical sense pine nuts are seeds.

The shell must be removed before the pine nut can be eaten. Unshelled pine nuts have a long shelf life if kept dry and refrigerated; shelled nuts deteriorate rapidly, becoming rancid within a few weeks or even days in warm humid conditions.

The mature cone containing the pine nuts is ready to harvest ten days before the green cone begins to open. In NZ that is around June. The have a series of tests they can to do to check the ripeness of the cone.

The cones can be harvested by tapping with a long pole. Pinoli has recently bought a tree harvester from Spain which resembles an olive tree shaker, which will speed the process up. One of the distinguishing characteristics of the pinus pinea is the ease with which the cones will fall.

Traditional systems involve exposing the cones to a heat source like the sun to begin the drying process. It can take months until the cone fully opens. Once it is fully open and dry the fruit (seed) or pine nut can be easily extracted. Pinoli has invested in a drier, similar to a timber kiln, to speed that process up.

Once the cones are dry they are crunched up to release the kernels. The difficult part is the processing to get clean seeds out of the kernels and into the bag ready for market.

In Roman times the seeds were extracted by wetting the hard kernels and then allowing them to dry in the sun which would encourage the kernels to crack. Romans (probably slaves) would then walk over top of the kernels to break them open.

Pinoli are using Spanish technology and have installed equipment which allows them to mechanise the whole process and thereby speed it up.

Lee Paterson says the company supplies gourmet food suppliers including Auckland’s Sabato with pine nuts. Pine nuts in supermarkets he says are generally Chinese pine nuts (Pinus koraiensis), which have a stronger “pine” taste than the European version

Pinoli pine nuts sell for about $100 to $120 a kilo.