The Siberian Pines Company has been manufacturing the highest quality pine nut products since 2003 and constantly strives to improve the production technologies, delivery, and storage of pine nut products. We want our customers to receive products that have retained the maximum amount of nutrients typically found in this type of tree growing in its natural conditions – in the Siberian taiga.
Our experience in the production of pine nut products as well as numerous studies carried out at our production base have allowed us to develop the most effective technologies for obtaining and conserving the highest quality pine nut products.
The quality of pine nut oil depends on a number of subtle factors, but it is possible to single out the basic conditions necessary to ensure that high quality is obtained.
Harvesting the nuts
The harvesting of pine cones is done by hand in the wild pine forests of Siberia and only in autumn.
The quality of pine nut oil begins with the quality of raw material. Our company chooses to harvest cones only in forests growing in the wild, since this ensures that the pine nuts have been grown without any interference from people.
Moreover, the nuts have grown in a natural environment surrounded by supporting plant life in rich, naturally fertilized soil, and thus have absorbed the maximum amount of all the useful elements inherent in this particular species (Pinus Sibirica – lat.).
In the wild, the Siberian pine begins to bear fruit on average 50 years after taking root. The pine cone with nuts takes two years to ripen, and for this reason each pine tree gives a crop only once every two years. The cones ripen by the autumn.
We never use a mallet to knock the cones down from the trees because it damages the trees, and the nuts in these cones are not ripe, and therefore do not possess their full nutritional potential. The cone harvesters in our company begin collecting cones at the beginning of September when the cones mature and fall to the ground naturally, thus we obtain only fully ripened nuts.
Sorting and selecting the nuts
Nuts that have ripened fully in their natural environment possess a nutrient composition of higher quality in comparison to unripe nuts or nuts collected at commercial plantations, often from grafted trees treated with chemicals. But even nuts grown in the wild may be divided into groups according to their quality. After the nuts have been shelled, it is possible to find white, pink, yellow, and even rotten nuts and nuts covered with mold.
Machine sorting helps to remove most of the rotten and moldy nuts. But it does not guarantee that they have been completely excluded. Manual sorting is used for this purpose. Long and expensive manual sorting makes it possible not only to exclude all substandard nuts, but also to sort nuts according to quality: yellow, pink, and white nuts. Yellow and pink nuts are inferior in their composition and taste to white nuts. This is precisely why white nuts are considered to be the best quality nuts. Our company has a preference for white nuts, and all our company’s pine products are made only from white nuts. This guarantees that the raw materials we use contain the best biologically active nutrient composition.
How pine nut oil is obtained
There are several methods of obtaining pine nut oil, beginning with chemical extraction and ending with cold pressing. Cold pressing is considered to be the least harsh method of extracting oil from the nuts because it is the least destructive of the oil’s biologically active elements. But nonetheless, if the presses are made of metal, then they still oxidize a number of vitamins as well as essential fatty acids and aggravate the process where the oil rapidly turns rancid.
Our time working with oil pressing methods demonstrates that the least damage is caused to the active elements of oil when wooden presses are used. To put it more precisely, wooden presses do not oxidize the oil, and so allow it to preserve its composition and nourishing potential to the fullest extent.
Nuts destined for pressing do not undergo any thermal or chemical processing. We use raw nuts.
After pressing, the oil is opaque, because it contains microscopic pieces of the nuts. We do not filter the oil, but let it settle. When the nut particles settle naturally, the oil is poured into the bottles used for retail sale. The oil is not deodorized or refined, and is not subjected to any further processing. It also does not contain any artificial or natural additives. The final product is 100% cold-pressed, superior grade pine nut oil pressed from the highest quality pine nuts growing in the wild.
The product is almost transparent and has a golden color. Its density is similar to the density of cold-pressed linseed oil (0.930 g/cm3 at 15 °C) and denser than olive oil (0.917 g/cm3 at 15 °C). It may contain natural sediment.
Transportation and storage
Of no small importance in preserving the best characteristics of the oil is the transportation and storage of the final product. Rich in unsaturated fatty acids, pine nut oil quickly oxidizes and becomes rancid as the result of the effect of heat and light. Pine nut oil can be stored for two to three weeks at room temperature and illumination, after which it begins to degrade.
Our task is to bring to our customer a product of the highest quality, so in all our warehouses (at the production site, in USA, Europe and Canada) we are equipped with commercial freezers, and all pine nut products are stored in them until the time of shipment. The products are transported between warehouses by plane in one to two days.
As the manufacturer, we can afford to import small batches of products every three months, that is to say, our oil is the freshest among all suppliers of Siberian pine nut oil.
In addition, each individual bottle is packaged in a lightproof packaging that protects the oil from light.
These expensive technologies for oil production and storage guarantee that the product received by the purchaser will be of the highest quality on the market: 100% pure, cold-pressed superior grade pine nut oil pressed on wooden presses from only the highest quality (white) pine nuts growing in the wild, an oil that is no more than three months old and kept in commercial freezers during its entire time in storage.
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