Last chance to enjoy these wonderful juices!
Photo by Hannah Kaminsky | THE NIBBLE.

It is with a heavy heart that we join Gregg Quinn, founder and president of Currant C black currant beverages, to inform you that the wonderful line of Currant C has ceased production. We reviewed it last year and adored it. The company subsequently expanded the varieties and Currant C would have been a Top Pick Of The Week in January (which is “healthy food month” at THE NIBBLE).

The unfavorable economic environment has put the kibosh on this small company and others. Retailers are forced to pay more slowly while warehouses and trucking companies demand payment upfront. Banks aren’t lending to small companies. Combine the variables and it’s impossible for some companies to keep their doors open.

As long as supplies last, Currant C is selling its delicious juices through its website. Six-packs are $11.94 instead of $23.94—a 50% reduction.

Coffee: neat, pressed and hungry for a shot
(of Java & Co. syrup, that is). Photo ©
Elina Manninen | Fotolia.com.

Millions of people in America walk into their favorite coffee emporium and order their java with a shot of syrup. Amaretto, caramel, hazelnut and vanilla are very popular, and it’s high season for egg nog, gingerbread and pumpkin (how did you think those pumpkin lattes are made)? Most coffee houses use Monin (which makes 113 flavors, not all meant for coffee) or Torani (78 flavors, ditto), and you can purchase bottles for home use. But if you’d like to give a gift of something special—small-batch, artisan-made syrups made from roasted coffee beans, including a “decaf”—Java & Co. has a good thing going.

The infused syrups that have so captivated coffee-drinkers are essentially flavored simple syrup (sugar syrup). They have gained visibility with the renaissance of coffee houses, but have been used for many years to make Italian sodas, as breakfast syrups and dessert syrups, and in recipes from glazes to baking. They can make almost any food taste better—but sugar has a way of doing that.

Java & Co.’s handmade and hand-bottled syrups—they’re made and shipped to order for maximum freshness—taste that much better than the mass-manufactured products from Monin and Torani. They begin with actual coffee beans, and are a delightful personal gift, corporate gift and sweet syrup for your own pantry.

Enjoy this yummy hot chocolate recipe, courtesy of top chocolatier Larry Burdick. Per serving:

1. Mix 1.5 cups milk, 2 heaping teaspoons of top quality cocoa powder, 1/4 cup of ground dark chocolate with 60% or higher cacao content (chop and grind a good dark chocolate bar in a spice mill or a food processor) and ground nutmeg and/or cinnamon (fresh-grind using a microplane grater for great flavor).
2. Heat the milk to just below boiling.
3. Whisk in the cocoa powder and ground chocolate.
4. Add nutmeg and cinnamon to taste—we like a lot of each.
5. If you like “Aztec” spice, add some chili powder, too.

Rich and spicy! Photo by Melody Lan | THE NIBBLE.

It’s effortless to save the world by drinking
organic, Fair Trade coffee. Photo by
Ermek | IST.

With coffee emporia nearly everywhere you look—cafés and shops that sell beans—you’d think that coffee was a hot growth category. Yet the annual growth rate of conventional coffee between 2000 and 2008 was just 1.5%. Organic coffee imports experienced a 29% annual average growth rate during the same period, and Fair Trade® coffee, 35%. Last year, the amount of organic coffee imported into the United States increased 12%, and Fair Trade coffee increased 30%, despite the worst economy in 70 years and the premium prices that both command.

You’d think this would be great news, but just 0.6% of the coffee sold in the major consuming countries is organic certified, and even less is Fair Trade certified.

In honor of National Fair Trade Month, we’ve reviewed some of our favorite organic and Fair Trade coffees. Agricultural products can be organic and Fair Trade, organic or Fair Trade (obviously, the vast majority of foods are neither). What do these terms mean? In brief:

Yet of the $18 billion spent on coffee in the U.S. last year, the tiniest fraction went to organic and Fair Trade coffee. You can make a difference while enjoying an excellent cup of java.

In Morocco, father and son share a glass
of mint tea. THE DVD provides a beautiful
tea experience, available in DVD with
a companion book.

Tea lovers can enjoy a profound and breathtaking journey through the world of tea with Scott Chamberlin Hoyt’s film on DVD, The Meaning of Tea. A wonderful gift for anyone who wants to see first-hand exquisite tea plantations, how tea leaves are hand-plucked from the plant and turned into the beverage we drink, the DVD, $24.95, can be enjoyed and shared over and over again.

The film takes you through China, India, Japan and Taiwan. It also talks to tea-drinkers in far-away Morocco, England, France, Ireland and even Tea, South Dakota, who enjoy the tea that comes from half a world away. Unveiling tea’s mysteries, the film contrasts ancient rituals and bonds, such as that expressed by a tea planter who would “dishonor his ancestors” if he could not continue growing tea. Then, there are the youth to whom the cultural heritage is unimportant, expressed by Taiwanese teens who disparage their grandmothers’ tea-drinking but enjoy spitting the tapioca balls in bubble tea at each other, and young adult Japanese who prefer coffee because “it’s Western and cool.”

The hanging question is the future of tea, still the second-widest-drunk beverage in the world thanks to its ingrained presence in the high-population countries of China and India. But as fast food and soft drinks enter those cultures, the influence on younger generations has already had its impact. There is continually growing disinterest towards a long-renowned and honored refreshment whose place and rituals are now largely ignored.

Contrasted against this sea change are the seriousness of purpose of people who have spent their lives working in the tea industry and consumer tea lovers. Two middle-aged brothers who sell Pashmina scarves in India remonstrate that they could survive without anything on a desert island including water, but not without tea. A Moroccan man describes the ritual and pleasure of searching in the market for the perfect bunch of fresh mint with which to make his tea, and the satisfaction of brewing the perfect pot of tea with it.

Experiencing the bonds that so many people have to tea is an emotional and cultural ride we’d like to take again. This handsomely-shot, wonderfully-edited 74-minute DVD includes 45 minutes of special features. There’s a companion book with 150 photos that explores tea through the words of tea growers, tasters, entrepreneurs, shopkeepers, scholars and experts from eight countries. Get the DVD and invite friends over for tea. It will be a memorable experience!

For an extra-rich cup of cocoa or hot chocolate, always use whole milk, and stir a teaspoon or more of unsalted butter into each cup at the end, until it dissolves. This produces a better result than using cream or half-and-half to make the cocoa. The butter transforms average cocoa into a good cup, and good cocoa into a memorable experience. If you’re watching your cholesterol and need to hold the butter and use reduced-fat milk, buy the ultrapasteurized milk (called Skim Plus or a similar name). It’s more expensive, but it tastes like milk that’s two levels higher in fat content.

The difference between cocoa and hot chocolate: Cocoa is made from cocoa powder. Hot chocolate is made from bits of actual chocolate (it was originally invented in Switzerland by shaving chocolate bars). It’s also called “drinking chocolate.”

Golden Star is terrific gift for anyone, and
especially for those who are abstaining
from alcohol. Photo courtesy of Golden Star.

Oops—we forgot to post last week’s Top Pick, Golden Star Sparkling Tea. It’s such a wonderful product, we don’t want anyone to miss out on it.

If you’re a non-drinker, designated driver, or otherwise avoiding alcohol—but yearning for something as sophisticated and flavorful—Golden Star White Jasmine Sparkling Tea was created for you. It looks like a glass of Champagne, but has the sweetness of Sauternes. You’ll like it so much that you may not notice (or care) that it’s non-alcoholic. It’s a real find for non-drinkers and drinkers alike: Anyone who seeks something new and exciting will love it.

In addition to sipping as a cocktail, Golden Star Sparkling Tea pairs well with fish (including sushi), cheese, salads and fruit desserts.

Golden Star White Jasmine Sparkling Tea is totally different from artificially carbonated tea soft drinks, be they herbal, green tea or other. The tea is fermented like grapes in wine fermentation tanks. While management is mum on the process, they describe it as a marriage of the artisanal crafts of wine making and brewing. The result is complex, sophisticated and as worthy of your attention as a good glass of wine. And, the ingredients are organic. This sparkling tea is intoxicating—although no one will get intoxicated.

If you turn to orange juice for vitamin C, you should know that tropical fruit juices like guava and mango have even more vitamin C per serving. They also have more layers of flavor. Natural food markets and chains like Whole Foods are one source to find tropical juices; international supermarkets catering to Latino, Indian and Pac Rim customers are also great sources. Don’t overlook frozen juice concentrates—they’re generally just as delicious and less expensive (many bottled juices are reconstituted from concentrate, too—read the labels). Grown in the U.S., currant juice has four times the vitamin C of O.J. and twice the antioxidants of blueberries. The best juice you can drink is Montmorency cherry juice, with the highest antioxidants of all fruits.

• See some of THE NIBBLE’s favorite juices.

  
  

Say “allo” to Alo Original Aloe Drink.

Most people know about aloe vera. It’s an attractive succulent plant that’s often kept on the kitchen windowsill because its sap is soothing to burns and cuts.

The same gel-like sap that has medicinal and cosmetic uses is also made into beverages and other foods, popular in Asia. They can be absolutely delicious—juicy, fruity and fun—they’re filled with chewy pieces of aloe pulp. The challenge over the years we’ve been tasting them in the U.S. has been that they’ve been limited to Asian grocery distribution.

Now, through an arrangement with Ito-en, maker of the Top Pick Teas’ Tea line of bottled teas that have wide distribution in premium food markets, you’ll be seeing more of Alo Original Alo Drink (it’s also available online). It’s a better sweet drink for kids, who will love the floating pieces of aloe pulp and the groovy colors, and it’s hip and sophisticated for adults. Alo is a juice drink, a cocktail mixer and can be frozen into popsicles.

We carry our own water bottle, filled from the tap, to save the environment from the impact of all those water bottles (1,500 are thrown away every second, according to the Earth Policy Institute). But a flavored treat we’ve been enjoying since its debut earlier this year is Dasani Essence, bottled water with flavor but no sweeteners, no preservatives, no calories.

Unsweetened flavored water beverages are growing faster than any other segment in the $11 billion U.S. bottled water and beverage category, according to Coca-Cola, makers of Dasani. The idea behind Dasani Essence is that, according to a 2007 research study, most consumers prefer lightly flavored bottled water beverages with little or no sweetener (hmm….what about the runaway success of Coca-Cola’s own VitaminWater?). The thought behind Dasani Essence was to offer the experience of a lightly flavored water that many people enjoy when they squeeze a wedge of fresh lemon or lime into their water glass.

Two of the three debut flavors are a bit more splashy than that: Black Cherry Essence and Strawberry Kiwi Essence. The Lime Essence truly is what you’d expect by squeezing some lime in your water (and if that’s what you want, check out True Lemon and True Lime, packets you can carry with you that do just that).

The hottest-growing category in water and water beverages. Photo courtesy of Dasani.

The Black Cherry Essence was our favorite, rich black cherry flavor tantamount to having an unsweetened, uncarbonated cherry soda. Perhaps our bottler was a bit more generous with the flavor, because we observed a complaint from another taster that there was hardly any cherry flavor in her bottle. Strawberry Kiwi Essence was in the middle: enjoyable, with more impact than the Lime Essence but less than the Black Cherry.

If you believe that you don’t need the sugar or artificial sweeteners in a soft drink, check out Dasani Essence.