Preface

We are delighted to be able to share this guest blog post (written by our friends from Root and Pestle) profiling a very unique kava cultivar, Puariki, from the remote, fertile and beautiful island of Tongoa (Vanuatu).

Some of you our readers and friends may remember that Puariki has always been a sort of personal mission for us. We first tried it around 2012 in Vanuatu and then in New Zealand, and were amazed by its effect profile and distinct aroma. So much so that for years we kept trying to figure out a way to source more of it. Unfortunately, the devastating cyclone Pam in 2015 wiped out most of the plants on the island and the extremely remote nature of Tongoa has always made it a challenge to arrange any transport. But we kept talking to our friends and collaborators from Root and Pestle about it for years.

A couple of years ago they managed to get 1-2 plants as part of their efforts to study and catalogue different cultivars from across the archipelago. We ended up with a small amount of insanely good kava powder that we happily consumed during a session at the Auckland University of Technology and even got some for the Four Shells Kava Lounge in Auckland. The feedback was great and since then we’ve kept asking our Vanuatu partners to figure out a way of sourcing a bit more of it for us to be able to share it more widely. This task seemed doomed with lockdowns, inter-island travel restrictions etc further complicating things. As our friends are masters at making the impossible possible, they have finally managed to arrange a dedicated expedition (involving a small charter airplane) directly to Tongoa from their base on Santo.

The expedition was led by John (chief scientist) and Joseph (research assistant and kava phenotype identifier/expert). In addition to connecting with the local growers, they also sought to secure a larger batch of freshly harvested plants to take back to Santo. As there are currently no ships transporting goods directly from Tongoa to Santo, the only way to ensure the plants would remain beautifully fresh for processing was to literally fill the whole airpline up to the ceiling with fresh plants. For that purpose the boys called an even bigger air taxi to assist.

Read their post below for a detailed (and fascinating) description of the Puariki cultivar, as well as the account of their journey there and back to Santo. We are sure you will enjoy it, especially if you are lucky enough to be drinking some of this excellent kava while reading it and looking at the beautiful photos they took.

Bualiu or Pualiu. Just look at how massive this cultivar gets despite being roughly the same age as Puariki!

Cultivars of Tongoa

There are two distinct cultivars of kava endemic to Tongoa – a vigorously growing plant with long branches between nodes and a root ball that rapidly becomes a mammoth which can weigh upwards of 60 kg at harvest, and a much slower growing plant with more closely spaced nodes and a large, but much more modest root ball, which at maturity (after 5 to 7 years of careful cultivation) is typically in the 10 to 25 kg range. These two cultivars are known ubiquitously amongst Tongoans as Buariki and Bualieu, derived automatically from their word for kava, bua, and their words for small and big, riki and lieu, respectively, but with the difference between the Tongoan pronunciation of “P” and “B” sometimes being a little difficult to discern by the non-Tongoan ear, and the notoriously wide range of spellings for any given word in Bislama (the common tongue of Vanuatu), Buariki and Bualieu were first recorded off the island as Puariki and Pualiu, and subsequently made their way into the Vanuatu Kava Act (2002) as such. Hence “Buariki” isn’t listed as one of the varieties of noble Vanuatu kava officially permitted for export, and as such is always labelled within Vanuatu for export as Puariki, even though on the rare occasion a sample has made its way overseas it has sometimes been promoted as something with a similar sound or spelling, such as Boariki or Pauriki. As with many things, it is easy for a few of the details to get lost in translation, but whether you want to call it Pauriki, Puariki, Boariki, or Buariki, one thing is for sure: This is some seriously nice kava.

An Icon of Pride

In the language of the locals, true Tongoan kava is either the big one or the small one, and everything else was introduced from other nearby islands in contemporary times, and is cultivated only in relatively small quantities, a bit like a novelty crop. The farmers are proud of their stands of Borogoru, their “Kava from Tanna” (almost certainly Kelai, which was probably brought to Tanna from Epi…), and their very limited specimens of “Chief’s Kava” (as yet a mystery, but I’m sure we’ll get back to Tongoa to thoroughly check it out at some point), amongst the Bualieu and Buariki, because variety is of course the spice of life, but when asked about their favourite cultivar, the answer is consistently given with pride and is almost uniformly the same: Buariki.

Why? Well, from our own perspective, this is the first time we’ve had enough kava to the point where we literally could not walk properly and yet the next morning awoke and felt as if we hadn’t consumed any kava the night before. Great effect. Great sleep. Zero hangover. Easy transition back to daytime the next morning, and to be clear, we were physically obliterated. In short, it was amazing. Are we biased? Yes, probably, and so is every Tongoan, but nevertheless, this stuff is good. Clean drinking. Very easy to swallow, shell after shell (if you’re so inclined), easy on the stomach and on the mind, but of course, as we were reminded by the friends of the person who squeezed it, that does depend too upon the preparation… Regardless, this was obviously something special.

What do People Say it’s Like?

W few years ago, as part of our research and development efforts, we organised an expedition to Tongoa (among other islands) and we sourced a tiny amount of Puariki for analysis and sampling. The Kava Society in New Zealand, who then organised a couple of small, quiet sampling sessions, including at the Four Shells Kava Lounge in Auckland. The feedback was outstanding. The lucky few who got to try it, clearly agreed that it was a phenomenal cultivar. They loved the fresh, slightly zesty, sweet and spicy aroma and the smooth drinking experience. But, above all, they were amazed by the effects profile. They told us that it delivered a clearly blissful, highly pleasurable start, followed by fascinating, but not overpowering depth, with at least one Aucklander calling it "like Kelai, but with an extra engine”. “

Survival of the Fittest

Hunting a rare and precious cultivar of exceptional quality, a kava found exclusively on the remote Vanuatu island of Tongoa, deep in the rainforest jungle; We were there to find, harvest, prepare, and reap the elixir of wonder which could only be concocted from this one legendary strain of kava, and this was no ordinary crop of Puariki either; Having miraculously survived volcanic ash deposits, damaging winds and debris resulting from storms and tropical cyclones, including Niran and Yasa (both category 5!), as well as the Granddaddy of them all, Harold (category 5, with 278 km/h winds and a mind bogglingly vast diameter of 3741 km), this was a plantation of mature, 7-year old beauties, which by no means should have persisted, and yet they did. We have ensured the celebration of their reaching of perfection would be made worth it in the end by sharing them with the greatest afficionados, connoisseurs, and kava fans around the world, you, our friends.

Kava is not an especially hardy plant, and the cyclones of the past few years have been particularly savage here in Vanuatu, and yet, by some gift of the gods, this special field of Puariki, with its dense perimeter of luscious jungle and mountainous terrain, had somehow been spared. In fact, cyclone Pam, the second most intense tropical cyclone in the South Pacific in all of recorded history, and which devastated Vanuatu in March, 2015, may have been partially responsible for providing the birthplace of this little patch of glorious Puariki, having ripped to shreds the vegetation that formerly had taken hold of the terrain here, and giving necessary reason to the immediate planting of this crop, at this exact time and place, just as the storm passed and local villagers began piecing their lives back together.

And so, by whatever natural wonders, and with plenty of intervention from their Ni-Vanuatu caretakers, these small stems of a previously shredded crop were planted and tended to with the attention and support necessary to bring them to their absolute peak of perfection; We know, we’ve had hundreds of cultivars through our facility and these plants are in a league of their own. We knew it from the rumours and stories. We knew it when we saw them in person. Once we tried out that creamy cocktail of cashewy delight, fresh from the soil in Tongoa, we would never be the same – we, as lovers of kava, had truly been spoiled.

An Adventurous Harvest for the Freshest Kava

We took a small, 5-seat airplane to Tongoa from our processing facility in Santo, but we needed to arrange Air Taxi Vanuatu’s 9-seater for the return trip: We knew we needed to bring as much of this kava home as we could possibly carry, and that was the biggest aircraft we could safely land on Tongoa, not to mention that there aren’t many carriers here, and those are Air Taxi Vanuatu’s 2 options…

Our processing facility is only a couple hundred kilometres to the Northwest of Tongoa, which is only a bit over an hour or so away by plane, so the good news is that we were able to get the kava back to our facility so soon after harvest, that people just a village or two away from where it was harvested from wouldn’t even be able to get it as fresh. Our cutting edge processing techniques mean that we can lock in the freshness, the flavour, the kavalactones, and the experience of drinking this kava as if you were here with us during the harvest, but with the ability to keep it shelf stable for years, so that we can get it to you anywhere in the world, if you place your order while it lasts… which we’re sure won’t be long. This means that you too can be as truly spoiled as we have been, and we truly hope that you are one of the lucky ones who gets to share with us in the pleasure of this special cultivar.

Chemotypical Specifics

To assuage those with a bit of a technically inquisitive mind, the chemotype of the finished product is 423156. This kava root powder is a perfect blend of lateral roots and rhizome (basal chips) in the ratio provided by nature as found in the plant at maturity, with the basal chips weighing about twice as much as the lateral roots at the time of harvest.

The relative kavalactone content of this special R&P Puariki was found to be:

Kavain = 32.62%

Dihydrokavain = 30.76%

Yangonin = 12.22%

Desmethoxyyangonin = 11.03%

Dihydromethysticin = 6.99%

Methysticin = 6.38%

Any given sample of the finished product gave a K/DHM ratio which was typically in the range of 4.537 to 4.667 and extracted kavalactones were estimated to typically represent about 7.31% of the kava mass, with a lower limit of 65,718 mg/kg and an upper limit of 74,676 mg/kg. If you’re not into technicalities, don’t worry – just trust us that this kava offers the potential for a truly excellent physical and mental journey to those fortunate enough to get their hands on a bowl of it.

Don’t Wait!

There may be a finer strain, as yet to be discovered, but for now, we hope you will enjoy drinking what we believe to be among the best of the best kava root powders currently available anywhere in the world: Root & Pestle Puariki. The adventure of collecting this kava, and of spending time with the growers, harvesters, and villagers of Tongoa was far too comprehensive to explain in detail here, but we hope to tell you more about the lives behind this wonderful harvest in an upcoming blog post. We do hope you will return to read all about it.

In the meantime, from our nakamal to yours, please enjoy the wonderful experience of indulging in a shell of R&P/Kava Society Puariki.

Puariki, the pride of Tongoa