Affe #238

About Affe mit Waffe Deprecated

Nicolas Thierry Pongart was a monkey merchant in fabrics made from banana leaf or coconut fiber – actually. What was initially seen as a small giveaway to make customers happy when the cloth was delivered had now developed into Nicola's main business over time. What monkey would be interested in fabric made from recycled fruit tree fibers when he could have banana champagne instead? Nicholas sighed. Inwardly, he still bore the heavy guilt of turning his ancestors' centuries-old family fabric business into a champagne house. Surely his great-grandparents would understand if they could taste his champagne. When a bottle of Pongart Banana Champagne first found its way to a customer, the drink was still called "wine with bubbles". Nicolas winced at the thought of it – though it was still better to describe it as "lemonade with alcohol", which was the other option.

However, when word of the product got around in the monkey society, the demand for the bottles soon became so immense that it far exceeded sales of the fabrics. For a good while his customers bought the fabrics as an excuse to get hold of a single bottle of Pongart Banana Champagne. At that time, whole tree habitats were completely wallpapered with the cloth from Pongart. When Nicolas finally discovered that they even made towels out of the fabrics, whose comfort and water-wicking abilities were arguably comparable to rubbing themselves down with ground coconut shells, he knew he had to be honest and that this was an imposition on his loyal customers. He launched his champagne onto the market of the Monekyverse – and it was soon so successful that only after one year he reluctantly decided to forgo fabric sales to focus solely on sparkling banana wine.

Of course, the success also caused many imitators who tried their opposing thumbs at banana champagne production – but the taste didn't even come close to that of house Pongart. Pongart had often been referred to as the "Manzano Banana House" for its reliance to this particular variety. Unlike the common type of bananas – the Cavendish banana – the appearance of the Manzano banana was short and chubby with thick yellow skins dotted with brown spots, turning completely black when fully ripe. The flesh was cream in color; firmer when unripe and creamier when fully ripe. It was a sweet dessert banana par excellence. Furthermore, Nicolas' cellar master had decided to focus only on the chardonnay grape, which together with the Manzano banana defined the Pongart style of banana champagne. Both proved to be wise decisions as the result tended to be very fine and linear.

The third crucial component of Pongart Banana Champagne was arguably the resting time given to the bottles before they were shipped or sold. Monkeys, who weren't exactly paragons of patience, were notorious for not being able to store anything edible for long – and especially something that contained the combination of alcohol and bananas. Nicolas was looked at with amazement by all the apes when, as the business expanded, he became the first producer to purchase eight kilometers of chalk quarries, so-called crayères, excavated below the city to store his bottles. A standard Pongart Banana Champagne only left the cellar after three to four years, whereas a Vintage Pongart had to be stored there for more than nine to ten years. Flavor depended heavily on this aging process in the chalk pits. Special vintages were stored even longer and only partially released for sale. The taste was characterized as elegant, full, and generous.

It was one of those sales events for his vintage bottles that ultimately brought him back to his original profession. The buyers were so eager to get hold of as many bottles of Pongart as possible that some broke when the primates tried to carry away more than two. To avoid wasting even more of his expensive vintages unnecessarily, Nicolas designed a stylish coconut fiber bag to carry five bottles of Pongart Banana Champagne at a time – the iconic "Pongart Bag".

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