Edible Seasonals - The Pear
OREGON'S STATE FRUIT—THE PEAR
Written by Ellen Jackson
October-December 2006
I’ve lived in Oregon for 12 years, and I just learned that the pear is our state fruit. Actually, I didn’t know states had fruits; I’d have guessed it was the marionberry. It makes sense, though; pears are Oregon’s #1 fruit crop and we rank #3 in the nation’s total production. Washington leads the nation in pear production, providing close to 46% of the total. Together, the states grow 84% of the nation’s pears.
So why are pears upstaged by apples? Do they get short shrift because the apple enjoys all-American status and long-standing popularity—in pies and lunchboxes, for target practice and kissing up to the teacher—or because the two fruits ripen and hit the market at the same time? They’re often mentioned in the same breath, as if their relationship is like French fries and ketchup. Both are pome fruits, true, but lumping apples and pears together is like, well, like comparing apples and oranges. A pear can do anything an apple can do, and sometimes do it better.
A few centuries of grafting have resulted in some 5,000 pear varieties, but we are most familiar with the handful introduced by early European visitors.
• Bartlett are bell-shaped, yellow-skinned summer pears. This is the variety
most widely grown in North America. The local Bartlett season begins in September and lasts about four months.
• Bosc have long, slender necks and russeted skin, with a firm, crisp texture ideal for poaching and baking.
• Anjou (or d’Anjou) are large, yellow-green or red in color, sweet, and abundant in the winter.
• Comice have fine-grained flesh and a delicate flavor that makes them a wonderful option for eating fresh.
The pear has many fine characteristics: a rich, almost buttery quality that complements savory ingredients like pork, game and foie gras; a creaminess perfectly suited to sorbet; a heady perfume. A pear plucked prematurely will sit happily on the counter to ripen, its complex flavor and unique texture left with no choice but to improve. What apple can do that? Once ripe, a pear eaten out of hand is deliciously messy. Keep a napkin ready to catch the juices winding down your neck and wrists.
Endlessly versatile, pears lend themselves nicely to unexpected flavor combinations and to different preparations: roasted, poached, baked and dried. They even come soused, in a bottle, an age-old practice traditional in Alsace. And now also in an Oregon pear orchard in Parkdale, where Craig McCurdy of McCurdy Farms grows these pears for Clear Creek Distillery's signature eaux-de-vie de poire Williams, or Pear-in-the-bottle, something I went to see for myself in his Hood River orchard.
Truth be told, it was quite a sight. I wandered the orchards, marveling at hundreds of glass bottles suspended from tree limbs heavy with fruit. Each of the bottles contained a perfect pear destined for a long soak in 80 proof Clear Creek pear brandy and worldwide renown.
The process begins when about 3,500 empty bottles (rigged around the necks and bases with twine) are attached to McCurdy’s Bartlett pear trees in May, just after they’ve flowered. Limb and bud are threaded gently through the slender neck of a 750ml bottle, its opening no larger than a dime. The pear continues to grow and mature in the bottle, pretty much as it would outside of it, until August when the bottles are harvested and shuttled immediately back to Portland, 30 cases at a time. Clear Creek Distillery takes it from there.
Pear and bottle are meticulously hand-scrubbed and topped with eaux-de-vie de poire Williams, the French equivalent of our Bartlett. Then they’re corked, labeled (around the neck, to showcase the gorgeous, perfect pear in its entirety) and put in cases.
The eaux de vie at the heart of Clear Creek’s product line are made using the traditional European brandy-making techniques of Alsace and Switzerland. The process begins with perfectly ripened whole fresh fruit gathered from select local orchards (including the pear orchards in Parkdale, Oregon, belonging to Steve McCarthy, the owner of Clear Creek Distillery). Sixty gallons of fruit are crushed and fermented in a stainless steel tank for 30 days. Then the juice is distilled in a small German-made pot still and aged in barrels (in the case of the eaux de vie de pomme) or 5-gallon carboys. The process is involved and costly; a single batch produces fewer than 5 gallons—approximately 30 pounds of pears go into each 750 ml bottle of brandy. But the payoff is evident: all of the brandies have an intense and distinctive nose, and a strong, pure taste that lingers pleasantly.
The whole process, from tree to box, is done by hand. I might add that the same can’t be done as well with apples because they tend to float and discolor under identical circumstances.
The McCurdy farm has been in the family since 1969, when Craig and his parents moved to Hood River from Ojai, CA, where they grew oranges. The Hood River Valley is home to around 300 farms, nearly all them family-owned for generations. In some ways, not much has changed since Craig took over for his parents: they still grow pears and apples, and most of the work is done by hand. And yet everything has changed.
The future of Hood River Valley’s growers is uncertain; they struggle with the same issues facing farmers everywhere: the changing climate, dependence on an immigrant work force, and land use laws that encourage the parceling of once large farms, issues that will eventually affect the Hood River region and, as a result, Oregon’s status as a major pear producer.
