You are in a high-quality wine merchant’s looking for something just a little bit different. The shelves contain spirits, liqueurs and wines of every colour and strength. You scan label after label. But when you see it, it’s not the label that attacts you – it’s the contents. A pear, complete with stalk, resting in a bath of clear liquid.
How did it get there? Was the bottle cast round the pear? Hardly: the heat of the furnace would have shrivelled it. Perhaps the bottle was made in two pieces. But there is no sign of a seam. Was the pear shrunk and then re-expanded by some piece of modern technology?
No – this is a traditional drink, and the bottle comes from a small pear orchard in southern France. The pear actually grew inside the bottle.
Your pear probably started to develop in May when it would be a miniature fruit less than 3/4in (20mm) across. The grower, making sure he had a perfect specimen, carefully cleaned it, and then inserted it through the neck of an upended bottle.
He then suspended the bottle in a net, which was tied to a branch above. Thus protected from birds and rain, the pear matured well in its miniature greenhouse. In September, the grower carefully united the bottle and eased the ripe fruit away from its branch, stalk and all.
It only remained to give the bottle with the pear a wash and add the locally distilled, fermented pear juice, and voila! – Eau de Vie de Poire, with a real pear.
picture Credit : Google
