Pears are for September. This is because pears have to be eaten ripe to get anything like the full range of their taste and texture. Practically all supermarket pears are pale travesties of the real thing, which have a combination of slippery, honeyed sweetness and a tight, close-grained texture of the flesh. The problem is that pears only reach that point of perfection for about a day. So if ever there was a fruit to grow at home to use as a gastronomic yardstick, it is the pear. As such it is worth treating them as the most precious of treats, with the same reverence you offer caviar, truffles or the best wine.
We grow Conference, William's Bon Chretien, Concorde and Doyenne du Comice. All the farmhouses round here in Herefordshire have a Conference tree growing up against the brick of the farmhouse, mainly because it can pollinate itself whereas all other pears need another tree, either of the same variety or else another from the same pollination group - which means that it has to be in flower at the same time so that the bees can buzz from pollen-laden pear to pollen-hungry neighbour in an easy hop. Conference is also a good all rounder, lovely as a dessert fruit if properly ripe although mainly used for cooking. William's is also primarily a cooker, although we eat most of ours raw.
Doyen du Comice is agreed to be the prince of pears. Because the fruit is so good, the trees are best grown as espaliers in a small garden - which will maximise fruit production against tree size. Ideally this will be trained against a south wall, which will hold heat and help the fruit to ripen. Concorde is a cross between the previous two and makes a beautifully healthy, archetypically pear-shaped fruit. My two trees have only just started to produce fruit but it is very good and, importantly for the organic gardener, very healthy.
When I made this garden I bought what I thought were a dozen Doyenne du Comice and planted them as an espaliered avenue in the vegetable garden. In fact they have turned out to be William's Bon Chretien that get canker, which causes the fruits to crack and split and the trees to die back. Chemical gardeners would use fungicides and try and deal with the symptoms but I tend to see it as part of the landscape. Fungal diseases are rife in this wet part of the country, especially with our heavy, poorly drained, rich soil. The organic answer is to pull up the trees and burn them, replanting with a canker resistant variety like Concorde. Every August I determine to do this after I have harvested the fruit, and every year I get cold feet because the memory of the pears is so delicious that I cannot bear to lose them, cankerous or not.
The pear-eating ritual starts weeks before they are ready. From the beginning of September I go round each of our 24 trees testing each individual fruit, cupping the bulb in my hand and gently twisting and lifting it. As the month progresses more and more come away from the tree in my hand. They are not fully ripe at this stage and certainly not likely to be ready to eat. Instead they are carried indoors, being careful not to bruise them, and laid out individually on a sunny windowsill in an unheated room. it is light more than heat that they need, although supermarkets store them below a certain temperature to delay ripening. Over the course of the following week or so they accumulate a yellow flush tinged, in the case of some varieties, with orange as the ripeness washes through them. I turn their hippy bodies sunwards once, to get the process even.
It is no use prodding and pushing a pear to test ripeness because all you will do is bruise the flesh, leaving a mushy wound beneath the skin. Pears ripen from the inside out so that the flesh immediately beneath the skin is the last to be ready. You must be gentle. If I press my thumb at the base of the pear there will be a slight yielding. Not a soft squidginess, but just a bit of gentle give. You want to eat it as soon as there is any softness to it at all. And never bite into like an apple. That is barbaric. Sit. Get a clean plate and if possible a beautiful knife. Consider and admire the pear before you. Cut it into quarters, always peel it (forget any health issues, the peel harms the perfect texture), slither the core away and eat the firm juiciness. I hardly eat a dessert pear for the rest of the year, and if I do it merely confirms the mistake.
