Pear Wine
A Beginner’s Guide to Pear Wine
Pear wine may sound strange to the uninitiated but in truth it has been a part of human history going all the way back to the Romans. The Romans regarded the pear very highly and even called it the fruit of the Gods and as they loved wine it is no surprise that they combined the two to come up with the pear wine or what was in those days calledCastomoniale. Pliny is said to have particularly recommended the Falernian variety of pear for wine making in his book ‘Natural History’ and in the 4th century Palladius referred to the pear wine and asserted its popularity over the other fruit wine of the time, the apple wine. He also goes on to give a recipe and instruction on how to prepare this delicious drink in his ‘Opus Agriculturae.’
There are a couple of different recipes of the pear wine and based on the ingredients it is sometimes called perry or mead. Perry, as the drink is popularly known in England, has been around for centuries in the counties of Worcestershire, Gloucestershire and Herefordshire. This version of the drink is also well-established in southern parts of Wales and in the Anjou and Normandy regions of France.
If all this talk of pear wine has made you curious to try some, here are two simple variations that you can try making.
Common Ingredients:
Pears - 5 pounds of ripe pears
Water – 1 gallon
Sugar – 2 pounds of caster or fine sugar
Acid blend – 1 ½ teaspoons
Pectic enzyme – ½ teaspoon
Yeast nutrient - 1 teaspoon
Wine yeast - 1 package
A large pot and fermentations containers.
In the case of the traditional pear wine, you will use one pound of raisins as the specific ingredient.
Boil the gallon of water in a large pot. In the meanwhile, cut your pears into chunks and put them in a nylon straining bag with the raisins and put the whole in your fermentation container of choice. Next you need to add the sugar and citric acid to the container. Once the water has reached a boil, pour it over the pears and stir until the sugar dissolves completely. Allow the mixture to sit and cool to room temperature. Then you can add the pectic enzyme to the cooked pears and allow the whole mixture to settle for 24 hours. After that you will add the yeast and yeast nutrient. Now tightly seal the fermentation container and store it in a dark and warm place. This will enable effective fermentation and ensure that the sugars convert to alcohol.
Over the next week, you have to stir the mixture everyday and then pour into a new fermentation container, which has to be air-tight, at the end of the week. You will leave the mixture undisturbed in the container for three months and then bottle it in sterilized bottles. Seal and store this wine for a year before trying it. Pear wine, like other wines, benefits from being given time to age.
In the case of Mead or Perry you will use six cups of honey in play of the raisins.
The process is largely the same as above in that you start with the boiled water being poured over the cut pears in a fermentation container. The major processing difference in this case is after the week of stirring, you will drain out the pulp and transfer into the second fermentation container after adding the honey. You will also need to stir it every three months over the following year and bottle it at the end of the year. After letting it rest for another year, it is ready to taste.
Mead tends to be thicker than the raisin sweetened pear wine and you may want to factor that in when deciding which recipe you want to try out.
Also, when picking a fermentation container, if you are going with a wooden barrel or vat, oak and redwood are recommended. Some people use concrete vats coated with epoxy or lined with glass. Stainless steel tankards with temperature-controlled jackets are most popular in wineries these days as they offer ease in terms of cleaning and help achieve a greater degree of control over the fermentation process by allowing us to monitor the temperature at all times.
Like all wine making, this will also be a process of trial and error in terms of the kinds of pear to use, the balance of the ingredients and the time you need to allow for fermentation. The joy will be in the process of discovery. Here is to a successful pear wine experiment!