posted by Mike Biltonen
You probably know that fruit varieties have all kinds of interesting names. When it comes to pears, you’ve got your Bartletts, Boscs, and d’Anjous. You’ve got Seckels, Clapps, and Comices. In fact, the world has so many pears, that it is difficult to keep them all straight. Most you’ve never even heard of. But when it comes to the Warren, all you need to know is that it is hands down the best pear you’ll ever eat.
Pears are old, really old. In fact, some folks believe that it was a pear, and not an apple, that was in the Garden of Eden. Now that may make some folks shy away from this tempting fruit, but not me. It makes me want to find out more about the mysterious pear.
Pears are as provincial a fruit as you’ll find—like tomatoes or melons—each region has its own. And the Frog Hollow Farm Warren is just such one of these fruits. Discovered in Hattieburg, MS and never widely planted, the Warren is the epitome of a provincial culinary treasure. Yet, pears are considered the forgotten fruit. Not that you can’t find them in every grocery store, but rather that they are just misunderstood and lost in the displays of apples, bananas, grapes, and gazillions of other kinds of fruit out there. People just don’t get the pear. But after they try the Warren, they’ll seek it out by the box load.
What makes the Warren pear so unique though is not its name or how widespread it is planted (it is not!) nor how easy it is to grow (it a devil of a pear to grow), but rather how it eats. All European pears (asian pears or Nashi are entirely different) get soft and sweet during the post-cold storage, room temperature ripening process. But as soon as someone bites into your average, well-ripened pear they often find the texture to be a bit grainy and not entirely pleasant. Then, unfortunately, they do not eat another pear for a long time! But with the Warren, watch out….the texture is as smooth as butter, sweet, juicy, and aromatic; it makes you wonder why anyone would eat one of those “other” pears. You want another, and another, and another.
So, as I found out with the Warren, names don’t tell you much after all when it comes to pears. So, you can have your supermarket Barletts and d’Anjous, I’ll take a Frog Hollow Farm Warren pear any day of the week. But don’t go asking for them in your local grocery store, ’cause you won’t find them. There’s really only one place to get them and that would be at Frog Hollow Farm. They know pears, because it is what they do. Just ask Farmer Al!