Tuesday, June 10, 2008

Thinking inside the bottle

After a meal one might enjoy a glass of Eau de Vie, Poire William (the water of life, a brandy made from bartlett pears).



That's not an optical illusion. That's a real pear in a glass bottle of pear brandy.
It's magic. A wonder to behold. How on earth did they squeeze that thing into a bottle through that tiny opening?

Rest assured that they didn't. As described at www.cookthink.com and www.bkwine.com, the Eau de Vie makers put glass bottles over pear branches with blossoms or tiny growing fruit and leave them there, waiting until the pear grows big enough to harvest.



Low tech but ingenious, imaginative.

I wonder what possessed Jean-Francois or Jean-Henri to try this. What dreams did he have that resulted in such a fanciful thing? How long did it take him to convince his pere and grandpere to let him keep the bottle on the branch and just see what would happen. Or did he just tie up a bottle in a far side of the orchard and come back with it containing a whole fruit to the delight and amazement of his friends and family?

1 comment:

Kat E said...

That is WAY cool.