Well I already answered above but I only gave four so I have an excuse for answering again 
Aurora
Magness
Fondante des Moulins-Lille
Urbaniste
Dana Hovey
Dana Hovey fruited for the first time this year, it really impressed me with its rich flavor.
It’s time to update my list. I have several more varieties grafted so I’m sure this list will change several times as they start fruiting.
Korean Giant
Harrow Sweet
Red Anjou
Bosc
Orient
Up in NYS two issues are probably more challenging than in other places. The first is brix and the second is productivity. I haven’t had a really good pear crop for 3 years because of these two things. Harrow Sweet used to be my most reliable cropper of quality pears but the brix hasn’t been there last two seasons and nothing else has cropped well at all.
I don’t really like early pears so although Aurora is a good russet that is big and beautiful on good years it isn’t very useful to me during peak stonefruit season. Doesn’t quite get up optimum sugar like Bosc here. I like pears most that ripen late Sept. into Oct and enjoy eating them most after some storage through fall- with really good cheese.
Seckel is good when it bears, but crops have been light for a couple years in a row. However, when it bears it is always sweet and good. Not a full fledged gourmet pear but very nice.
Sheldon and Dutchess are my most truly gourmet fruit on best years, but best years have not occured recently.
I’ve never eaten a Magness from my own tree and they take forever to fruit on vigorous root stocks- at least a decade in my experience. I cut down my first tree and have been waiting for a graft to fruit since. Quince just isn’t a good option for a rootstock for me, I need more vigor to quickly get trees above the deer browse line.
Bosc gets up full sugar here but is very susceptible to both fireblight and pear psyla. It tends towards biennial bearing in less than optimum sunlight.
E. pear quality seems to suffer more than most fruit from any shade- reduces brix.
Then you didn’t have a properly ripened Abate Fetel. They are very juicy.
I have had very juicy ones, but they were still bland compared to e.g. Bartlett. Still, they very well could have not been properly ripened. They were popular for awhile here in the markets, I have not seen them as often recently though.
They grow here and are really an incredible pear. Too bad you had the bosc-like experience. Here they are melting and very large! Come see when you can!
I’m so glad I keep seeing Korean Giant favored on this site. I picked one up a month or so ago. Looking forward to it!
Euro:
Abbe Fetel
Harrow Sweet (my HS has consistently been excellent)
Comice
Magness
Fondante de Mouline-Liile
Asian:
Korean Giant
Hosui
Shinseiki
I’m glad this thread resurfaced, because my shy Warren tree finally stopped being a wallflower and hit the dance floor with a vengeance in 2020. In fact, pears had their best year ever in my orchard. We ate them from mid-September until January.
Bartlett has been dependable for years here and is always good to very good. Nye Russet Bartlett delivered its first decent crop from a 4-5 year old graft on the Bartlett tree and was even better than Bartlett, delivering a couple more Brix, more acid and just enough tannins from the skin to be a positive.
Comice has cropped a bit for several years, but only a few fruits on a big, healthy ~13 year old espalier. Last year it gave me a couple of bushels of sweet, juicy, appealingly scented pears. The Taylor’s Gold (russeted sport of Comice) I grafted in 2017 and trained as the top tier on this espalier delivered 15-20 large fruits. Those fruits had a bit more russet than regular Comice, but it wasn’t remarkably more, nor was the taste much different, possibly a slight improvement, but I wouldn’t swear to it. The biggest difference is that Taylor’s Gold began rotting in refrigerated storage several weeks earlier than Comice, so I lost a number of them when I failed to notice this. It will be interesting to see how these compare across multiple fruitings.
Seckel is also a regular bearer for me, and produced a large crop. I probably should have planned a small batch of perry with Bartlett and Seckel (no fruiting perry pears yet) because a decent number of each ended up back in the compost pile after we failed to eat, process and give enough of them away before they rotted. Seckel has a nice amount of tannin in my orchard, so I expect they’ll make a nice perry.
I had a dozen or so Suij (a winter pear from Washington state). The best were quite nice in December, but it was inconsistent from fruit to fruit.
Belle Lucrative delivered its first crop last year, a decent number on a small tree that has struggled since I transplanted it in 2017 from another spot in my orchard. It was treacly with undesirably dense flesh and small fruits and I didn’t like it. It’s probably not fair to judge the variety on this crop given the circumstances.
Warren! Finally! The crop was large, too large, if you consider the fairly small size of the fruit. But oh, was it heavenly to eat, easily the best pears I’ve ever eaten: sweet, acidulous, juicy, aromatic excellence. And it kept under refrigeration through December. I ate the last few fruits sometime in January, and while several were not close to their best, most of those late keepers were still almost as good as they were in November. Worth the wait.
In order of best to least best:
Warren
Comice/Nye Russet Bartlett (so different from each other). (Taylor’s Gold was almost indistinguishable from Comice in its first cropping, so not separated here)
Bartlett
Seckel
Suij
Belle Lucrative
If I based this on consistency and productivity:
Bartlett
Seckel
Comice
Nye Russet Bartlett
Warren
Suij
Belle Lucrative
I have more than a dozen other pear varieties that haven’t fruited yet, so this list will undoubtedly change. I can’t, however, imagine a pear that could taste better than Warren. I just hope it’s consistent in production and flavor going forward.
My favorites at the moment are
Small yellow pear
Warren
Drippin honey
Clapps favorite
Harrow sweet
That will change by next year again i’m sure. Magness and warren taste identical to me. If your looking for heavy bearing trees these sibling pears are not them.
How fire blight resistant is the red blushing bartlett pear?
tHANKS!
Red blushing Bartlett wound up being ayers and it is very resistant to fireblight.
Is your Magness pear on Quince rootstock? If so, could this explain the fire blight problem?
The tree that got fireblight was on standard rootstock. My current Magness is on quince and it never got any blight.
How long did your magness take to fruit on quince? I planted one last year and wonder how long I should expect to wait.
It took about five years. Well worth the wait!
I am putting some new pears on standard stocks in this spring, my favorites, but I am skipping Magness as it would take too long to fruit on standard. Also it is a triploid so on quince it makes a pretty big tree anyways.
BTW back on the fireblight topic, I found that when blight was bad in my orchard anything could get blighted, but when blight is light hardly anything gets it. In recent years I have gotten very little. I did in fact get some blight late this fall, I think all of the cicada damage made it a lot easier for the pathogen to enter. This is the worst blight I had seen in a few years. It was only on the pears, not on the apples. Also again oddly it was only on the full-sized trees not on the quince which are in a different location.
Good to know! Based on your recommendation, I am growing 3 Magness pears on Quince Provence. I was told by a horticulturist at Washington State U. that Provence is more fire blight resistant than Quince A. However, Quince A is supposed to be more tolerant of wet, clay soil.
Is anchorage good with Quince? Have you had to stake your Magness on Quince?
Thanks so much for your invaluable help,
Frank
I think I have Provence Quince as well, it was from Cummins and looking now they seem to only use Provence quince (the order itself just says “quince”…).
I have found quince to have super good anchorage, no problems at all and no staking needed.
Cicada causing fireblight has been my experience as well. Another trick you use Scott that i like is following a year like that in the spring you spray with copper. Once I sprayed with copper pre bloom it eliminated the fireblight on the tree. Prior to you mentioning It I used heavy antibiotics which I now eliminated completely. Late season Fireblight
Mine is on Quince A (only option and also very clay soil). We shall see how it does.