Crunchy european pear varieites with excellent flavor for zone 7a

General Fruit Growing
1

Tall list: but im considering adding a pear.

Requirements: crunchy texture, either self fertile or can be pollenated by the many bradfords/callery in the neighborhood, so early flowering if needing a pollinator, high brix, and ideally a nice flavor.

wants: ive seen tale of red fleshed pears, i really enjoy the “red” taste from cherries and in red fleshed apples, so if this is present in a red fleshed pear im in. My favorite fruits are high in anthocyanins.

I have only really tried pears from a grocery store. I like the texture of asian pears but tend to find their flavor lacking, but maybe thats just what ive tried. Shingo is the most recent one and the texture was great, but it just was not a great flavor for me.

I like the texture of comice pears, enjoy the taste of a “royal riveiera” pear whatever that is (appears to be a comice, so maybe the flavor of comice is just variable on source a lot), i enjoyed the flavor of a Red Anjou pear, but the texture was really unenjoyable.

1 Like
2

The combination of “crunchy” with “excellent flavor” combined with enough disease resistance to be viable in your climate is tough to find. As an example, I could suggest Spalding which is a somewhat crunchy somewhat good flavor pear. It is a European/Asian hybrid that is actually a good pear in its own right, but it is NOT a great pear. It is also somewhat susceptible to fireblight. I could suggest Warren which is a very good flavored pear (Comice is an immediate ancestor), but it is not very crunchy when ripe. It is not a good pollinator and just about has to have a good pollinator like Ewart paired with it. If you read the description of most European pears, they are either “buttery” or “gritty”. Buttery pears have very soft texture often described as melting. Gritty means they have lots of hard grit cells especially near the core.

2 Likes