My husband and I taste-tested Comice, Magness and Taylor’s Gold today.
Taylor’s Gold is firm, sweet but hubby detected some after taste. Brix 13
Magness - sweet, aromatic, melting. Brix 13
Comice - very similar to Magness but sweeter and as aromatic. Brix 14.
We both like Comice and Magness in that order. Taylor’s Gold is fine, definitely better than store bought pears.
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Those Magness look really different than the ones I have seen elsewhere, they are usually more conical at the top going into the stem and not indented like that at the bottom. Also they are more yellow when ripe. It could be climate related but its different enough to get me to wonder…
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Scott,
I’ve seen quite a bit of variation in Magness’ appearance over the years. The batch I recently gave you were not the best (sorry about that).
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Hubby and I continued our pear taste- testing tonight with 3 more pears, Concorde, Harrow Sweet and Abate Fatale.
Concorde - sweet, smooth. Brix 13
Harrow Sweet - sweeter, a bit grainy. Brix 19
Abate Fetel- sweet, smooth and perfumey. Brix 15.
I like them all and thought HS was the sweetest (before measuring brix)
Hubby likes HS, too, saying it tastes like a pear should be.
So far, with 6 E pears, we like them all with HS is our favorite and Taylor’s Gold the least.
We have Potomac and my neighbor’s pears to try. We will not taste any more tonight. Too stuffed.
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Scott,
I only hope that the Cornell store did not mix up those varieties. When I see them all together, most look different from one another. My only Magness from my tree this year got stolen. I suspected a squirrel.
Abate Fatale and Potomac are the largest that they sell.
@mrsg47, now I know why you like AF, the taste and the size are impressive.
@clarkinks, i think you grow an E pear variety that weighs a pound a pear, right?
You are thinking of Duchess d’ angoulme and yes most of the pears on that tree are over a pound each. I grow Concorde, Potomac and Abate Fetel but they are young trees. Harrow sweet is a medium sized pear. Excellent choices of pears!
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Yes, Duchess. I hope mine flowers again next year.
Cornell store spells Abate Fatale this way so I copied its spelling.
Of all the 9 varieties the store sells, Harrow Sweet is the smallest in size, about the same size as Comice or even smaller.
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Tip, the spelling is incorrect. Cornell is spelling the pear as in ‘femme fatale’!
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What is the correct spelling, please?
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Abbe Fetel accent over the e in Abbe. The Italian pears were named after Abbé Fétel, the monk who first bred them in the mid-1400s. They were discovered as a “chance” seedling, and are commonly referred to as an “Italian fruit.”
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Hi Clark: We planted both Duchesse D’Angouleme and Abbe Fetel in our Maine orchard this past spring based on things you wrote about them last year. The trees were a decent calliper size and all on OHxF87 rootstock. We’ll have to do some winter protection, but we are hopeful. We also planted White Doyenne at the same time. Also on OHxF87. Can you tell me at what age yours began bearing fruit?
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Thank you for posting these wonderful photos and your tasting notes. We have some of these planted in our small 75 tree orchard and we were thinking about adding some of the others that you’ve mentioned here. This is helpful.
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Duchesse D’Angouleme Fruits very quickly. I would not think they will take more than 2-3 years. Harrow sweet is another very tasty fast to fruit pear. For me Harrow sweet took one year before it produced. It’s not like me to recommend abate fetel that far north since its typically zone 6. It is certainly a great pear but it does lack disease resistant and cold tolerance. White doyenne is another good one according to many experts. Duchesse D’Angouleme Is the lowest quality pear of the group of pears just discussed but it’s very large and has good disease tolerance. Duchesse D’Angouleme Is a good producer to the point of it breaking branches at times if precautions are not taken. It’s also very disease resistant.
You probably didn’t recommend it for Maine (we’re zone 5A.) I just got excited about it from reading what you and others wrote. And seeing what mamuang wrote spurred me to tell all of you about trying it here. (mamaung: I apologize for coming out of left field with my comment to Clark. Your post was really exciting to me because we have a couple of those pears. Pear fever.)
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Maureen,
So glad you find this thread helpful. I wish I have more sophisticated taste buds and fancier vocabulary so I could better describe the taste of those pears.
Please feel free to share and discuss anything E pears here. We are lucky to have several experienced pear growers like @scottfsmith, @clarkinks, to name a few on this forum.
When @mrsg47 sang praises of Abbe Fetel, i was excited even though the statement about its disease susceptibilty put a damper on my enthusiasm.
Maybe, your climate would have less disease problem for AF.
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Thank you, mamuang, I thought your vocabulary and tastebuds were wonderfully expressed. And it helped to see the actual pears. I also remember @mrsg47 writing about the Abbe Fetels. Well, we shall see how we do. We are following a strict organic protocol based on Michael Phillips work and guidance. Hopefully, by working on promoting healthy fruit trees and with some good winter protection our pears will live and thrive. We’ll post photos (hopefully) next summer.
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