This is part of Fruit Loot, which is taking a look at the strange and surprising links between fruit and money.
Who would pay $5, plus tax and shipping, for a pear? I have, and perhaps you should too.
I first heard about Harry & David pears years ago when I was working on a gift guide of items that would work for a wide variety of people. A professional home organizer recommended the pears, perhaps because you eat the pears and therefore never need to figure out where to put them. At the time, I presumed that most people thought pears were fine, and sometimes a gift does not need to be more than fine. Mostly, I had a deadline.
I remained unconvinced of the actual magic of these pears until I received a box of them from a friend a few years later. (They come in various configurations of gift boxes.) Turns out Harry & David pears are better than fine. They are sweet and juicy; I might say they’re like candy, but that kind of misses the point. Good fruit tastes both brighter and less cloying than anything humans could concoct on our own. Instead, imagine the ideal slice of pear—then give it a texture that is buttery. When my husband and I get these pears now, eating them feels like an event akin to popping open a bottle of wine. I’ve also sent boxes of the pears as gifts. If you would send someone flowers or buy them a pricey candle, why not get them an expensive box of fresh fruit?
The secret to these holiday-season treats, which isn’t exclusive to Harry & David pears, is that they are Comice pears. “A fantastic eating pear,” says Greg Sarley, senior vice president of merchandising revenue, who has worked at Harry & David for more than 20 years. (The alternative to an “eating pear” includes pears destined to be baked into desserts or canned; part of the magic of gift pears is that they serve one purpose, rather than making their way to lots of kinds of buyers.) A horticulture professor once described the texture of Comice pears to the publication Eater as “melting,” noting that their delicate skin renders them ill suited for the machinized fruit packing that helps get typical pears to the grocery store. Originally from France, in the U.S. Comice pears are grown in the Pacific Northwest, where orchards supply such pears to a few fruit gift box operations.
Harry & David Royal Riviera pears (as the company calls the specific pears it grows) are handpicked starting in late August or early September, after which they go into cold storage for 30 days, a process that, Sarley says, allows the sugars in the fruits to mature. Then the pears are checked for quality; any that aren’t “gift grade” are weeded out. (According to Eater, the duds are sold to regular supermarkets or donated.) The rest are packed into boxes, placed back in cold storage, then sent out into the world when an order is placed. “Our pears are not ripe when we ship them,” says Sarley, “but they’re designed to ripen up along the journey.” Because they arrive a little underripe, they can be enjoyed at exact, peak ripeness. (It’s worth noting that if you order gift pears around Christmas, the fruits will be the Royal Riviera Comice variety; order Harry & David over the summer, and they’ll hail from elsewhere in the world, and possibly be a different variety.)
For the purposes of reporting this story, Harry & David sent me a box of nine pears so I could (once again, hehe) try them myself. I served them to a small crowd of other editors and writers working at the Slate office, to universally positive responses. “They are good pears,” said one colleague, who eats a lot of pears. “The farmers market pears are a real roll of the dice.” It’s not that you can’t find good pears other places; it’s that this goodness is not guaranteed. As with flowers, the time and labor it takes to get Harry & David pears into a box and delivered to the recipient is engineered specifically so that they’re in a maximally pleasant state upon arrival, instead of bordering on disgusting or past their prime or whatever else. Still, even when packed by professionals, these things are going through the mail. When Consumer Reports gave gift baskets the Consumer Reports treatment, 3 in 4 Harry & David boxes included fruit that was “bruised or damaged.” But Harry & David did send replacement pears, and chocolate, after customer-service complaints were filed. See, these vendors are professionals.
I will say—and this is such a small complaint, really a diamond-shoes-too-tight problem—that nine pears would have been tough for my two-person household to get through alone, without the assistance of colleagues, in the time in which their consumption would be ideal. The right amount, in my experience, is more like three pears per capita. Yes, you can put them in the fridge to slow their ripening (giving your recipient the chore of pear management) or just, you know, suck it up and eat a wild abundance of beautiful pears. But for the purposes of the reader, to help you calibrate if you are considering sending these pricey pears to a lucky someone: There are options that include both a few pears and other edible delights, like cheese, crackers, and Moose Munch (popcorn with caramel and chocolate). Apparently, there is something even better than a simple box of perfect fruit. It does cost more.
