Poire Prissonniere is an eau-de-vie brandy made from pears. Eau-de-Vie is French for "water of life" and refers to a wide variety of fruit-based distilled beverages. The production process for it is very similar to that for most other spirits. The raw material is harvested, crushed and fermented, and the result is then distilled in order to separate impurities from the alcohol. The resulting beverage is bottled at somewhere between 35 percent and 50 percent ABV.
Poire Prissoniere (translated it means imprisoned pears) usually has a whole Bartlett pear inside the bottle. How did they get it in there? That is a question often asked by people who see healthy, whole pears in the beautiful, uniquely shaped glass bottles used to bottle this beverage.
The answer is simple, yet the process is delicate: they grow them inside the bottle. As soon as the pear blossom drops its petals, leaving a tiny pear, the branch is carefully inserted into the bottle. The bottle is then gently fastened upside-down from another branch held by twine. Over the summer the pears grow to full size inside the bottles. They are harvested when they are still a bit green and firm.
The bottles are then scrubbed inside and out with water and filled with the pear brandy. Once the bottle is opened the pear can be preserved for a long time by keeping it covered in brandy.
