The Oregonian/OregonLive



By Samantha Bakall

The Oregonian | OregonLive

Perry is cider's underrated, and undiscovered, cousin.



An alcoholic beverage made by fermenting pears, perry is often confused with pear cider, a distinctly different drink. While perry is made with 100 percent pears, pear cider is typically an apple cider sweetened with pear juice.



Similar in taste to cider, with some bottles providing a funky, blue cheese expression and others more like sweet bubbles, perry's history has long been entwined with its apple relative. It's been a common drink in England and parts of France and Spain for centuries. In the United States, the pear-based beverage is just starting to gain traction as an alternative to cider, though it's been a favorite of cider-makers for years.



"It's a wholesome, lower alcohol alternative to wine and a gluten-free alternative to beer," Portland Cider Company's Jeff Parrish said. "Perry tastes good. It's a different flavor from cider, a different flavor profile from wine. It's a nice, very sessionable drink where with wine you can sip, this you can drink."

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Portland Cider Company co-owner Jeff Parrish. The Oregonian/OregonLive



The Pacific Northwest's perry industry is tiny. According to the Northwest Horticultural Council, Washington and Oregon are the two highest pear producing states in the country, yet only a handful of cider makers make perry and even fewer make it regularly.



"I would say 99 percent of the consumers don't know what is often called a pear cider and what is a true perry," Parrish said. "That's just an effect of how new our industry is and how much work we have to educate the consuming public on these products we're producing. When you label something a perry, it's just a whole other magnitude of obscure from cider."



Some cider makers, like Reverend Nat's Nat West, point to pears themselves as a reason for perry's obscurity. Washington has 175,000 acres of apple orchards, according to the Washington Apple Commission, more than three times as many acres of pears grown in the entire United States.



Two types of perries are on the market -- modern and heritage -- according to the United States Association of Cider Makers, a national trade association. Modern perry is made with dessert fruit -- pears like Bosc, d'Anjou and Bartlett or others you would buy to eat -- while heritage perries are made with pears specifically selected for their astringent, bitter and tannic qualities.

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Reverend Nat's Cidery & Taproom is located at 1813 N.E. 2nd Avenue. Photo by Stephanie Yao Long | The Oregonian



Most modern perries made in the Pacific Northwest -- think Portland Cider Company's Pearfect or Reverend Nat's occasional hop-infused perry -- are made with dessert pear juice purchased from a commercial juicer simply because they're not worth the effort to juice in-house, West said.



"The very first time we ever made perry, we learned our lesson," West said. "Apples press pretty well. They grind up and have some cellular structure that locks them together.... Pears are very, very goopy. The best way to describe it is trying to squeeze the liquid out of margarine. It's liquid, it's wet, but it's coming out the cracks."



Pacific Northwest-made heritage perries are difficult to find, with only a handful of cideries growing or having access to those bitter and tannic perry pears. Finnriver Farm & Cider outside of Port Townsend, which makes a limited amount of perry yearly in addition to their award-winning cider, is home to 600 perry pear trees in four varieties.



For their perry, which cider maker Andrew Byers said typically flies off the shelf since they started making it five years ago, Finnriver presses fruit from their own orchards, as well as other face-puckering pears plucked from old, gnarled pear trees from nearby farms.



"Perry is the jewel of the cider diaspora," Byers said. "It's time consuming to grow, fickle to produce and just lovely when it comes out."

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Finnriver Farm & Cider's perry. Photo by Crystie Kisler.



The largest difference between perry and cider, besides using different fruit, Parrish said, is pears naturally contain unfermentable sugars that leave a residual sweetness in the beverage. The sugar, sorbitol, is the same you'll find sweetening sugar-free gum. But that same sugar is also a laxative, West said, cautioning anyone from drinking too much in a single setting.



Conveying the distinction between perry and pear cider isn't the drink's only hurdle, cider makers say. It's also getting consumers to find and pick it up off the shelf, even in cider-friendly Portland.



"The Portland metro area is the No. 1 cider market per capita in the U.S. on consumption," Parrish said. "I'd attribute that solely to the fact there are more producers per capita in the Northwest than anywhere in the country. Cider represents about 6 percent of the beer market here. I would say perry is less than half a percent of that, maybe a tenth."

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Finnriver Farm & Cider's pear orchards. Photo by Jen Lee Chapman



Locally, the best shop to find a selection of perry is Southeast Portland's Bushwhacker Cider, the first cidery in the city and the first all-cider pub in the country. Recently, Bushwhacker offered 11 perries from across the globe, more than half from Pacific Northwest producers. Bottle prices range from $8-$25.



And while perry will likely never reach cider's popularity, Byers is hopeful about the future of the beverage, and of cider in general.



"We are building our connoisseurship," Byers said. "We are pushing through a whole bunch of novelty. Through the novelty and the crazy ciders, people are settling down with macro ciders into more sophisticated ciders."

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Samantha Bakall | The Oregonian/OregonLive

Where to buy perry

We visited Southeast Portland's Bushwhacker Cider for a selection of perries. Here are their five suggestions.