6 In many liquor stores you can buy pear brandy with a real pear inside the bottle The pear is whole and ripe and the bottle is genuine it hasn't been cut in any way How did the pear get inside?

To make pear-in-the-bottle they actually grow the pear inside of the bottle in their orchards, and then fill it with their pear eau de vie. This practice of growing Pears in the bottle is traditional in Alsace where pear brandy has been made for hundreds of years. Pear-in-the-bottle is highly labor intensive, requiring weeks of work putting the bottles on the trees in late May when the small pear will still fit in the neck of the bottle, tending them all summer, and picking them in late August. Since they use no preservatives or artificial cleaning solutions, each pear and each bottle must be painstakingly scrubbed by hand before they fill it with their pear eau de vie for which they are known worldwide. Due to the unpredictable nature of pear growth from year to year the pear in the bottle is only available certain years.