I read a very interesting hub by Cosette entitled What Foods These Morsels Be and I enjoyed seeing the little pears that were grown into the shapes of Buddha. I was telling my husband about them on the way to the grocery store. It reminded him of a European liqueur that he could buy in England that had a pear that was grown in the bottle. That was the birth of this hub.

In trying to research this topic, I found Clear Creek Distillery in Portland, Oregon. They manufacture the same type of product. In fact, it's their 25th anniversary of producing Pear Eau de Vie.

Their website indicates they just received 92,000 pounds of pears that they have mashed and are now fermenting. They have a batch of Mirabelle Plums fermenting as well. They also make an Apple in a Bottle Brandy. The apples float whereas the pears sink to the bottom.

I wanted to know more about how they are able to grow fruit inside a glass wine bottle. So, this led to more research.

I'm going to give you a real brief description of how to grow fruit in a bottle. The gentleman in the video will demonstrate.

• You catch a tree in it's budding stage and find limbs that you can reduce the buds down to one good healthy bud. Obviously, some limbs lend themselves to this better than others. You're looking for a limb that will make it easy to fit the bottle over the bud. If you wait until the buds are too big they won't fit into the neck of the bottle.
• Trim away all unnecessary leaves and buds so that you have one long bud on a limb.
• Run the bud into a clean dry wine bottle leaving room for the fruit to grow. You don't want to push the bud completely to the bottom of the bottle.
• Determine how to best anchor the bottle. You can use wire, ribbons, string, zip ties, etc. You'll need to make adjustments as necessary so that the bottle can freely sway as it will need to with the sway of the limb and yet you don't want bottles too close together so that they clash and potentially break.
• Allow the fruit to grow as normal.
• When the fruit has satisfactorily ripened see if the limb will easily loosen from the fruit. If so, clip the bottle free and slide the bottle off leaving your piece of fruit in the bottle.
• Run tap water into the bottle to clean the fruit and bottle.
• Pour brandy into the bottle and seal the bottle. About 5 months later you will have a fruit flavored brandy and a nice show piece that makes everyone wonder how you did it.

If you'd like to just order ones already done, check with Clear Creek in the link below and find their nearest distributor. You can also buy it online from them and other authorized dealers. I think it would make a great Christmas gift for that person who has everything! These would make a wonderful addition to any Christmas Wine Gift Basket!