Perry pear
Butter Pear
A soft-fleshed Three Counties perry pear of mild, low-phenolic juice, named for the texture of its flesh rather than for anywhere in particular.
Also written Butterpear.
- Classification
- Sweet — Perry pear classification
- Harvest
- Mid (Late September to mid October)
- Single varietal
- Rarely bottled on its own
- Blend role
- Bulk juice, Sugar and body
- Origin
- The Three Counties
- Species
- Pyrus communis
- Vigour
- Vigorous
- Biennial bearing
- Slightly biennial
- Keeping
- Poor — mill soon after picking
How it is classified
Perry pear classification
Sweet
Low acid, low tannin. Mild perry pears giving soft, light perry.
Measured at 4.5 g/L acid and 440 mg/L true tannin — mild on both counts.
Every classification on CiderHQ names its system. Why there is more than one.
What it contributes to a blend
A direction, not a measurement. These bands are the level of resolution the evidence supports, and they say which way adding this fruit pushes a blend rather than what the finished cider will be.
| Axis | Typical | Range |
|---|---|---|
| Acid | Low | |
| Tannin | Light | |
| Sugar | Moderate | |
| Bitterness | Slight | |
| Astringency | Slight | |
| Aroma | Present | |
| Body | Medium |
A 2022 juice analysis: SG 1.055, 4.5 g/L acid, 440 mg/L true tannin, 640 mg/L total phenolics.
A soft, low-tannin juice with moderate acid: mild in every direction.
Aroma
No aroma descriptors are recorded for Butter Pear, and for a great deal of cider fruit that is a finding rather than a gap. Bittersweet apples in particular contribute tannin, sugar and body while being close to aromatically mute, and most of what a cider made from them smells of was produced by the fermentation rather than carried in by the fruit. CiderHQ publishes the absence rather than filling the space with descriptors nothing supports.
Measured analysis
Each figure is shown with where and when it was taken. They are not averaged: the same cultivar grown in another climate genuinely gives different numbers, and collapsing them into one would be the most misleading thing this page could do.
| Property | Reading | Where | When | Source |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Free amino nitrogen | 11.6 mg/L | Gloucestershire, Herefordshire, Worcestershire and neighbouring counties, England | 2022Modern analysis | Cider and Perry Academy (Peter Mitchell) |
| Phenolic acids | 200.0 mg/L | Gloucestershire, Herefordshire, Worcestershire and neighbouring counties, England | 2022Modern analysis | Cider and Perry Academy (Peter Mitchell) |
| Proline | 76.8 mg/L | Gloucestershire, Herefordshire, Worcestershire and neighbouring counties, England | 2022Modern analysis | Cider and Perry Academy (Peter Mitchell) |
| Specific gravity | 1.055 SG | Gloucestershire, Herefordshire, Worcestershire and neighbouring counties, England | 2022Modern analysis | Cider and Perry Academy (Peter Mitchell) |
| Titratable acidity | 4.5 g/L | Gloucestershire, Herefordshire, Worcestershire and neighbouring counties, England | 2022Modern analysis | Cider and Perry Academy (Peter Mitchell) |
| Total amino acids | 66.5 mg/L | Gloucestershire, Herefordshire, Worcestershire and neighbouring counties, England | 2022Modern analysis | Cider and Perry Academy (Peter Mitchell) |
| Total phenolics | 640.0 mg/L | Gloucestershire, Herefordshire, Worcestershire and neighbouring counties, England | 2022Modern analysis | Cider and Perry Academy (Peter Mitchell) |
| Total tannin | 440.0 mg/L | Gloucestershire, Herefordshire, Worcestershire and neighbouring counties, England | 2022Modern analysis | Cider and Perry Academy (Peter Mitchell) |
How these were measured
- Juice pressed from fruit collected in the Three Counties and frozen before analysis. Published to five decimal places and shown at the three the site displays.
- Titration, reported as malic acid.
- “True tannin” — the polymerised phenolic fraction, measured separately from the phenolic acids. Published in grams per litre and stored here in milligrams per litre by exact conversion.
- Phenolic acids measured separately from the tannin fraction. Published in grams per litre and stored here in milligrams per litre by exact conversion.
- The sum of the true tannin and phenolic acid fractions as the surveyor reports it. Published in grams per litre and stored here in milligrams per litre by exact conversion.
- HPLC. The whole amino acid pool by mass, assimilable and non-assimilable together.
- Free amino nitrogen, calculated from the individual amino acids as nitrogen available to yeast. Excludes proline.
- HPLC.
- One sample from one source in one season. The surveyor reports the same variety differing markedly between years, sites and tree types, and publishes the samples separately rather than pooling them.
- Measured as “true tannin” — the polymerised phenolic fraction — separately from the phenolic acids. It is not a Folin–Ciocalteu total and not a permanganate total, and should be compared only with figures produced the same way.
- Perry pear juice runs far lower in assimilable nitrogen than cider apple juice, a difference the Long Ashton workers reported and this survey confirms across most of the varieties sampled. Several readings here sit below the level at which a ferment is generally expected to need feeding.
- Proline is an amino acid a wine or cider yeast cannot assimilate without oxygen, so it does not count towards usable nitrogen. In these pear juices it routinely exceeds the whole assimilable amino pool, which is why a perry must can be rich in amino acids and starved of nitrogen at the same time.
Compare within a study to see where these figures sat among the other cultivars the same work analysed — which is a more robust statement than the figures themselves, because absolute values move between laboratories and the ordering inside one study mostly survives.
Watched in the orchard
What named research programmes recorded about this fruit at their own sites. Bloom, harvest and cropping belong to a place and a run of seasons rather than to a cultivar, so they are reported site by site rather than merged.
Three Counties perry pear juice survey
Gloucestershire, Herefordshire, Worcestershire and neighbouring counties — the perry country itself, rather than a research station elsewhere · 2022–2024 · Cider and Perry Academy (Peter Mitchell)
The lower Severn and Wye vales: mild, wet, and the only ground in Britain where perry pears have ever been grown at scale. Fruit was collected across three autumns, and the survey reports each collection separately rather than pooling the seasons.
- Held as
- Sample BuP-Oct22
Juice from single varieties, frozen before analysis. Specific gravity; titratable acidity by titration as malic acid; “true tannin” and phenolic acids measured as separate fractions; individual amino acids by HPLC, with free amino nitrogen calculated from them and proline reported apart because yeast cannot assimilate it anaerobically. Where samples differed by location, tree age or year, they are reported separately.
In the orchard
- Harvest window
- Mid
- Flowering
- Not recorded
- Vigour
- Vigorous
- Cropping
- Slightly biennial
- Keeping
- Poor — mill soon after picking
The National Perry Pear Collection does not place this variety in its published ripening bands, so no harvest window is recorded for it here beyond the October collection date of the analysed sample.
The name is the warning: butter-fleshed fruit goes from firm to collapsed quickly.
Not placed in the National Perry Pear Collection’s published flowering bands. The gap is recorded rather than filled by inference from related pears.
Pears are not self-fertile. A variety needs another in blossom at the same time to set fruit, which is why the flowering band matters more in a perry orchard than the harvest window does.
Juice and pressing
- Moderate acid
- Low tannin
- Total phenolics of 640 mg/L, in the lower third of the modern survey
How it is used
- Blended for volume and softness.
On its own
Rarely bottled on its own
Nothing in its measured composition or in the record suggests a single-variety perry has been made from it.
About Butter Pear
Butter Pear is one of the perry pears whose name is a description of the flesh rather than a place or a person. Butter-fleshed fruit is soft, melting and quick to collapse, which makes it easy to mill and hard to store: it goes from firm to unusable in days rather than weeks, and a mill taking it has to be ready.
A 2022 analysis of its juice returned 4.5 grams per litre of acid, 440 milligrams per litre of true tannin and 640 of total phenolics, at a gravity of 1.055. That is a mild juice with moderate acidity and very little grip, which is the profile of a pear that fills out a blend rather than defining one.
The National Perry Pear Collection holds it but does not place it in its published flowering or ripening bands, so CiderHQ records no flowering group and no harvest window for it. The absence is worth stating rather than papering over: a great deal of what is known about perry pears is known about the twenty or thirty that Long Ashton analysed and the collection has studied closely, and this is one of the ones outside that circle.
Names, origin and identity
Cultivar naming is the hardest problem in cider fruit data. The same tree carries different names across ten miles, and two different trees have shared a name for two centuries.
Origin · traditional account
Unrecorded. “Butter” describes the flesh — soft, melting and quick to break down — which is a description that has attached to unrelated pears in several countries.
Why it matters
- Held in the National Perry Pear Collection, which is most of what keeps a variety like this in existence.
Related cultivars
Recorded relationships, including the ones this fruit is routinely confused with.
Fruit that plays a similar part
Cultivars sharing a classification under the same system and a comparable role in a blend. Not a similarity score — a stated relationship.
Green Longdon
The senior member of the Longdon group, widely grown in north-west Gloucestershire and carrying six synonyms, three of which other Longdons also claim.
Barnet
A very late-flowering Three Counties perry pear of mild juice, carrying six recorded synonyms and one that collides with a cider apple.
Bartestree Squash
A late-ripening Herefordshire squash pear of notably low acid, and one of the mildest juices in the modern Three Counties survey.
De Cloche
A bell-shaped Domfrontais poiré pear, planted alongside Plant de Blanc and giving a mild, sweet juice.
Green Roller
An early-flowering Three Counties perry pear with the highest assimilable nitrogen recorded in the modern survey.
Potato Pear
A heavily russeted Monmouthshire perry pear whose name describes a fruit that looks like a potato, giving a mild, sweet juice.
Where it grows
What people ask next
Questions readers ask about the things this page mentions. Each one goes to the section that answers it rather than to a page written to receive the question.
- What is perry — Perry is an alcoholic drink made by fermenting the juice of pears, traditionally of specific perry pear cultivars rather than eating pears. It is to pears what cider is to apples, and has its own history in the three counties of England and in Normandy.
- How are apples milled for cider
- What is juice blending
- How are perry pears classified — Perry pears are conventionally divided by acid and tannin into sweet, medium sharp, bittersharp and bittersweet, following the scheme used in the English perry literature. Sorbitol content matters too, and it does not appear in the classes.
- What is still perry
- What is herefordshire cider
Where to go next
- How cider apples are classified — Why there are four schemes and none of them is universal.
- The blend explorer — See which way changing the proportions moves a blend.
- Blending — What a cider maker is actually deciding when they build a blend.
Sources
What this page rests on. Where a source is marked as registered rather than read, CiderHQ is recording that the body is authoritative on the subject without claiming to have worked through the document itself. See our evidence policy for what each state means.
Perry Pears and Perry — Research and Survey Work
Cider and Perry Academy (Peter Mitchell) · specialist publication · passage verified 2026-08-25 · covers 2022–2024
Ongoing survey work by a cider and perry technologist who has taught production for decades, published openly and updated annually; retrieved and read in full on 2026-08-25. Thirty-eight single-variety perry pear juices analysed for gravity, titratable acidity, the tannin and phenolic acid fractions separately, and the individual amino acids by HPLC — the last of which nobody else has done at this scale for perry. Not peer-reviewed, and the author is explicit that the accompanying fermentation trials are initial surveys needing statistical treatment before differences are called significant; CiderHQ repeats that wherever the fermentation results are used.
National Perry Pear Centre, Hartpury · specialist organisation · passage verified 2026-08-24
Read on 2026-08-24 — and the address CiderHQ had registered, perrypears.co.uk, is no longer the Centre at all. It fails the TLS handshake over https, and over plain http it resolves to a Sedo domain-parking page: an earlier pass in this sprint recorded it as retrieved on the strength of an HTTP 200, which was wrong, and the correction is the point. The Centre publishes at nationalperrypearcentre.org.uk. It is the closest thing British perry has to an identity authority: it holds at least two examples of most known varieties, states that the DNA of most of them has been determined and is used as an aid to identification, and publishes a variety register with synonym lists. Its 121-variety register is transcribed into the perry pear records, including the nineteen names it shows being claimed by more than one variety.
Research Evidence standard for this record. What that means.