Over the winter we have been busy working on various jobs around the farm, and also planting pear trees in the orchards. At the Gollop orchard near Bridport we have been planting a few different varieties of pear tree to fill in gaps in our established perry pear orchard.
In the photo above we were planting 2-year-old Eyewood pear trees. The graftwood was taken from a tree in a nearby old Dorset cider orchard.
The original tree is at least 100 years old. It has never shown any signs of disease and it is a regular cropper. The resulting perry is nicely balanced, very easy drinking, and usually it will keeve naturally to give sweetness. It was for this reason that we decided to have the tree DNA tested to find out what it is and whether it is a named variety. The DNA test results came back with the variety ‘Eyewood’.
Researching Eyewood, it originates from Herefordshire at the end of the 18th century, and the pear was originally called Eyewood Bergamot. How fascinating that one of these trees found its way to a Dorset cider orchard over 100 years ago where it has thrived.
We have around 60 pear trees to plant, the majority being Eyewood, and we are hopeful that these young trees could be the future of Dorset perry!