piré

Latin pirum means 'pear,' and the Romans made fermented pear juice alongside apple cider. Pliny the Elder mentions pear wine in his Natural History (77 CE). The Gauls and Britons were already making it when the Romans arrived. Old French piré (from Latin piratum, 'made from pears') became the English 'perry' by the 1200s. The drink predates the word by centuries.

Perry was a regional specialty of western England and Normandy. The counties of Herefordshire, Gloucestershire, and Worcestershire developed dedicated perry pear varieties — Blakeney Red, Moorcroft, Thorn — that were inedible raw but fermented beautifully. These trees took decades to mature and could produce for three centuries. A perry pear tree planted in the 1700s might still be yielding fruit today.

The drink nearly died in the 20th century. Industrial agriculture cleared ancient orchards. The knowledge of which pear varieties made good perry was held by aging farmers who were not replaced. By the 1970s, perry was almost extinct in England. The Campaign for Real Ale (CAMRA) and a handful of artisan producers — Tom Oliver, Kevin Minchew, Denis Gwatkin — brought it back from the brink.

Babycham, introduced in 1953, was a mass-market sparkling perry marketed to women — the first alcoholic drink advertised on British television. It made perry famous and unrecognizable simultaneously. Artisan perry producers have spent decades distinguishing their craft from Babycham's sweetened fizz. The word 'perry' now carries two completely different drinks: a mass-market novelty and one of Europe's oldest fermented beverages.