Mathilde makes 100% natural, 100% hand picked fruit liqueurs from their French family recipes that are over 100 years old. The Pear liqueur is 18% abv / 36 proof and is a very light yellow, gold in color. The aroma is that of pears that are at the peak of ripeness as if they had been sitting on your counter all week slowly becoming more and more aromatic. This is a light bodied liqueur that is on the pleasurably sweet end of the spectrum, and is crammed full of the essence of ripe pears. I'm drinking it chilled from a snifter and it's like biting into an icy pear so ripe and honeyed that the pear just disintegrates and bursts in your mouth with a splash of sweet nectar.

As sometimes happens when I smell and taste a fine spirit I was taken back to 15 years ago. It was the middle of the winter with several feet of snow on the ground and I was taking a course on wilderness survival and Native American spirituality out near the Pine Barrens of New Jersey. We were spending the week tramping around all day in the snow talking, and all night sleeping wrapped up like mummies in our bags in an old, unheated hay filled barn. It was actually quite comfortable if you don't mind temps of 14° F at night. Our food wasn't bad, but it was very boring for a gourmet like me, consisting of all kinds of healthy stuff like roots and hay, uh... I mean kohlrabi and granola.I woke up early one morning just before dawn and was wandering around in the gray tinted dark. I saw a crate in back of the barn that was partially covered in hay and obviously forgotten. I brushed it clear and saw that it was packed full of local pears. I took a bite of one and was overwhelmed with how sweet, cold, and juicy it was, the best pear I had ever tasted. I quickly stuffed my parka full of a half dozen of these nuggets of gustatory gold and hid the crate back under the hay. I then walked out into the rosy dawn and slurped up all those pears, enjoying them intensely, juice dripping down my chin, as I watched the sun rise and the day begin. For the rest of the cold and wintry week I would sneak to that crate and carefully fill my pockets full of those pears and then wander away to watch nature and the elements dance with each other.

I snapped back to the present as I finished the glass of Mathilde Poire in tiny sips, desperately licking the glass clean before finally putting it down. Mathilde is readily available at many liquor stores and a bargain at around $10-$12 for a 375 Ml bottle.