Patagonia's wine country winter dessert: firm Williams pears poached in Mendoza Malbec with cinnamon, cloves, and orange, served with dulce de leche cream: the European immigrant farmhouse kitchen transplanted to the foot of the Andes
Origin: Argentina
From the journey of Pear.
The Río Negro and Neuquén valleys in Patagonian Argentina, running east from the Andes foothills toward the Atlantic, constitute one of the most important pear-growing regions in the Southern Hemisphere. The combination of intense desert sun, cold nights, glacial meltwater irrigation, and volcanic soils produces Williams and Bosc pears of exceptional quality; Argentina is consistently among the top five pear exporters in the world. The European immigrant communities who settled Patagonia from the 1880s, Italians, Spaniards, Welsh, and Germans, among others, brought with them both the knowledge of fruit cultivation and the tradition of cooking fruit in wine. In the Argentine wine culture, the Malbec grape (transplanted from Cahors in southwest France, where it was nearly destroyed by the 1956 frost) found its true home in the high-altitude vineyards of Mendoza; by the late 19th century the combination of Patagonian pears and Mendozian Malbec was a natural one. Peras al Malbec is the classic Argentine farmhouse dessert of autumn and winter; whole pears, poached slowly in the deep, violet-fruited wine with cinnamon, cloves, and orange, finished with dulce de leche: the Argentine national caramel-milk preparation that appears in some form in nearly every sweet dish of the Argentine kitchen.
Argentina's Welsh colony in Chubut, Patagonia (established 1865) preserved a tradition of pear and quince cultivation that contributed to the region's orchard culture. The Río Negro valley's pear exports, primarily Williams (Bartlett) and Bosc, go largely to Europe and Brazil, where Argentine pears are prized for their size and sweetness. The Malbec grape arrived in Argentina with Michel Pouget, a French agronomist brought to Mendoza by the governor in 1853 to establish a model farm (quinta agronómica). The variety's success in Mendoza's high-altitude climate was not predicted; in France, Malbec was a blending grape at best. In Argentina, it became the country's defining red wine variety.
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