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Rhône-Alpes
In the valley that the Gallo-Romans called "Vallis Aurea", the golden valley, pear trees replaced diseased vines — and their fruit, picked green then patiently affined, has retained that golden, melting quality.
Fruit from Rhône-Alpes.
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The Valloire valley, in northern Drôme, has been the cradle of pear production in the département since the 19th century. In the 1860s, phylloxera devastated the valley's vines; local fruit growers gradually replaced them with pear trees. The transition gathered pace from 1930: growers specialised, refined their training methods — croisillon lyonnais, gobelet training, scaffold branches — and diversified the cultivated varieties. Moras-en-Valloire, the market town around which this fruit growing flourished, is a thousand-year-old village whose name is attested as early as 1009, and which retains a medieval and Renaissance heritage.
This history is still recounted today in the "cabane Chosson", a former tool shed belonging to a village fruit grower and restaurateur: Laurent Chosson notably hosted the politician Édouard Herriot here, who came to taste his trout caught in Manthes. Restored by the Site Remarquable du Goût association, the hut now houses an exhibition devoted to the profession of fruit grower in the Valloire.
At the turn of the 2020s, production remained driven by a handful of family farms grouped in an association: in 2020, six growers united within the "Arbos de Moras et de la Valloire" alone farmed around a hundred hectares around Moras-en-Valloire, with an announced harvest of around 10,000 tonnes that year — a sharp recovery after a 2019 season slashed by two thirds due to frost. Their fruit reaches the market through several parallel channels: the Rhodacoop cooperative, the producer organisation Les Fruitiers Dauphinois, national wholesale markets (Corbas, Rungis, Bordeaux), supermarkets, and for some, direct sales at the farm.
The tradition is also kept alive through festivities: every two years in September, Moras-en-Valloire celebrates its pear in the village streets, featuring direct sales by growers, a parade by the confrérie de la Poire, tastings, and entertainment.
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The valley's name comes from the Latin "Vallis Aurea", the golden valley, attesting to its fertility as early as Gallo-Roman times. Orchards are planted on north-facing hillsides in fertile clay-loam soil, under a Mediterranean climate tempered by the coolness of the neighbouring uplands. Fruit growers developed trellised cultivation here — the tree branches are tied to a framework to enhance yield — patterning and criss-crossing the landscape from slope to slope.
Carved out several million years ago, the valley is also strewn with pebbles deposited by melting ancient ice: laid out in herringbone or fishbone patterns, occasionally alternating with courses of brick, they define the vernacular architecture of villages in the bas Dauphiné, where their once costly use often reserved them for façades. It is this terroir — soil, exposure, climate, and savoir-faire passed down from generation to generation — that earned the Valloire its designation as a "Site Remarquable du Goût" in 2011.
Appearance
Warm colours ranging from green to yellow, through red and amber, across the twenty or so varieties grown in the valley.
Taste
Sweet flesh, with high sugar content and a pronounced flavour enhanced by affinage.
Texture
Melting and barely grainy.
Around twenty varieties share the orchards of the Valloire, with Williams largely dominating production (accounting for roughly half of total volumes). It is grown alongside Guyot, Conférence, Doyenné du Comice, Packham, Passe-Crassane, and Louise-Bonne. Their harvesting schedule spans from July, beginning with the early Guyot, to the first half of October, concluding with the late Passe-Crassane.
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Poire de la Valloire can be enjoyed fresh, but is also well suited to processing — jam, fruit juice, eau-de-vie — or cooking, where it pairs naturally with other products of its terroir. It serves in particular as the base for gratin morassien, a savoury dish created by maître-restaurateur Jean-Jacques Galliffet combining pear slices (preferably Williams) and potatoes in a cream and milk mixture. Refreshing and low in calories — around 50 calories per 100 g —, it is also rich in fibre, minerals, and vitamin C.
Poire de la Valloire bears no official quality mark (PDO (AOP), PGI (IGP), Label Rouge): it remains an open-field farm product, without European specifications. In 2011, its terroir was named a "Site Remarquable du Goût" by the Fédération Nationale des Associations locales des Sites Remarquables du Goût — a distinction that honours a terroir and savoir-faire, but does not constitute a protected designation.
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