Pearl Cocktail

What do Kamala Harris, Elizabeth Taylor, Rumi, Grace Kelly, Jackie Kennedy, Coco Chanel, and Shakespeare have in common? A love and appreciation of pearls. And they are not alone. For centuries pearls have been equated with prestige and wealth, metaphors for transformation in literature, art and philosophy, and symbols of luck, beauty and purity.

The lore and allure of pearls is as vast and varied as the bodies of water from which they are harvested. Venus and Aphrodite were said to have emerged from an oyster shell. And if the story is true, Cleopatra famously set out to impress Marc Antony when she wagered a bet with him that she could host the most expensive dinner in history, thereby exhibiting Egypt’s wealth. She finished that meal with a cocktail made from one of her own very expensive pearl earrings—worth millions even then—crushed and dissolved in a goblet of vinegar wine. Wager won. 

Pearls are formed when an irritant works its way into an oyster, mussel or clam causing a defense mechanism to secrete a fluid, nacre, that coats the irritant in layers to form a luminous pearl. It can take anywhere between six months to four years for a pearl to be ready for harvest. Cultured pearls are surgically removed without harm to the mollusk, and sometimes an irritant is reintroduced to seed the growth of another pearl.

In a letter to his brother Theo, Vincent van Gogh wrote: “The heart of man is very much like the sea, it has its storms, it has its tides and in its depths, it has its pearls too.” Some of the pearls that are formed from the irritants that land on the mantles of our hearts and souls are never harvested, while  others can take a lifetime to harvest. The removal of them is a delicate process, not always as surgically precise or efficient as those harvested from oysters, but the yield is as priceless as a cocktail concocted by Cleopatra herself.