[2] It is a late-season dessert pear picked in late autumn for use in early to mid-winter.

The fruit are medium in size and have outstanding storage properties for a pear, easily keeping for a couple of months.

Hoggs Fruit Manual (1880s) describes it as one of the richest flavoured pears, flesh being yellowish, fine-grained, buttery and melting, with a rich, sugary and vinous flavour and a fine aroma.

The pear is named after the Flemish nobleman Jan-Karel de Nelis [fr; nl] (1748–1834), who raised it from seed in the early 1800s.

It was introduced to England in 1818 and to the United States in 1823[5][6] In 1869, Edward Berwick planted the first commercial pear orchard on the Berwick Manor and Orchard in Carmel Valley, California, specializing in the Winter Nelis pear.