Wine Country Times

The Gravenstein apple has thrived in Sonoma County for many decades.

But increasingly, apple orchards have been replaced by vineyards for wineries. A local nonprofit group, Slow Food Russian River, is on a mission to save the Gravensteins.

“A bunch of us were really passionate about saving the orchards for so many reasons,” Paula Shatkin, coordinator of the apple project, told Wine Country Times. “Most of the farmers are local. Older apples trees don’t require a lot of water. They don’t require a lot of fencing that would keep wildlife from moving around. And it’s our apple. We have a Gravenstein school, a Gravenstein highway.”

The Sonoma County chapter is part of Slow Food International, which is dedicated to producing a "global food system that gives us good food, healthy food, clean environment, fair pay and food justice, for all.”

Saving the Gravestein apple is one small part of that mission, Shatkin said.

The Sonoma group, funded in part by a grant from the city of Sebastopol, promotes the apples in many ways and tries to educate people on “what they’re losing if they let them go,” Shatkin said.

There is an annual Gravenstein festival and parade.  

“We hang up banners in July in the middle of town saying, ‘The Gravensteins are coming,'” she said.

From August through October, the group sponsors a free apple press for making juice out of the Gravensteins.

“It’s so popular, we pressed 50,000 pounds of apples last year,” Shatkin said.

Gravensteins are “sweet and tart,” and great for baking pies, she said. The apples also make great apple cider which is made in “cideries” the apple version of wineries.

“We have quite a few really good cideries up here that are using local apples,” she said. “The cider business made a big difference in terms of the demand for local apples. Also, a lot of people who come to our press, actually make cider with their juice.”

Many communities have their own special foods, Shatkin said.

“One of the problems in this day and age is that the multi-national corporations go in and say, ‘We’ll pay you to grow what we want.’ That’s when they lose their heritage foods and traditions.”