Ark Of Taste, No Room
TASTING NOTES:
"Clean apple-forward gently sparkling Normandy style with primarily Gravenstein & King apples, a little pear and quince.
VARIETALS: Gravenstein & King apples
BARRELS: Not specified.
PAIRS WITH: N/A
THAT REMINDS ME OF: Gravensteins.
The Gravenstein apple has been grown in Sonoma County since the 1800s, which sounds impressive until you learn it was already old then — it dates to at least 1669, when it was recorded at Grasten Castle in what is now southern Denmark. (The castle is still there. The Danes are thorough.) For most of the 20th century, Sebastopol was basically synonymous with Gravensteins — the region produced so many that they held an annual festival, printed them on things, made the whole town smell like pie for a few weeks every August. At peak Gravenstein, Sonoma County had something like 15,000 acres of them.
Then the bottom fell out. Gravensteins don’t travel well, they don’t hold on the tree, and they ripen all at once whether you’re ready or not — which is a terrible combination if you’re trying to compete with the apple industrial complex. By the mid-2000s, acreage had dropped to something like 1,000. Slow Food USA added the Gravenstein to their Ark of Taste, which is a real program that catalogs endangered food traditions, and which has a name that is either very poetic or very on the nose depending on your mood. The apple that defined an entire region had become a heritage curiosity, a farmers’-market talking point, a thing people describe as “complex” right before they say they can’t find it anywhere.
Which is maybe why it ends up in cider from orchards that are themselves almost forgotten. There’s a logic there that doesn’t need much explaining — the apple that won’t cooperate, sourced from trees old enough to have opinions, made the way you’d make wine if you didn’t want to be told what to do. Seems about right.
ICYMI, you have two choices:
- Worried Summer heat might get to your wine before your wine gets to you? Order from the sale linked here, and we’ll get it to you at a cooler time of year!
- Want it shipped now? Every package during the summer will have protected temp control ground shipping for much of the country that takes longer but will ensure safe delivery. Expect up to two weeks for delivery. Now through the September 12th offer.
