Ripened in the warm summer days and sweetened by the cool evening fogs of Northern California’s Sonoma County, Gravensteins are a beloved sweet-tart apple treasured for their taste and baking prestige.
Our annual Gravenstein Apple Box is available only for 2 weeks each August. It contains a mix of green and red Grav varieties that are both great for pies, sauce, juice, and just plain eating out of hand. We purchase the apples from Sonoma County farmers and then give them an additional 16% of the proceeds from all box sales.
Gravenstein apples are an “endangered American food,” included in Slow Food USA’s Ark of Taste, a living collection of heritage foods in danger of extinction. Housing development, the allure of higher profit wine-grape production, and cheap overseas imports for apple juice and sauce are among the factors that have greatly reduced the number of Gravenstein apple orchards around Sebastopol in Sonoma County. Only a handful of farmers continue to grow Gravensteins in the area. Your purchase supports Sebastopol growers like Stan Devoto, John Kolling, Dave Hale, Sharon Gowan, and Lee Walker, all longtime FruitGuys farm partners. They set the price for the apples we purchase and then we give them back an additional 16% of the revenue from box sales. This was the 12th year of the Gravenstein Box!
