Making Fruit Brandy

Summer's last chance for great Gravensteins

In a tiny window of summer between July and the first week of September, the branches of the county's few remaining Gravenstein apple orchards sag heavily with this precious fruit.

In farmers markets, restaurants and even a handful of dirt lots by the side of the road, you'll find baskets of these tart red and green flecked apples for sale. But don't dawdle, because within a week or two, they'll be gone until next year.

At Dutton Ranch, one of the area's largest producers of these historic apples, most have already been harvested, according to owner Joe Dutton. They'll sell out of whatever's left in the next 10 days.

Snapping up what they can get, a handful of restaurants are offering sweet desserts that take advantage of the last of the harvest, including:

John Ash & Co. (4330 Barnes Road, Santa Rosa, 527-7687) offering a Gravenstein & thyme infused cocktail and a Gravenstein Upside-down cake with salted caramel gelato;

Petite Syrah's (205 5th St., Santa Rosa, 568-4002) Gravenstein apple cake with buttermilk ice cream; Zazu Restaurant's (3535 Guerneville Road, Santa Rosa, 523-4814) Gravenstein apple pie and Hole in the Wall Cafe's (972 Gravenstein Highway S., Sebastopol, 861-3777) Gravenstein Apple caramel crepe.

You may also be lucky enough to stumble on a few remaining apples at weekend farm markets and grocery stores.

So why seek out the humble Gravenstein?

Small, delicate, short-stemmed (making them difficult to harvest) and subject to imperfection, they're hardly the prom queens of the apple world. A slight breeze can throw a significant portion to the ground and the apple's delicate nature makes it turn mealy and soft within a week or two of harvesting.

Bigger, sturdier, more uniform breeds like Granny Smith, Jonagolds, Red Delicious and Galas that can be more easily jostled and transported from far-off places (like New Zealand and Chile) tend to make it into our shopping carts more frequently.

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The Scots most likely learned about distilling from the Irish (though they are loath to admit it). The Irish in turn learned about it, according to the Irish at least, from missionary monks who arrived in Ireland in the seventh century. The actual details are a bit sketchy for the next 700 years or so, but it does seem reasonable to believe that monks in the various monasteries were distilling aqua vitae (“water of life”), primarily for making medical compounds. These first distillates were probably grape or fruit brandy rather than grain spirit. Barley-based whiskey (the word derives from uisce beatha the Gaelic interpretation of aqua vitae) first appears in the historical record in the mid-1500s when the Tudor kings began to consolidate English control in Ireland. Queen Elizabeth I was said to be fond of it and had casks shipped to London on a regular basis.

The imposition of an excise tax in 1661 had the same effect as it did in Scotland, with the immediate commencement of the production of poteen (the Irish version of moonshine). This did not, however, slow down the growth of the distilling industry, and by the end of the 18th century there were over 2,000 stills in operation around the country.

Under British rule Ireland was export oriented and, along with grains and assorted foodstuffs, Irish distillers produced large quantities of pot-distilled whiskey for export into the expanding British Empire. Irish whiskey outsold Scotch whisky in most markets because it was lighter in body. It is said that in the late 19th century over 400 brands of Irish whiskey were being exported and sold in the United States.

This happy state of affairs for Irish distillers lasted into the early 20th century when the market began to change. The Irish distillers, pot still users to a man, were slow to respond to the rise of blended Scotch whisky with its column-distilled, smooth grain whisky component. When National Prohibition in the United States closed off Irish whiskys largest export market, many of the smaller distilleries closed. The remaining distilleries then failed to adequately anticipate the coming of Repeal (unlike the Scotch distillers) and were caught short without adequate stocks when it came. The Great Depression, trade embargoes between the newly independent Irish Republic and the United Kingdom, and World War II caused further havoc among the distillers.

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