Bobbing Around Apple County

Max was at it again.

For the second time in five minutes, the plump black Labrador sneaked an apple from a box of Gravensteins right at Shirley Walker’s feet, headed for a quiet corner of the barn and settled onto the floor for a good gnaw. Only this time he didn’t get away with it.

“Max, you stay out of there!” scolded Shirley, her tiny apple-shaped earrings bobbing madly as she shook a paring knife in the dog’s direction--the same knife she was using to cut slices from apples for my travel companion Mac and me to taste.

With her husband, Lee, Walker grows 27 varieties of the fruit on an 80-acre farm begun in 1914 by Lee’s grandfather outside Sebastopol, the state’s unofficial apple capital. In this neck of the woods, where apples have been cultivated for more than a century and the local taqueria’s logo is an apple sporting a serape and sombrero, even dogs love apples.

It was a cool, damp Saturday morning in mid-September, five days before the start of autumn, and Mac and I were well into a weekend of apple-sampling, antiquing and fine eating in and around Sebastopol, a town of turn-of-the-century bungalows and roughly 7,000 souls in western Sonoma County. From August through November, Sebastopol is awash in apples as different varieties successively ripen in the orchards surrounding the town.

Many of the apples are old heirloom varieties like Arkansas Black and Spitzenberg (Thomas Jefferson’s favorite), but since most heirlooms don’t have a long shelf life, you’ll rarely see them in chain supermarkets. To taste them at their best you need to visit the growers, who are listed in a free Sonoma farm guide (available at local businesses or by calling Sonoma County Farm Trails, telephone [800] 207-9464; some farms will ship their apples).

We had arrived in Sebastopol on Friday night, driving into town on California Highway 116--known locally as the Gravenstein Highway, after the region’s most famous apple--and checked in to a clean, new Holiday Inn Express with a stone fireplace in its lobby and an outdoor pool and a whirlpool (standard rooms $79 to $124, suites $99 to $179).

Dinner that night was in neighboring Forestville at the Farmhouse Inn, a six-acre property with an unheated swimming pool, gardens and eight cottage-like rooms and suites, most with fireplace, spa and sauna ($105 to $195, including full breakfast; tel. [800] 464-6642). We’d wanted to stay there, but when I called to reserve several weeks in advance, it was already completely booked.

The inn’s 32-seat restaurant occupies a restored late-1800s farmhouse, and our dinner featured Sonoma country cooking at its best. After starters of flavor-popping tomatoes with fresh mozzarella and a salad of slow-roasted beets with tangy greens and goat cheese, we moved on to main courses: fork-tender Sonoma duck breast in a dark pool of huckleberry sauce, and thinly sliced veal topped with a colorful mix of coarsely chopped tomatoes, red onion, basil, garlic and crispy potato.

We split a bottle of light-bodied 1997 Everett Ridge Pinot Noir, vinted just down the road, as well as an apple-huckleberry crisp made with Gravensteins from the inn’s own tree.

We were up early on Saturday to meet a Sonoma friend, Jackie Holmes, for breakfast at Willow Wood, a stylish country market and cafe in the nearby hamlet of Graton. Over strong coffee and inventive egg dishes--a creamy scramble, for example, cooked in a double boiler with fontina cheese and fresh herbs--Jackie described the tough times facing Sebastopol’s apple industry. This summer, the town’s fruit-drying plant--the last big commercial processor in the area--closed for good. Some growers were left without a market, which explained why Mac and I had spotted fallen apples surrounding so many trees.

The popularity of Sonoma wine has also created problems as apple orchards have given way to far more lucrative vineyards. In the 1960s there were 12,000 acres of apples in western Sonoma County; today there are 4,000.

Despite the decline, apples are still very much in evidence at this time of year. On our drive to the Walkers’ farm, we passed scores of orchards where trees were heavy with apples and the air was perfumed with the smell of ripe fruit, and at Twin Hill Ranch, which has been owned and operated by the same family since 1942, we encountered a virtual world of apples. Unlike the Walkers’ farm, with its no-frills barn where only fresh apples are sold, Twin Hill, on Pleasant Hill Road just west of Gravenstein Highway, is a pleasantly homespun tourist attraction, with picnic benches, a kids’ play area and a cavernous old barn where you can buy all kinds of apple-related items, from the fruit itself to cookies, peelers, cakes, pies, juice, cookbooks and jams.

After a snack of apple cookies, cake and juice at Twin Hill, we took a break from apples to nose around a couple of Sebastopol’s antique stores, which are concentrated along Gravenstein Highway south of town.

By late afternoon, however, we were back on the apple track, sharing a piece of flaky-crusted, fruit-filled pie at Mom’s, a homey luncheonette and pie shop (4550 Gravenstein Highway North), and stopping to wet our whistles at the Ace-in-the-Hole, purportedly America’s first hard cider pub (3100 Gravenstein Highway North). Four different hard ciders are poured, each made on the premises with mostly local apples. There’s the dry, lightly carbonated apple cider popular in parts of Europe, as well as sweeter versions flavored with honey, pears and berries. The pub is a cheerful spot with bright yellow walls inside, and as we sat sipping our pints, we studied the huge copper and steel fermentation tanks visible through an interior window behind the bar.

That night we ate at 101 Main, a 40-seat restaurant housed in a 1907 beaux-arts bank building in downtown Sebastopol (tel. [707] 829-3212). Joining a happy and noisy crowd that appeared to be mostly locals, we shared an appetizer of seared sea scallops on a crispy risotto cake, and traded frequent bites of our main courses, mushroom-Parmesan ravioli in a pesto-tomato broth and a Southern-inspired pork loin with maple-bourbon sauce, sweet potatoes and braised greens. We sampled four local wines by the glass, and at dessert returned to the theme of our trip with an apple-mascarpone tart, made with rose-fleshed Pink Lady apples donated by a regular customer.

On Sunday morning, after a free continental breakfast at the hotel, we drove out to Hale’s, an apple farm five minutes north of downtown on Gravenstein Highway. Fifteen years ago, on the first of our now-annual autumn apple trips to Sebastopol, Mac and I had stopped at Hale’s, attracted by its folksy sign promising “Apples Fresh Off the Trees.” Over the years we’ve watched the sign fade and the selection diminish. This year, though, the decline was more noticeable, and we wondered if a well-tended vineyard would soon replace Hale’s venerable trees. A bit of sad speculation, but so long as there are any blossoms in the spring and fruits in the fall, I’m sure apples will draw us back to Sebastopol.

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Budget for Two

Air fare, LAX-S.F.: $156.00

Car rental, 2 days: $37.76

Holiday Inn Express, two nights: 236.60

Dinner, Farmhouse Inn: 107.95

Breakfast, Willow Wood: 20.17

Hard cider, Ace-in-the-Hole: 6.75

Dinner, 101 Main: 83.98

Golden Gate Bridge toll: 3.00

FINAL TAB: $652.21

Holiday Inn Express, 1101 Gravenstein Highway South, Sebastopol, CA 95472; tel. (707) 829-6677.