DRINK LOCAL
FAR FROM THE TREE Nana Mae’s and the sour taste of an ungrafted economy
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pples! Such an innocent fruit. The sturdy globe of a red-cheeked apple is American shorthand for student affection of favored teachers, wholesome homespun values, patriotic pies, and good health. Apples! Such cunning tricksters. Leave an apple tree ungrafted and it will produce an apple entirely its own, of a kind unknown anywhere else in the world. With small exception, its native fruit will be bitter and unpleasant. Apples! Replaced by grapes. Really? Only six percent of Sonoma County’s 1 million acres is planted to grapes. And while wine grapes are certainly highly valued, bringing in some $582 million in 2012, apples held their own, with the treasured heritage Gravenstein variety hauling in over $1.7 million and the overall apple crop topping $5.3 million.
Paul and Kendra Kolling of Nana Mae’s Organics.
PHOTO: MICHAEL B. WOOLSEY
After grapes, apples are the most widely planted and lucrative crop in the county. So why are things so tough for apple farmers Paul and Kendra Kolling? It’s as though Sonoma County’s apple industry was never grafted onto something that would mark it sweetly through the generations.
The Kollings own and operate Nana Mae’s Organics in Sebastopol, a business devoted to processing
heirloom, organic, sustainable Sonoma County apple products into juice and sauce. They’ve had a good run. But it might be over. Don’t blame the grapes. Blame the producer’s conundrum. Blame capitalism. What the hell, blame the French. “We’re basically modern-day share-croppers,” says Kendra Kolling bluntly. The Kollings farm 300 acres of apple trees in orchards held by 100 landowners. Paul Kolling has been in the business for almost 30 years and the couple have achieved wide regard for their juice and sauce on shelves along the West Coast. But one couple can’t farm, pick, and process 20,000 pounds of product a year themselves. They need a co-packer, an outfit set up to take their work onto the shelves. In the Kolling’s case, that’s Manzana, the Graton company that’s served them well for decades. Until March 2012, that is, when this family business was sold to a European agricultural conglomerate based in France and, according to Kendra Kolling, everything changed. “They’ve shifted the way that we’ve done business by putting a cog in the wheel of the structure,” she says. Nana Mae’s—named for Paul’s grandmother—typically produces 15,000-20,000 cases of heirloom apple products solely sourced from Sonoma County in a year. CONTINUED ON PAGE 21
vol. 1, issue i | D E C /J A N 13 -14 | M A D E L O C A L . C O O P
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