Wrapples are wonderful, and they're in the case.
Carol named it the Wrapple. A heaping mound of baked apples wrapped inside a thick layer of piecrust, drizzled with vanilla icing when it comes out of the oven. The apples come from an orchard just up the road. The recipe is about thirty years old now, and it runs until the local apples run out — usually around June.
— per the Daily Hampshire Gazette: “People go bonkers when there are no Wrapples.”
The bakery, the ice-cream room, the pantry shelves, and the gift counter — here's what each one holds.
The building is 149 years old. The Majerciks are in year 49. The floorboards still slope where people used to stand in line for the mail.
Salmon Kingsley — everyone called him Kinney — Wait built this store in 1876. Two years earlier, the dam on the Mill River had burst, and the flood took his first store down in Skinnerville along with most of the village. He rebuilt here, in the center of Williamsburg. President Grant was deciding not to seek a third term that year.
David and Carol Majercik bought the store on Columbus weekend, 1977, and added the bakery in 1979. Their daughter Heather runs it now. About twenty wonderful people work the floor and the bakery. The room where we scoop ice cream was once the post office; the worn spot where the postmaster stood is still in the floor.
The Mill River dam bursts above Williamsburg. The flood takes Kinney Wait's first store, in Skinnerville, along with much of the village. He survives.
Kinney Wait builds the store on Main Street, in the center of Williamsburg, and re-opens. Much of the original is still in the building you walk into today.
Charles R. Damon, locally renowned and civic-minded, buys the store and runs an insurance office out of the same building.
Richard F. Burke takes over and re-establishes a traditional general store — boots and rubbers, hammers and nails, tar paper and shingles, meat and potatoes. The post office is in the room that's now the ice cream parlor.
David and Carol Majercik buy the store on Columbus weekend. The doors have not been closed since.
A large addition goes up behind the original building. The bakery starts, and settles in.
Carol invents a hand-held apple pastry and names it the Wrapple. It is still the bakery's best seller.
Heather Majercik runs the store. About twenty people work here. The Wrapple is in the case most of the year, and people go bonkers when there are none.
“It's a satisfying job because it makes everybody happy.”
On Route 9, eight miles west of Northampton. We're the gateway to the Berkshire Trail — come for the bread, stay for the bucolic Berkshire hills.
Call ahead for holiday hours.
Five spots out front. A dozen more in the rear lot.
In the town center with the Williamsburg Market, the Meekins Library, and the post office.