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The following article is taken from The
Bridgestone food lovers guides to Ireland-The Shoppers Guide.
APPLE COUNTRY
 Tipperary is also apple country and,
as with cheese and beef, the apples here get transformed, by
the best people, into something superlative. The leading
exponent of superb apple juice is Con Traas, of the
(imaginatively titled) The Apple Farm, on the road between
Cahir and Clonmel. Here is how you make a superb apple juice.
First of all, you harvest by hand, so that the sugar content
is as high as 16% (in normal apples, 9% is standard). You
choose varieties carefully, so that the characteristics of the
blend are distinctive, so Mr Traas uses the unusual Karmijn,
along with Bramley's Seedling. The Karmijn performs well in
Ireland's climate, as well as having the aroma characteristics
of a tree-ripened Cox's Orange Pippin, and thus features
hundreds of esters and other volatiles. You then pulp the
apples, press the pulp in a rack and cloth press, collect and
bottle the juice and pasteurise in bottle to prevent
fermentation. And when you have done all this, what do you
get? A drink worthy of the Gods, is what. This is an
incredibly fine apple juice. The best fun is to take a trip to
the (imaginatively entitled) The Apple Farm, to buy from the
man himself, though they are becoming more widely distributed
as time goes on. (Moorstown, Cahir, Tel: (052) 7441459,
signposted on N24 between Cahir and Clonmel)
The following is from the May 2005 issue of
the newsletter of Euro-Toques Ireland, the European Community of
Cooks.
Food Committee on the Run in Tipperary
by Martin Dwyer
 We then made a very quick visit to Con
Traas's farm to sample his apple juices. We (Myrtle Allen,
Jacque Barry, Brid Torrades and myself) were shown their state
of the art apple pulper, and their huge Heath Robinson
Accordion press which squeezes the pulp. We found the apple
juice excellent, and were particularly impressed with the
strawberry and raspberry flavoured juices they were producing,
these made with their own soft fruit.
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