The Apple Club Newsletter, Autumn 2008, Page 1

I have not sent you a seasonal newsletter since last winter. My apologies for the delay, although it is not as if we have really had any seasons since then, though I am now enjoying a late Indian summer as I write. A little more sun would go a long way.

Nationwide

Keep an eye on Nationwide in the next little while. Recently a new Tipperary food website was launched at www.tipperaryfood.ie. To celebrate the launch, a fine banquet was organised in Cahir Castle, and as part of this, Nationwide featured some of the food producers that make up part of the website. On the evening in question we launched our new sparkling apple juice, and it may even make an appearance on the show.

Fizzy apple juice:

As mentioned above, we have been developing a sparkling apple juice. It began about a year ago with the idea, and gradually we sourced the pieces of machinery that we needed, and during the summer we made some trial batches. These tasted so good that anyone who was on our tasting panel has been taking more “samples” home with them at every opportunity.
The juice is pressed just like our normal apple juice, and then some fizz is added. This gives a drink unlike almost all other fizzy drinks, in as much as it is still a juice, rather than a factory-made mixture of water, sugar and fruit flavours.
We are hoping that people will choose our sparkling apple juice as a healthy alternative to other fizzy drinks, as well as because it is a thirst-quenching drink.
For the moment we will only be selling this juice from our farm shop. This is because the bottles that are needed to hold the fizz are rather expensive, and we will therefore need to charge a deposit on these. Obviously, once the bottles are returned, you will get your deposit back. Just like in the old days, but it will be an entirely new concept for anyone born after 1980!

Harry O’Brien

Harry O’Brien has been our Teagasc farm advisor for the last twenty years. He has always been a great help to us and the other apple growers of the region. His knowledge seemed to know no bounds, and his advice was also practical and straightforward. In December of this year, Harry will retire, and all the growers will certainly miss him. At a recent meeting the growers presented Harry with a retirement gift, and we were most fortunate to be able to get a beautiful painting of two Discovery apples, painted by Ella Kavanagh. If you are from the Clonmel area you may remember Kavanagh’s fruit and vegetable shop on Parnell Street, near Dowlings printing shop, and it is here that Ella’s family operated from. Alas the shop is no more, but Ella is still involved with fruit in a way, creating paintings which catch the essence of their subjects. If you ever have a chance to see Ella’s work, at a gallery or exhibition, I would certainly recommend that you take the opportunity.

In our farm shop

Right now we have three eating apples for you to choose from. We have the Discovery, Katy and Delbar Estivale, and soon we will have Tipperary Pippin. As usual, we have Bramley’s for cooking.
Depending on the weather, we will continue to have strawberries and raspberries until mid October.
In juices, we have apple, raspberry & apple and strawberry & apple and blackcurrant & apple mixes. At the moment the only one of these that is available in small (250ml) bottles is the apple juice, although we will soon also have apple and blackcurrant in this size.
As usual, we have plum jam, strawberry jam, and apple jelly, as well as Ann Keating’s Baylough cheeses.

Newsletter Autumn 2008		page 1 of 5