We Irish are a faithful bunch when it comes to our favourite tipples and tonics, our preferred liquids. People who drink Barry's tea wouldn't touch Lyons, and Beamish drinkers don't entertain Guinness at all, at all. Once we have established our favourite cooking oils and salad oils we stay with them. But some luscious new liquids are so good that we should become promiscuous - stray a little rather than stay put. Here are three that you really need to know about.
Traas Apple Juice
Con Traas's parents moved from southwest Holland to Ireland in the late 1960s and began apple growing at The Apple Farm, between Cahir and Clonmel just beside the main Limerick-Waterford road. Traas's father had been involved in fruit growing since childhood, and quickly set about establishing orchards, which are today planted with a dozen varieties of eating apples, including Discovery, James Grieve, Cox's Orange Pippin, and Bramley's seedling cooking apples, plum varieties such as Opal and Victoria, and raspberries and strawberries, which are currently in season.
By the 1970s, the family realised there was no structure to enable them to sell their fruit locally, so they opened a shop at the farm. "Basically a barn from which we retail most of what we produce from the 30 acres of fruit," says Con.
But the big leap forward was to come in 1995, when Con Traas began to make apple juice, using James Grieve, Karmijn de Sonnaville and Bramley's seedling apples. The following year they acquired their own apple press, bottler and pasteuriser and today's Traas apple juice began to acquire its singular characteristics.
Today, the apple juice is made with a mix of 66 per cent Karmijn de Sonnaville and 33 per cent Bramley's seedlings. The apples are handpicked from the trees at full maturity in order to maximise the natural sugar content.
Con Traas points out the use of the unusual Karmijn as one reason why their juice is so distinctive: "It's a cross of Cox's Orange Pippin and Jonathan, with the aroma characteristics of a tree-ripened Cox's Orange Pippin, but it behaves much better in our climate. We are the only grower of this apple in Ireland because, for cosmetic reasons - it has a russet skin and variable shape - supermarkets will not consider it for sale."
Pretty it may not be, but on the evidence of Traas's apple juice, the Karmijn has found its true vocation, for this juice is simply outstanding. Indeed, a friend who recently came across the apple juice in the Well & Good shop in Midleton, actually rang me immediately to tell me of this exciting new discovery.
The juice is successful because it perfectly finds a balance between sweetness and sharpness, with sufficient acidity to make sure that it is thirst-quenching. It is cloudy in appearance with a sweet and florid bouquet, but the perfect pitch of the juice means that it is an excellent drink with food, as well as being a thirst-slaking summer drink. Kids go crazy for it, which makes for happy parents who are delighted to see their chisellers drinking something so wholesome.
Traas Apple Juice is worthy to keep company alongside the other superb apple juice produced in West Waterford, Julia Keane's brilliant Crinnaghtaun juice, made just outside Cappoquin. And, if you simply can't get enough of it, then this recipe for fried apples with an apple juice sauce let's you have Traas apple juice on a spoon.
Traas Apple Juice, The Apple Farm, Moorstown, Cahir, Co Tipperary, tel: 05241459. Farm shop open 8 a.m.8 p.m., seven days. Also sold in Ivan's of Limerick, Well & Good, Midleton; Ballymaloe Cookery Shop, Shanagarry; Shortis Wong, The Gourmet Store and The Good Earth, Kilkenny; Joyce's Supermarket, Knocknacarra, Galway; and various outlets in Clonmel, Cahir, Cashel and Thurles.
Fried Apples in Apple Juice Sauce
Allow one apple per person. Working quickly - or else the apples will begin to discolour - peel and core the apples, and slice each into eight pieces. In a large frying pan, melt an ounce of butter over medium heat, and place the apple slices in the pan. Let the underside of the slice cook to a nice brown colour, then turn the apples over. Fry for another minute, then scatter one to two tablespoons of caster sugar over the apple slices. Scatter a little powdered cinnamon on top.
When the apples are nicely browned and tender, remove them to a warm plate, then pour a glass of Traas apple juice into the pan and stir briskly to incorporate all the caramelised residues. Now, pour in a cup of cream and stir to incorporate, then add in a knob of butter. Pour the sauce straight from the pan over the fried apple slices and serve immediately.
O'Hara's Stout
We wrote about the brews of the Carlow Brewing Company on this page last year in our profile of the Irish craft brewers, and praised their fine Curim beer and the Molings red ale. At the time, chief brewer Brendan Flanagan was working on the production of a dry stout. O'Hara's Celtic Stout has now arrived with a bang.
After only being on the market a few months, O'Hara's has already collected a gold medal at the Brewing Industry International Awards along with the Championship Trophy, and even the merest sip will let you know just what the judges went for: this is a terrific drink.
At a time when Guinness now produces a drink that puts one in mind of what Americans call "popsicles", the toasty, roasty, hoppy enervation of O'Hara's is thrilling. This is a true stout: nutty and buttery, with a weighty body and a tart crispness. You can detect notes of prunes and tobacco, perhaps thanks to the use of traditional stout hops such as Challenger, Styrian Goldings and Fuggles.
Seamus and Eamon O'Hara, the brothers who established the brewing company just two years ago, describe O'Hara's as "the way stout used to taste", and anyone with a stout memory will find that the crispness and lucidity of O'Hara's evokes the pleasures of nostalgia almost as much as the pleasures of drinking.
O'Hara's Stout is available in 500ml bottles from selected off licences throughout the country.
Elaeon Extra Virgin Olive Oil
It's always the underdogs who surprise you in the food world. The Aussies now have the best restaurant culture, the Spaniards have the most dynamic wine makers, we have one of the best food cultures - and so it's fitting that the Greeks should come along and show us a thing or two.
Greek food has been derided for far too long. It has always played second fiddle to the noble cooking of Turkey. But just as Greek wines have begun to establish a reputation for themselves as distinctive, delicious and good value, it is time for the country's other great products to demonstrate their uniqueness.
The yoghurt is coming but, in the meantime, the olive oil has arrived. Eleaon olive oil, to be precise. It shapes up like this: in conversion to organic status, a single variety of olives is used, Korneiki, with extra-virgin classification due to acidity of less than 1 per cent, crushing the olives at low temperature. All the characteristics one expects of expensive olive oils are in place, so one could assume that this oil will cost an arm and a leg.
But Dunnes Stores has been selling Eleaon at about £2 for a 250ml bottle for several months, which makes it an absolute steal. While other Greek olive oils can prove to be rather fatty and dense in flavour, Eleaon is light and balanced, with good fresh fruit notes and a little attack of pepper reminiscent of Tuscan oils. It's a good salad oil, but at this price you could even consider frying with it. You won't get a better bargain this year.
Available in Dunnes Stores and other multiples.