This week, Value for Money compares four varieties of apple juice

Walshe's Freshly Pressed Apple Juice

€2.25 for 250ml, €9 per litre

We were pleasantly surprised by this juice’s mild carbonation. Actually, truth be told we were initially very unpleasantly surprised as it exploded all over our desk when we opened it. But once we’d done the mopping up, we began to appreciate its lovely fresh-flavoured fizziness. It is a locally-made product – from a Carlow-based company – and contains nothing but apples.

As it was freshly-pressed, we’re pretty sure they were juiced within the last two weeks. It was the dearest of the options we tried by a hefty margin.

Verdict: Lovely

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Centra Good To Go Pressed Juice

€1 for 330ml, €3 per litre

We kind of loved this from the get go. Not only was it close to being the nicest juice we reviewed – the juice from Walshe’s just shaded it – it is also the cheapest which makes it a real find in our books. It has a wonderful sharpness and an authentic cloudiness. It is made with pressed apples which gives it a freshness that any product made from concentrate cannot hope to match. Remarkably priced and excellent value for money.

Verdict: Very good to go

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Jaffo Apple Juice

€2.29 for 500ml, €4.58 per litre

This juice is made from concentrate, so it is always going to struggle to compete with its recently-pressed rivals in terms of taste and freshness.

While it is not entirely without flavour, it does flirt a little bit with blandness. The company which distributes this juice is Irish, although we could not find out where the actual apples came from. It has the colour of a good whiskey and certainly quenches a thirst without any difficulty but it is not a product that we’d be rushing out to buy again.

Verdict: Cheap, grand, dull.

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Ribena Apple

€1.19 for 288ml, €4.13 per litre

We approached this with some trepidation as we figured it could not possibly compete with the fresher competition. And we were right. It is not great at all. It is a juice “drink” as opposed to a juice and in addition to the 32 per cent apple juice (from concentrate) there was also water, sugar and flavourings. The company seems very proud of the fact that neither the sweeteners or flavourings are artificial. We reckoned it was far too sweet although its sugar content was no higher than any of the competition.

Verdict: Not great

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