Sunshine Apple Juice Pack

Kohl Sunshine Apple Juice Package from Rubinette to Carrot

The Sunshine Apple Juice Package from Kohl Mountain Apple Juice brings together the yellow and orange juices from Unterinn on the Ritten: six bottles of single-varietal Rubinette, plus two cuvées each of peach, apricot, and carrot. The perfect package for the breakfast table, rather than a festive evening.

Sunshine Apple Juice Package is the yellow package from the Troidner Hof in Unterinn on the Ritten, Thomas Kohl's mountain estate: twelve 0.75-liter bottles, six of the single-varietal Rubinette, and two each of apple juice with peach, apricot, and carrot. Nine liters of naturally cloudy, direct-pressed juice from hand-picked mountain apples, five percent cheaper than buying individual bottles.

The four varieties are similar in color but taste quite different. Straw yellow, sunny yellow, apricot orange, carrot orange—whoever opens the package has four shades before them and no two glasses look the same.

Of the three Kohl packages, the Sunshine is the mildest. While the red package emphasizes acidity and tartness, this one works with sweetness, fruit pulp, and a hint of earth—which is why children also enjoy drinking it.

Rubinette provides the base note

Six of the twelve bottles are single-varietal Rubinette, pressed from a variety that connoisseurs call the best apple in the world and fruit farmers fear for its fickleness.

It originated in 1966 as a chance seedling in the nursery of Walter Hauenstein in Rafz, Switzerland, from Golden Delicious and Cox Orange. Its color shifts between straw yellow, rosé, and apricot, and its fragrance unfolds in layers: date, quince, apricot, with a quiet note of vanilla underneath.

Because it is prone to scab like its parent variety Cox, it has remained uninteresting for the mass market—yet it grows on the Ritten, and it makes up the majority of this package with six bottles. The Rubinette Mountain Apple Juice can also be reordered as a single bottle.

Peach, apricot, and carrot set the color

The three cuvées use fruit pulp and vegetable juice, each in different dosages.

The Apple Juice with Peach is the most generously dosed. Thirty percent yellow peach pulp makes it creamy and sunny. The apricot brings twenty percent fruit pulp from the Vinschgau, sweet-tart and bright. The Apple Juice with Carrot contains fifteen percent carrot juice and is the most surprising in the package—earthy, nutty, and awarded bronze at the 2019 Mostbarkeiten awards.

From the Troidner Hof above the Adige Valley

All apples come from the estate's own orchards around the Troidner Hof at nine hundred to one thousand meters, picked by hand and pressed as single varieties.

Thomas Kohl calls himself an apple juice "affineur," and that is exactly what this work means: dosing the secondary fruit just sparingly enough that the apple retains its structure while the addition remains recognizable. Nothing is filtered, and the only preservation method is gentle pasteurization in the bottle.

The altitude does the rest. Cool nights and warm days extend the ripening period, and fruit that ripens slowly brings more acidity and more aroma than produce from the lowlands. This is why even the mildest juice in this package tastes like more than just sweet apple.

From the breakfast table to risotto

The Rubinette and the peach pair well with brioche and scrambled eggs in the morning, while the apricot lasts until dessert. The carrot belongs at the lunch table, with fish, risotto, and Asian dishes. Unopened, the bottles keep for at least a year in a cool, dark place; once opened, they last about six days in the refrigerator; all four should be served in a stemmed glass at 8 to 10 degrees. The Ruby Red Apple Juice Package is darker and tart.