Is your favorite morning juice apple from the Tree Top company?
Back in 1944, a co-op of over 1000 apple growers was formed with headquarters in Selah under the leadership of William H. “Bill” Charbonneau. Realizing that the public was dissatisfied with “fruity drinks that contained only 15% real juice” which he called “belly wash masquerading as the real thing,” he determined to do better with Washington apples. He founded the Tree Top company with the high standards of “all natural, no sugar added,” which still is followed today.
Today, Tree Top’s seven plants produce a long line of apple products with apple juice and cider being the backbone of the retail market. Bill’s genius was to take the “culls,” those fruits deemed undesirable as eating apples, and turn them into a useful product. Up to this time, the culls had been dumped by truck loads into the landfill.
The name, Tree Top, arrived in 1947, with the contest winner to name the company. Today, America’s #1 selling apple juice is Tree Top, made right here in Washington!
(From Tree Top: Creating a Fruit, great book by David H. Stratton, published in 2010 by the WSU Press.)
From a grower’s perspective, Tree Top gave the orchardist an additional outlet for their fruit. This was needed when the fruit was damaged on the tree – like a hail storm or sunburn. It was not a huge sum, but everything adds us to offset the production costs.