The Apple Juice Brand You Should Keep Out Of Your Grocery Cart

Apple juice is nostalgic and unexpectedly hydrating. From childhood juice boxes to some adventurous experimenting in adulthood — like pairing whiskey and apple juice or using the beverage to make tequila more palatable — it's one of those drinks that seems to follow us throughout our lives and somehow always have its place in the fridge or pantry. But not all apple juice brands are created equal, as Food Republic (FR) revealed when ranking apple juice brands from worst to best. In trying 13 popular apple juices, our taste tester found that one brand in particular was not worth buying: Signature Select Juice 100% Apple. They determined the juice did not taste like apples — which is, y'know, kind of an important factor in a beverage made from apples.

Signature Select is among a number of brands owned by U.S. food and drug retailer Albertsons Companies, which operates a host of grocery store chains throughout the United States, including Albertsons, Safeway, and Vons. Being an in-house brand isn't always a bad thing — The Kroger Co.'s Simple Truth brand, for instance, churns out some darn fine organic products. But in the case of Signature Select, neither the smell nor the taste of its apple juice were found to be at all up to par.

The drink's lackluster taste may be at least partially attributable to water being the primary ingredient. In contrast, the winner of FR's juice ranking, Martinelli's Gold Medal Organic Apple Juice, is actually made from 100% apple juice, with no other ingredients or additives to dilute or alter its flavor.

Quality and/or freshness may also play a part in the taste test failure of Signature Select apple juice. The winning Martinelli's product sources its juice from apples grown in the USA, which is plainly and prominently stated on the product packaging. With the Signature Select brand, one has to be a veritable detective to suss out where its juice is sourced. The product label doesn't say — only the distribution company's location is listed (Pleasanton, California). Since "distributed by" and "manufactured by" are most definitely not the same thing, that sheds no light on the apples' origins.

Online product descriptions for the juice aren't any help, either — only vaguely saying, "Contains concentrate from: See top of bottle." For the record, online images of the bottle tops are plain white with no printing on them. It's unclear if that means you have to actually purchase and open a bottle and look under the cap to find out where the juice comes from. (Like a less-exciting version of looking for prize-winning messages under soda bottle caps.)

Even a call to the company didn't reveal the source of the apples themselves. A customer service agent was only able to provide the California distributor's location. In the end, after quite a bit of time spent researching, I still have absolutely no idea where Signature Select sources its apple juice. The world's top apple juice exporters, as of 2023, were Poland, China, Turkey, Germany, and Austria, while the U.S. was the world's biggest importer. So, Signature Select's juices may travel a fairly long distance to reach their final U.S. destinations — which doesn't exactly lend itself to freshness.

The product size of Signature Select's apple juice, contrasted with its price point, could be another clue as to why the juice doesn't stand up to the competition. The drink is touted as being affordable by customers who rated it on Safeway's website — which, in and of itself, can bode ill, when you're getting a large quantity of something at a low price. Cheap and quality aren't usually synonymous. At a whopping 90 fluid ounces, a mega-bottle of the Signature Select juice runs only $4.49 in Albertsons stores — roughly the same as you'd pay for a significantly smaller amount of juice from another brand. A 64-ounce bottle of Tree Top Apple Juice, for instance — which ranked No. 4 on Food Republic's list — costs $4.59 when purchased at Albertsons.

Like Signature Select, the Tree Top product has water as its first ingredient and also includes the addition of ascorbic acid. But, as with Martinelli's, Tree Top's juice is USA-sourced — again, listing this attribute prominently on the front of the bottle — and it includes extra sweetening in the form of stevia leaf extract. Unspecified natural flavors are also listed on the Tree Top product label, presumably further boosting the juice's taste. So, while the foundational ingredients of the two juices — water and apple juice concentrate — are identical, Signature Select adds nothing extra to improve flavor, while Tree Top does — another likely reason Tree Top's flavor far surpassed Signature Select's in Food Republic's taste test.