Glossary · Law and labelling
Ingredients declaration
Definition
The list of ingredients required on a food or drink label. Alcoholic drinks above 1.2 per cent have historically been exempt in the European Union and United Kingdom, which is why many cider labels carry none.
- Subject
- Law and labelling
In more detail
The exemption is the reason a consumer cannot generally tell from the label whether a cider was made from concentrate, sweetened, coloured or flavoured. Rules in this area have been under review, and producers increasingly declare voluntarily or by on-pack code.
Related terms
Terms that belong to the same part of the subject, or that this one is routinely confused with.
Law and labelling
Contains sulphites
The mandatory allergen declaration required on a drink containing more than 10 mg/L of sulphur dioxide, expressed as total SO₂.
Law and labelling
Alcohol by volume
The proportion of a drink’s volume that is pure ethanol at 20 degrees Celsius, expressed as a percentage. It is the figure labelling law requires on drinks above 1.2 per cent.
Cider
Cider from concentrate
Cider fermented from apple juice concentrate that has been reconstituted with water, rather than from juice pressed and fermented in the same season.
Law and labelling
Best before
A quality date indicating how long a product remains at its best under stated storage conditions. It is not a safety date, and drinks above a certain strength are exempt from requiring one.
Where to go next
- Cider glossary — The whole vocabulary, by subject and A–Z.
- Comparisons — Terms that are only really clear when set against the thing they are not.
- Search — Finds terms by their aliases and by their spellings in other languages.
Sources
What this page rests on. Where a source is marked as registered rather than read, CiderHQ is recording that the body is authoritative on the subject without claiming to have worked through the document itself. See our evidence policy for what each state means.
Regulation (EU) No 1169/2011 on the provision of food information to consumers
European Union · legislation · passage verified 2026-08-24
The instrument behind the "contains sulphites" declaration and the alcoholic-strength labelling rule. Read on 2026-08-24 in the assimilated text maintained on legislation.gov.uk, which is the version in force for Great Britain and keeps the EU numbering. Two provisions matter to cider and both are widely misquoted: the sulphite threshold is 10 mg/L rather than a percentage, and a labelled cider strength carries a tolerance of a full percentage point either way — twice what still grape wine is allowed.
Food labelling and packaging guidance
Food Standards Agency / Department for Business and Trade · regulator · retrieved 2026-08-24