History · 1990–present
Cider since the 1990s
What has happened to cider in the last thirty years?
In short
The volume category was transformed in the mid-2000s by serving cider cold over ice in a tall glass, marketed heavily, and then by fruit-flavoured products from around 2010. Cider became a mainstream long drink competing with lager, and the category grew accordingly.
Alongside that, and largely disconnected from it, a small number of producers went the other way: single-varietal, bottle-conditioned, keeved and wild-fermented ciders made from whole fruit. Conflating the two is the commonest mistake in writing about modern cider.
The over-ice serve and what it changed
From the mid-2000s an Irish brand marketed in Great Britain on the strength of being poured over ice in a pint glass reframed cider as a cold, long, refreshing drink rather than as a regional or rural one. Competitors followed within a season or two, and the serve became the category norm.
The change was one of presentation rather than of product. The cider itself was industrial cider of a kind that had existed for decades; what was new was the glassware, the ice, the temperature and the advertising spend directed at drinkers in their twenties in urban pubs.
It worked. Cider volumes in Great Britain rose substantially over the following years, and the category acquired a presence in the on-trade it had not previously had. This is a marketing history rather than a cider-making one, and it should be told as such.
Flavoured cider
Fruit-flavoured cider expanded rapidly from around 2010 and became a major part of the category. Berry, pear and other flavourings were applied to the same industrial base, in formats and at sweetness levels aimed at drinkers who did not much like the taste of cider.
Whether these products are cider is partly a legal question — they may or may not meet the juice-content threshold, and are otherwise sold as made-wine or as flavoured alcoholic drinks — and partly a semantic one that the industry, the campaigners and the regulator answer differently.
Their effect on the wider category is genuinely ambiguous. They recruited drinkers and sustained volumes; they also made the word cider less informative than it had been, which is a real cost to the producers whose product the word used to describe.
The other story
Through the same decades a much smaller number of producers moved in the opposite direction, towards fruit-led cider made from whole apples and identified by variety, orchard and method. Single-varietal ciders, bottle-conditioned ciders, keeved ciders in the French manner, wild fermentation, barrel ageing and long maturation all returned to commercial availability.
The reasons were partly the example of continental and North American producers, partly the availability of technical knowledge that had previously sat inside company laboratories, and partly a general shift in food and drink towards provenance. The revival of interest in traditional orchards and in local varieties belongs to the same movement.
Consumer campaigning played a part in keeping the distinction visible. The real cider position — that unpasteurised, unfiltered, naturally conditioned cider is a distinct thing worth naming — gave the category a vocabulary for what it was defending, whatever one makes of the definitions themselves.
- Single-varietal ciders identified by cultivar.
- Bottle conditioning and keeving reintroduced commercially.
- Wild fermentation and extended maturation as deliberate choices.
- Orchard provenance and traditional-orchard fruit used as a point of identification.
Duty, scale and the position of the small producer
The United Kingdom has long exempted very small cider makers from duty registration below a threshold volume, which is why a farm or a smallholding can sell cider at all without becoming a registered producer. That exemption has been repeatedly debated, both as a distortion and as the only thing keeping the smallest producers viable.
The 2023 restructuring of alcohol duty into strength bands changed the arithmetic for everyone, with lower rates on lower-strength products and a separate relief for draught sales. Its effects on the category are still working through and are treated under the history of cider duty.
For the smallest producers the constraints are more often orchard and labour than tax. Traditional-orchard fruit is expensive to gather, the varieties are scattered, and the economics only work at a price point that a minority of drinkers will pay. That is the condition the revival operates in, and it is why it has remained small.
How this developed
Certainty is marked on each entry. Where the popular account runs ahead of the evidence, that is said rather than smoothed over.
1990s· probable
A low base
Cider is a mature, regionally concentrated category with limited national presence in the on-trade.
Mid-2000s
The over-ice serve
Heavy marketing of cider served cold over ice in a pint glass reframes the category and drives several years of volume growth.
From around 2010
Flavoured cider
Fruit-flavoured products become a major part of the category and broaden its drinker base.
2000s–2020s
The orchard-based revival
Single-varietal, bottle-conditioned, keeved and wild-fermented ciders return to commercial availability, on a small scale and a separate trajectory.
2023
Duty restructured
UK alcohol duty moves to strength bands with a separate draught relief, changing the economics for producers of every size.
Also answered on this page
Questions this page covers, so you can tell at a glance whether it is the one you want.
- Why did cider become popular again in the 2000s?
- What is craft cider?
- Is flavoured cider really cider?
Related
Places
What people ask next
Questions readers ask about the things this page mentions. Each one goes to the section that answers it rather than to a page written to receive the question.
- How many traditional orchards have been lost, and what is being done about it — Traditional orchards in England and Wales declined severely over the twentieth century, through grubbing-up grants, conversion to other agricultural uses, development and simple neglect. The scale is now documented rather than guessed, because the habitat has been mapped.
- Is mass-market cider made from apple juice — Partly. Most high-volume cider is made from apple juice concentrate reconstituted with water, fermented, and adjusted with sugar, water and sweeteners to a target strength and sweetness. The finished drink can contain a minority of apple juice by volume and still be sold as cider in the United Kingdom.
- Has cider always been taxed in britain
- How did american cider come back
- How do you pour bottle conditioned cider — Stand the bottle upright for a day, chill it, and pour in one continuous movement, stopping when the sediment reaches the shoulder. Some traditions deliberately rouse the sediment instead, and both are defensible.
- Is single variety cider better than a blend — Neither is inherently better and CiderHQ does not rank them. A single varietal shows one cultivar’s character and depends entirely on that fruit being balanced; a blend is how most makers reach balance deliberately.
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.
National Association of Cider Makers
NACM · specialist organisation · retrieved 2026-08-24
The UK trade association. Useful for industry-agreed definitions and for the voluntary labelling standards its members work to. A trade body has an interest in how its product is described, so CiderHQ cites it for what the industry says about itself rather than for neutral scientific claims.
CAMRA cider and perry standards
Campaign for Real Ale · specialist organisation · retrieved 2026-08-24
Opened on 2026-08-24. Registered for the consumer-campaigning vocabulary — "real cider", "full juice" — which is advocacy language rather than legal definition, and is recorded as such wherever CiderHQ uses it.
Where to go next
- The history of cider — The rest of the history, by period and by tradition.
- Cider culture — What survived from this history and is still practised.
- Regions — The places this happened in, and what they make now.