History · c. 1960–present
Concentrate and the changing definition of mass-market cider
Is mass-market cider made from apple juice?
In short
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.
The governing figure is the minimum apparent juice content set in excise law — the number behind the widely quoted 35% — and it is markedly lower than what several other countries require. Whether that is a scandal or simply a different product from farmhouse cider is a judgement; the mechanism itself is not in dispute.
What concentrate is and what it solves
Apple juice concentrate is juice with most of its water evaporated off, reduced to a thick syrup that is stable, compact and shippable. Reconstituting it means adding water back. The aroma volatiles driven off during evaporation are partly captured and returned, and partly lost, which is one reason reconstituted juice is not identical to the juice it came from.
The commercial problem it solves is seasonality. Apples are pressed over a few autumn weeks, but cider is sold all year, and a factory that ferments only in the autumn needs enormous tank capacity standing idle for nine months. Concentrate allows fermentation to be spread across the year against demand.
It also decouples the maker from the local harvest. Concentrate is an internationally traded commodity, so a producer can buy on price and on specification rather than on what the surrounding counties happened to grow — which is the point at which cider stopped being tied to a particular orchard landscape.
The legal floor
What may be sold as cider in the United Kingdom is set out for duty purposes by HM Revenue & Customs, which specifies a minimum apparent juice content and the strength limits above which a product is taxed as wine rather than as cider. That minimum is the origin of the familiar figure quoted in arguments about mass-market cider.
The comparison with other jurisdictions is stark. French cidre rules are built around fermentation of apple juice rather than around a minimum proportion, and several other European frameworks set a far higher juice basis. Two drinks called cider on opposite sides of the Channel are not obliged to be the same kind of thing at all.
Duty law also does the definitional work here, which is worth noticing. There is no separate food-standards definition doing the job; the tax code determines what the word means commercially, and it was written to raise revenue rather than to describe a drink.
Sugar, water and the shape of the product
A high-volume cider is built rather than made. Concentrate is diluted to a fermentation gravity, often supplemented with fermentable sugar such as glucose syrup, fermented to dryness by a selected yeast under controlled conditions, then diluted to final strength and sweetened, coloured, carbonated and stabilised to specification.
Fermenting strong and diluting afterwards is efficient: it uses tank capacity to make alcohol rather than to store water. It also means the relationship between the fruit and the finished drink is a matter of formulation rather than of what the juice happened to be.
Nothing in this is illegitimate or concealed, and the resulting product is consistent, cheap and stable, which is what the market it serves asks for. The honest observation is simply that it shares a name, and not much else, with cider pressed from whole fruit and fermented on its own sugars.
- Concentrate reconstituted with water to a fermentation gravity.
- Fermentable sugar added to raise alcohol yield per tank.
- Fermentation to dryness under controlled temperature with selected yeast.
- Dilution to sale strength, then back-sweetening, colouring and carbonation.
- Filtration and pasteurisation or chemical stabilisation for shelf life.
White cider and the flavoured category
White cider is the clearest case of the logic taken to its conclusion: a pale, heavily filtered, strong product made to the minimum juice basis and priced on alcohol content rather than on character. From the 1980s it became associated with harmful drinking and with street drinking in particular, and it drew regulatory and public-health attention out of proportion to its volume.
The policy response ran through pricing rather than through composition — minimum unit pricing in Scotland and Wales, and duty structures that bear on strength — and several producers withdrew or reformulated high-strength lines. The category is much smaller than it was.
Fruit-flavoured cider is the other major development, growing rapidly from around 2010. It uses the same industrial base and adds fruit flavouring, and it brought a large number of drinkers into the category who had no previous relationship with cider at all. Both developments show the same thing: once the drink is a formulation, it can be formulated towards any market.
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.
1960s–1970s· probable
Concentrate enters commercial practice
Storable, tradeable apple juice concentrate allows fermentation to be spread across the year and decoupled from the local harvest.
Later twentieth century
The legal floor becomes the working standard
Minimum apparent juice content in excise law defines the category, and high-volume products are formulated to it.
1980s–2000s
White cider
Strong, minimally flavoured cider sold on price per unit of alcohol becomes a public-health concern and attracts pricing and duty responses.
From around 2010
Flavoured cider
Fruit-flavoured products built on the same industrial base expand the category sharply and recruit drinkers new to cider.
Also answered on this page
Questions this page covers, so you can tell at a glance whether it is the one you want.
- How much apple juice is in cider?
- What is cider from concentrate?
- Why is British cider allowed so little juice?
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.
- What has happened to cider in the last thirty years — 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.
- Is cider from concentrate different from fresh pressed — Concentration removes water and, with it, most of the volatile aroma; the aroma is either added back or lost. Fresh-pressed cider carries the character of the fruit and the season, which concentrate is designed to eliminate.
- What is fruit cider — Fruit cider is cider flavoured with another fruit, either as juice, purée or flavouring, added after fermentation. How much apple has to remain varies by jurisdiction, and in some markets very little does.
- How is supermarket cider made
- What is herefordshire cider
- Why is cider made in the west country — Because the climate suits apples and disappoints wheat and barley: mild, wet winters, heavy soils and a long growing season. Where grain was hard to grow, orchards took its place and cider took beer’s.
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.
Alcoholic Products Technical Guide, section 2 — alcoholic products (formerly Excise Notice 162)
HM Revenue & Customs · regulator · passage verified 2026-08-24
What may be called cider or perry for UK duty purposes. The substantive text now lives in section 2 of the Alcoholic Products Technical Guide rather than in the notice itself, and the passages below were read there. The widely repeated "35% juice" figure checks out — but note two things the figure alone hides: it is a tax threshold rather than a quality standard, and concentrate and dilution both count towards 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.