Best-before dates and shelf life

A use-by date is a safety instruction, applied to foods that support the growth of pathogens — chilled meat, fish, prepared salads. Food past its use-by date should not be eaten. Cider is not such a food: its combination of alcohol, acidity and low pH makes it a hostile environment for foodborne pathogens, and cider does not carry use-by dates.

A best-before date, formally the date of minimum durability, is a quality statement. It marks the point up to which the producer expects the product to retain its specific qualities under the stated storage conditions. Beyond it the product is generally still safe and may be perfectly acceptable; it is simply no longer covered by the producer’s expectation.

The distinction is a legal one as well as a practical one. Selling food past its use-by date is prohibited; selling food past its best-before date is generally permitted, provided the food is still fit and is not sold in a way that misleads.

Regulation (EU) No 1169/2011 on the provision of food information to consumers exempts beverages containing 10 per cent or more by volume of alcohol from the requirement to bear a date of minimum durability. The same regulatory framework was retained in Great Britain after EU exit, with subsequent divergence in some areas, so the exemption in substantially the same form applies to cider sold there.

Almost all commercial cider is below 10 per cent ABV, which is why cider generally carries a best-before date while wine generally does not. The stronger cider styles — some traditional West Country ciders, ice cider, apple wine, pommeau — may sit above the threshold, in which case the exemption applies to them as it does to wine.

This has an odd consequence worth naming: the ciders most likely to age well are the ones least likely to carry a date. The exemption exists because the legislator recognised that a durability date is meaningless for a drink intended to develop over years.

A best-before date is set by the producer, and how rigorously varies enormously. A large producer will run accelerated shelf-life trials, holding samples at elevated temperature to simulate longer storage, and will set a date with a margin. A small producer may set a date by judgement and convention, often at twelve or eighteen months from packaging.

The date assumes the storage conditions on the label. A cider dated for eighteen months at ambient temperature has not been tested for eighteen months in a conservatory, and its date does not survive that treatment. Where a label carries a storage instruction, the date is conditional on it.

Formats differ, and dates reflect it. Bag-in-box carries a shorter date than glass because the container is more permeable; cans are dated on their own basis; unpasteurised farm-gate cider is often given a very short date because it is a live product.

Open it and assess it. A tannic bottle-conditioned cider a year past its date may be at its best; a light aromatic cider six months past may have faded badly. The date is a weak predictor for the individual bottle, and the sensory evidence is a strong one.

The characteristic failures are loss of fruit, loss of carbonation, and oxidative character — none of them dangerous. The failures that matter are acetification and other spoilage, and those announce themselves clearly on the nose.

Where a cider is being sold rather than drunk, the position is different and is a matter for the seller and the regulator rather than for taste. Retailers have their own obligations, and a knowledge site is not the right authority for them.