‘It’s called Disco, so we’re buying it!’: the rise and rise of fancy cordials

theguardian.com:

As soon as the sun shows its nose in Britain, we want to be outside with a drink. Socks shrink, shoulders relax, park tennis courts teem with hopefuls counting down the days to Wimbledon, and we start pouring.

You might presume this means alcohol. One recent baking hot week, in late March, Waitrose says it saw a 600% increase in searches for “summer cordial recipes”, compared with February. It also says that when Wimbledon was cancelled in 2020 (quashing Robinsons’ hopes of being the tournament’s official soft drink for the 85th summer in a row), households stockpiled all manner of squash for their homeschooled kids, as well as what the sector calls “premium dilutes” – cordials – for homeworking parents.

Since the soft drinks industry levy in 2018, AKA the sugar tax, drinks manufacturers have been reducing the sugar content in these offerings, but that doesn’t mean we’re drinking any less of them. Supermarkets can barely keep up with demand. Waitrose is banking on the same almost 10% bump in sales for 2022 as it saw in 2021. “In all warm countries, this is what you need,” says Honey and Co’s Itamar Srulovich. “Something really cold and something really sweet.”

Until recently, “premium dilutes” has basically meant cordial brands such as Belvoir Farm and Bottlegreen, and French sirops (Monin or Teisseire), which one Mumsnet user recently described as, “a bit like squash but much nicer”. How dilutes are sweetened is crucial to understanding their differences. In France, for something to be sold as a “sirop de fruit”, it has to contain at least 10% fruit juice (7% if it’s citrus) and at least 50% sweetener (sugar, dextrose, honey, fructose). Cordials, meanwhile, are often similarly sweetened, just less concentrated. Both syrups