Belvoir Fruit Farms makes English lemonades and cordials from elderflowers
Belvoir Fruit Farms is a family farm in the Vale of Belvoir in Leicestershire that has been producing cordials, lemonades, and punches from real juice and fresh blossoms since 1984. The first product was an elderflower cordial from the farmhouse kitchen, and it remains their best-known to this day.
Belvoir Fruit Farms is an English beverage manufacturer in Leicestershire, not far from Belvoir Castle, the seat of the Dukes of Rutland. The farm grows 60 acres of organic elderflower, the largest plantation of its kind in Great Britain. Using their blossoms, berries, citrus fruits, and ginger, they create cordials, sparkling lemonades, and winter punches, available in Germany through the importer Viani.
A recipe from the farmhouse kitchen of 1984
It all began with Mary Manners, who started making elderflower cordial on the farm for her own family, using blossoms from the surrounding hedgerows.
Friends and neighbors wanted more, and so the first small batches were produced by hand. Her husband John, who was a farmer until then, loaded 88 crates into his car and drove them to local farm shops. That was 1,056 bottles and the entire annual yield of the first season.
The initial 2,000 bottles grew to over 80,000 a year by 1992. Today, their son Peverel Manners, whom everyone calls Pev, runs the company, and the bottling line produces 10,000 bottles an hour. The recipe for the elderflower cordial has not changed in four decades because the family saw no reason to change something that people enjoy.
The name comes from French and is also pronounced in the French way. "Bel voir" means beautiful view, referring to the view from the steep slope on which the castle stands. Norman nobles brought the name across the channel after the conquest, and since then, the valley, the castle, and the farm have shared it.
The blossoms must reach the kettle within minutes
Elderflowers lose their aroma faster than almost any other ingredient, which is why there must only be a few minutes between picking and processing.
Therefore, they are picked in the sunshine, when the clusters are warm and heavy with yellow pollen. What ends up in the kettle still smells of the field. If the blossom cools down beforehand or sits for too long, a grassy note remains instead of the floral scent for which Belvoir is known.
Furthermore, elderflowers only open during a narrow window of the year. Only a few weeks in late spring lie between the first open clusters and the first green berries, and the annual requirement must be gathered during this time. If it rains during these days, the water washes the pollen out of the clusters, and with it, the aroma.
The family has long been unable to handle the harvest on their own. Once a year, the farm calls for the great blossom harvest, and helpers from Leicestershire, Lincolnshire, Cambridgeshire, and neighboring counties bring the clusters by the kilogram. Nearly 30 tons are collected this way, paid by weight. Every single blossom is hand-picked.
The valley itself is one of the most fertile parts of England, a wide, flat piece of land between Leicestershire, Lincolnshire, and Nottinghamshire, above which the castle sits on its steep slope. Hedgerows still line every field edge here, and it is in these hedgerows that the wild elderflower grows, with which it all started in 1984. The cultivated organic plantation was added later, when the hedgerows could no longer cover the demand.
Cordial for diluting and lemonade for the glass
The range is divided into two families: the cordials, which are concentrated syrups for diluting, and the pressés, which are ready-to-drink carbonated lemonades.
Among the cordials, Elderflower Cordial is the centerpiece; others include lime, ginger, lemon, and elderflower with rose. A splash is enough for a glass of water, for a spritzer, or as an ingredient in a cocktail.
The lemonades come in 750-milliliter returnable bottles and are intended for the table, not for on-the-go: Elderflower Pressé, Elderflower with Rose, Ginger Beer, Cucumber & Mint, Raspberry, and fresh-pressed Lemonade. In winter, the Mandarin & Cranberry Lemonade and the Winter Punch are added, which is served warm in a mug.
The difference between the two families is more than just a matter of carbonation. A cordial is thickened and keeps for weeks in the refrigerator after opening, while a lemonade is ready-mixed and intended to be consumed within a few days. Those who want to determine the sweetness themselves should choose the cordial; those who want to place a bottle on the table should choose the lemonade.
Over the years, the first few varieties have grown to more than two dozen, and some of them consciously go against the grain of sweetness: Cucumber & Mint tastes green and cool rather than fruity, the Ginger Beer brings a heat that lingers in the throat, and the lemon lemonade is made from freshly pressed lemons instead of concentrate. Anyone who thinks of children's birthday parties when they hear the word "lemonade" will be taught otherwise here.
Real juice instead of flavorings from a barrel
Every bottle contains juice, blossom, or fruit, and Belvoir consciously avoids artificial flavors, colors, and sweeteners.
This is why the Ginger Beer is spicy rather than just sweet, and why the cucumber lemonade actually tastes like cucumber and not just an idea of it. Where a fruit is not available year-round, the farm works with juice concentrate derived from the same fruit, not from a lab. All drinks are suitable for vegans.
Sweetening is done exclusively with sugar—and less of it than one might expect from an English lemonade. The Cranberry Lemonade contains 7.6 grams of sugar per 100 milliliters, the Winter Punch 17 grams, which brings it close to a mulled wine without the alcohol. According to the company, they do not use sweeteners at all.
Just how seriously the company takes this stance can be seen as of 2025: Belvoir passed the B-Corp certification with 91.2 points, significantly above the British average.
From the farm shop to the shelves of the nation
The cordial for friends and neighbors has become one of Great Britain's best-known beverage brands, all without the farm changing owners.
In 2022, the trade magazine The Grocer voted Belvoir Soft Drinks Brand of the Year. The drinks have won stars at the Great Taste Award multiple times, including the highest tier with three stars. For a company that started with a kitchen recipe and a full car trunk, that is quite a journey.
In England, the bottles have long been staples in both country pubs and department stores, and the Elderflower Pressé is a standard part of their non-alcoholic repertoire. The fact that the farm remained in family hands at this scale is the exception. Picking, processing, and bottling still take place in the same location.
Belvoir reaches us via the Göttingen-based importer Viani. You can see what is currently in stock in the grid below; those who prefer it warm will find what they are looking for under mulled wine and punch, and those seeking non-alcoholic options under the non-alcoholic drinks.
