Belvoir Farm

The origin story starts with surplus strawberries. Lord John Manners began bottling Lady Mary Manners's elderflower cordial recipe in 1984, a recipe she had been making since the 1950s. The first 88 cases were loaded into a car and taken to local farm shops by hand. By 1993, sales had passed 10,000 cases per year. The business is still rooted in the Vale of Belvoir, an area of farmland that runs along the Nottinghamshire and Leicestershire border.

The core range centres on cordials and sparkling soft drinks made without artificial preservatives, colourings, or sweeteners. The elderflowers come from Belvoir's own 60-acre organic plantation, hand-picked each May and June by community pickers paid at £3.75 per kilo. Picked flowers go into production within 24 hours. At capacity, the bottling plant processes nearly 20,000 bottles an hour, producing almost 30 million bottles each year.

The alcohol-free cocktail range applies the same approach to the RTD mocktail category. Products come in 250ml cans and cover a range of classic cocktail-inspired formats, all made with real fruit and botanicals and no artificial flavourings. A margarita-style variant launched in December 2024, the most recent addition to the range.

Belvoir sits in an interesting position for sober-curious drinkers. The brand's core identity is built around premium cordials and sparkling soft drinks with forty years of the same elderflower recipe behind them, rather than around substituting alcoholic drinks. The RTD cocktail range suits Dry January and drink-free occasions, but weeknight drinkers who want something that doesn't reference spirits will find the cordial and presse range equally practical. Belvoir products are widely stocked across mainstream supermarkets and available through independent delis, farm shops, and specialist retailers. The cordial range frequently shelves in the soft-drinks section rather than the alcohol-free aisle, which extends the brand's reach well beyond shoppers actively looking for AF alternatives. With production dating to the 1980s, Belvoir is one of the longer-established names in a category where most brands launched in the last five years.