“Positioning 750ml sharing bottles of ciders alongside wines on restaurant/pub menus should help to boost cider’s perceived sophistication and links to food-led drinking occasions.”

– Chris Wisson, Senior Drinks Analyst

This report looks at the following areas:

• Cider can move into wine’s territory
• Can cloudy cider point the way back to growth for apple cider?
• Cross-category promotions can boost cider (and beer) sales
• Cider can compete with beer more effectively

Cider has been one of the best-performing drinks categories over the past decade. While some apple cider brands have enjoyed a successful few years, much of this growth was – and continues to be – driven by fruit ciders such as Kopparberg and Rekorderlig. However, the past two years have been sobering for the category. A dip in volume sales in 2014 was followed up by a larger 20 million litre decline in 2015, while values fell into decline for the first time in over a decade last year.

Cider penetration remains high, only 7 percentage points less than beer. However, cider continues to lack sessionability and it remains a much smaller market than beer. The majority of NPD (New Product Development) continues to focus on flavoured variants, taking the category further away from its traditional roots. Cider sales are also likely to have been hampered by the market not effectively leveraging the ‘craft’ trend which has served beer so well in recent years.

As such, cider stands at something of a crossroads and it is unclear whether the category will regain momentum or fall back into its pre-2005 malaise. Mintel expects the market to post modest value growth in the coming years.

All ciders are included within this report: low/no-alcohol to super-strength; draught and packaged cider; unflavoured and flavoured ciders; still and sparkling ciders. Both on- and off-trade sales are included in the UK market size.

The NACM (National Association of Cider Makers) Code of Practice states that the alcohol content of cider must be greater than 1.2% ABV (Alcohol by Volume) but less than 8.5% ABV; products in excess of 8.5% ABV are classified as apple wine. This definition of cider is used for this report.

Perry and pear cider are both included in this report. Whilst it is recognised that perry refers to a drink made using fermented pear juice, this term is used to describe light perries that are sold as wine-style drinks (eg Lambrini). Perries that are sold alongside ciders are referred to, for the purposes of this report, as pear cider.

Flavoured cider refers to drinks marketed as ciders that contain flavourings or fruit other than pear or apple. Examples include Kopparberg Mixed Fruit and Brothers Strawberry and Mixed Pear Cider, among others.

Apple-flavoured alcoholic carbonates are excluded from market size calculations in this report. Duty-free sales and personal imports are also excluded from market size calculations.