The boss of a family-owned fruit cordial business said he hopes the recent dry spell won’t damage this year’s elderflower harvest ahead of the May/June picking season.
The team at Belvoir Fruit Farms will be harvesting their own organic elderflowers in the coming weeks – and accepting bin bags of fresh pickings from a small army of helpers who will take to the local fields, woods and country lanes.
The family-owned company, managed by Pev Manners, employs around 79 people from its base in the Vale of Belvoir on the pretty Leicestershire/Lincolnshire border.
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The business – which makes around 40 different cordials, presses and fizzy drinks – is raising awareness of the harvest right now, and publicising the fact that volunteer hedgerow pickers can collect £2.70 per kg of flowers which they can bring in to collection points at Barkestone Lane, in Bottesford and Sacrewell Farm, in Peterborough.
This year's publicity drive for the harvest also includes a behind-the scenes look at the operation on ITV 4’s Made in Britain Show tonight (May 6).
Belvoir Fruit Farms was co-founded by Pev’s parents Lord and Lady John Manners and has been producing soft drinks in the Vale of Belvoir since 1984.
It started out supplying delis and farm shops and today its drinks are stocked by the big supermarket chains and pubs and restaurants up and down the country as well as in countries such as the US, France, the Netherlands and Scandinavia.
The business turned over around £19 million last year, down around 10 per cent due to the impact of the pandemic, but forecasts 2021 will be back up again.
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Pev said the elderflower drinks still make up the lion’s share of sales, but its classic ginger cordial is now the biggest ginger flavoured cordial on the market, with sales up almost a third year-on-year.
He said this season’s elderflower crop will probably be a couple of weeks late due to the recent weather, and hoped the more recent rain will help.
He hopes to get more than a million bottles out of this year’s crop.
He said: “We had no rain for about eight weeks, so the elderflowers have not been very happy, and it’s taken us a bit by surprise.
“Because it’s been so dry we think the harvest will be in June and we will be advertising for people to come and pick flowers for us by then.
“People can do really well out of it – we say all they need is a walking stick with a bit of a hook on the end to pull the branches down, and a bin bag.
“The season lasts four or five weeks depending on the weather and we need the flowers to be freshly picked that day because they spoil overnight.
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“Then we mix them with sugar syrup and lemon juice and allow that to infuse for one or two days and then stir and filter it.
“The key is to have lots and lots of flowers and the rain we have now has come just in time before, hopefully, normal weather resumes.”
The ITV show goes out at 8pm and should also be available to download on the ITV Hub.
He said: “The TV show we are on is about all the weird and wonderful things that are made in Britain and we were thrilled to be able to take part in that.
“They came and filmed us in the winter when we were bottling elderflower cordial we had frozen last June.”