This year’s trendiest tipple? Posh squash!

Shoppe RS are turning their backs on fruit squash, according to market researchers IRI, which says overall sales are down 4.3 per cent.

Britvic, the firm that makes Robinsons, has been phasing o ut all of its full - sugar varieties, but it’s not just sugary versions that are suffering — even sales of lowcalorie squash are down.

one sector of the market is doing well, though, and that’s posh squash.

Upmarket cordials in flavours such as rhubarb and strawberry, elderflower and summer fruits, made by the likes of Belvoir Fruit Farms, Rocks Drinks and Bottle Green, are flying off the shelves.

pev Manners, managing director of Belvoir Fruit Farms, which makes cordials in the Vale of Belvoir in Lincolnshire, says sales of their naturally flavoured fruit drinks are up nearly 60 per cent in the past two years, while sales of their cordials are up by 23 per cent in the past 12 months.

he says: ‘The trade thinks the consumer wants no added sugar, but I think they’ve got it wrong. Consumers look at the labels on bottles of no-addedsugar squash, which are made with artificial sweeteners such as aspartame or saccharin, and it looks like a chemistry set.

‘Drinks like ours are made with water, freshly squeezed fruit, sugar and a little citric acid — and that’s it.

‘I think parents are deciding that they would rather their children have a little sugar than all of these chemicals. Also, sales are up because our drinks taste lovely — for example, our lemon cordial is made with lemons that have been picked and squeezed the night before.

‘ They don’t have artificial flavourings, so there’s none of the cloying, heavy taste you can get with added chemicals.’

Down in Devon, the team making Rocks Drinks agrees with Belvoir’s pev Manners that parents want to give their children naturally flavoured drinks, even if they have been sweetened with sugar.

‘Shoppers are beginning to understand that “no added sugar” equals artificially sweetened, and that means lots of chemicals,’ says Russell Smart, Rocks’ commercial director, who has seen sales of his company’s fruit squashes rise 10 per cent year-on-year in the supermarkets.

For chemical- wary parents, it seems posh squash is providing the perfect solution.