The mystery and delight of English elderflower

There’s an old saying that English summertime begins when the frothy heads of elderflowers appear in hedgerows – and ends when the black elderberries have ripened. People have been picking these great white ‘plates’, as the flower heads are known, to make drinks since at least Tudor times. In Hannah Glasse’s The Art of Cookery Made Plain and Easy (1747) there’s a recipe for elderflower wine. But only in the past 20 years or so have elderflower cordial and pressé become ubiquitous as soft drinks.

That expansion has largely been brought about by Peverel Manners of Belvoir Fruit Farms in Leicestershire. ‘Pev’, a cousin of the Duke of Rutland, still uses his mother’s recipe. Lady Mary Manners got it from Lady Astor while staying at Cliveden, where it was always on the drinks tray. In 1984 Lady Mary started commercial production with 100 cases. The elderflowers were picked by three carloads of local children, driven around the Vale of Belvoir by Pev and his parents. Last year some ten million bottles of Belvoir’s elderflower cordial were sold worldwide. At weddings and parties, it’s no longer acceptable to be offered Britvic or Coke if you’re not drinking, and Pev is proud to have ‘built a whole new category of adult soft drinks’. Other brands abound, but he points out that most use elderflower extract rather than the real thing.

Today it takes more than a few local kids to gather the 50,000 tonnes needed to meet the global demand. Belvoir now promotes the elderflower harvest as a family day out, with influencers invited to Instagram the blossoms. Pickers are paid £3 a kilo, with the most industrious gathering up to 50 kg a day. It is a middle-class version of the Cockney hop-pickers’ annual Kentish holiday.