We are all led to believe that cider is gluten free and I often purchase "bag-in-a-box" cider online, but whilst searching for a new order, I came across this one which claims to be "Certified Gluten Free", but when you look at the allergens list at the bottom, it states that there are "Cereals containing gluten".
I'm confused!
Hi.
You can drink cider that says gluten free. It’s entirely dependent on your individual threshold of tolerance. The law allows upto 20 parts per million gluten content to be certified gluten free. This is different to being allergic. Anyone allergic to cereals could react to a trace.
This has confused me as well!I was under the impression that cider is always gluten free, as it should be made purely with fruit - mostly apples.
Personally, I wouldn't go near this one! If they have used cereals in their recipe, I would treat it like any processed food, and assume it is "GF" as in 20ppm, not "free of gluten".
Contamination often occurs in the bottling/packaging plant.
We do always need to be aware of cross contamination, of course, but the label above does not say "may contain" or "packed in a factory that also processes..." - it implies that the cider actually contains "cereals containing gluten". If they have used cereals, or alcohol from them, then this would put this cider in the same category as so-called gluten free beer, which to me, is not free of gluten.I don't drink much cider, but my favourite cider is made purely from apples, in a factory that produced nothing but cider, so I am confident about drinking it. I know nothing about Saxbys, but will not try their cider while it is labelled like this!
If something tells me it's 'certified gluten free', I just take that as a given that it is not safe. There is no more screwed up a world than certified gluten free world. Why the heck cider needs to contain grains is beyond me as well. Cider does not, and should not, contain grains ever. Wouldn't touch this one with a barge-pole, but might be worth contacting the manufacturer/brewer for an enlightening answer on this one.
I'm going to contact them today
Please share their answer - this is an intriguing one.
I will 👍
I did email Saxby's and still not heard back from them yet.
Excellent update. Nothing like confusing your customers to do business.
I've got a reply from Saxby's and they said it was a mistake on the website and have corrected it now, which they have.
I'm glad you got that correction... because otherwise I would say "that's not cider"!
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