I don’t have webbed toes. Or square eyes. Or hair on my chest. I admit to being shocked when it was revealed that carrots won’t really make you see in the dark.

The little white lies we’ve been told over the years were just so. White lies can grow, but where does a tiny snippet of misleading information metamorphosize into a full-blown lie? How far does omission have to go to be called out as deception. If the studio didn’t actually state that Milli Vanilli were the voices on the track then they didn’t outright lie? Or did the packaging and hype amount to exactly that?

CAMRA’s recent campaign on the manufacturing origin of “imported” beers offers a glimpse through the smoke and guide through the mirrored maze. A behind-the-scenes expose of the carnivale that tempts the customer to treat their tastebuds with drinks pitched for the exotic and discerning. While cider and perry rarely, if ever, have a “produced somewhere more aspirational than Somerset” label on the bottle, the deception of where they are fermented (and by whom) is still an issue.

Customers deserve to be offered the truth.

How would customers feel if they thought they were buying a cider fermented in Cornwall, only to find out that the apples were grown and processed hundreds of miles away?

Where beer brands are drawing on consumer desire to feel they’re opting for a premium import, the deception for cider drinkers is two-fold.

Cider drinkers care about sustainability, we’re told they are drawn to products that have an “authentic sustainability narrative”.  A genuinely local product contributes to the local economy, supports orchard habitats and carries a lower carbon footprint than one imported from distant counties. For many cider drinkers the great appeal is those eco-credentials before you further add solar power, water recycling and pomace becoming biofuel.

In most cases, white label bypasses the key element in actually being physically local.

Where would consumers stand on that? How would they feel about supporting a heritage drink that’s not local? Some won’t consider it (we’ll disregard percentage apple content for now). Customers can choose where their boundaries lie if they are informed.

In reality, how many people would shun a cider that was open about its white-label nature? I probably wouldn’t. If I was in a pub and I fancied a cider, given the paucity that’s usually on offer, I’d likely still drink it. So the driving factor behind the omission of true origin is less the consumer and more the producer and licensee’s complicity in wanting to be perceived to offer and support local producers. They’re selling a sustainable narrative that isn’t truly authentic. 

Where collaboration ends and white label begins is, again, a tale to be unwoven.

Why do breweries feel the need to paint the picture that they produce a token cider alongside their beers? Breweries throwing a token cider into their arsenal offers only to suggest that they’ve just knocked up a quick batch of fermented apples to offer alongside their brews. Anyone can make cider, but it takes skill to make good cider. 

Breweries view cider from afar and want a piece of the action. Cider is something that has demand, that people will reach for. It offers another opportunity to make money. That’s business. That’s why Del Boy and Rodney repackaged tap water into plastic bottles (I seem to recall a huge multinational doing something similar more recently but not for comedic purposes). Where we laughed at Trotters Independent Traders (TITs’) vain attempts to profit from the naivety of the public, we should consider how those practices translate to our shelves and pubs today. Do we want to uphold a drinks culture where open, transparent communication is lauded, and the opposite are marched down the street in shame, or settle for the one in which we are left grasping for the truth?

Where provenance and locality are key factors in consumer choice any ambiguity or spin is, surely, dishonest. The issue is not that white label ciders exist but that omission and lack of clarity can quickly slide into deception.

I still eat carrots but I wish I’d known sooner that I didn’t need to eat as many.