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Soft Drinks

Episode 6 of 6

Documentary series. Gregg Wallace explores Ribena's Gloucestershire factory. Meanwhile, Cherry Healey is in the lab figuring out why fizzy drinks are so appealing.

Gregg Wallace explores Ribena's Gloucestershire factory. It turns 90 per cent of Britain's blackcurrants into soft drinks, producing three million bottles a week. Gregg takes delivery of 500 tonnes of blackcurrants at a cider mill in Somerset. The harvest comes in during July and August, when there are no apples to process for cider, so they press blackcurrants instead. Gregg discovers how the aroma of the blackcurrants is captured separately and later added back into the drink. Next, the concentrate and aromas are transported to the drinks factory, where they are mixed with 11 other ingredients before being bottled. Gregg watches a machine that can create a plastic bottle in 0.1 of a second and learns why nitrogen is the secret to creating a bottle that won't get stuck in vending machines.

Cherry Healey is harvesting the berries on a farm in Kent - one of 40 that supply the factory. She also heads to the Netherlands to a plant that recycles plastics. It processes two and a half million used PET bottles a day, transforming them into 4mm pellets that can be turned back into drinks bottles. And Cherry is in the lab figuring out why fizzy drinks are so appealing. She learns that bubbles play sensory tricks on us, making fizzy drinks taste colder, less sweet and more flavourful than their still equivalents.

Ruth Goodman is investigating the origins of fizzy drinks. Carbonated water was first sold by Mr Schweppe in 1783, but it was a British husband-and-wife team - Robert and Mary White - who were to popularise fizzy pop. In 1890, R White's styled itself as the world's biggest drinks company and they sold 46 million bottles a year. Ruth looks at why we associate barley water with the great British summertime.

59 minutes

Last on

Sun 24 Jul 2022 17:00

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Music Played

  • Pumarosa

    Priestess

  • Birdy

    Keeping Your Head Up

  • Bastille

    Campus

  • Coldplay

    Birds

  • Coldplay

    Birds

  • The Phoenix Foundation

    Buffalo

  • Coldplay

    Up & Up

  • Olly Murs

    24 HRS

  • William Walton

    Spitfire Prelude And Fugue

  • Chase & Status

    This Moment - Instrumental

  • Picture This

    Let's Be Young

  • Katy Perry

    Last Friday Night (T.G.I.F.)

  • Hot Butter

    Popcorn

  • The New Dave Pike Set

    Mathar

  • Solomon Grey

    Firechild

  • Take That

    Giants

  • Rita Ora

    Your Song

  • Coldplay

    Birds

  • Kungs

    Don't You Know (feat. Jamie N Commons)

  • Robert Farnon, Queen's Hall Light Orchestra

    Sporting Occasion

  • Agnes Obel

    Riverside

  • Empire of the Sun

    High And Low

  • Empire of the Sun

    High And Low

  • Sigma

    Find Me (feat. Birdy)

  • Emeli Sand茅

    Highs & Lows

  • Richard Ashcroft

    Hold On

  • Lauren Aquilina

    Oceans

Credits

Role Contributor
Presenter Gregg Wallace
Presenter Cherry Healey
Presenter Ruth Goodman
Executive Producer Alice Harper
Executive Producer Sanjay Singhal
Series Producer Amanda Lyon
Director Michael Rees
Producer Emma Pound
Production Manager Sally Finigan
Production Company Voltage TV Productions Ltd
Producer Sam Bailey
Director Sam Bailey
Producer Will Aspinall
Director Will Aspinall

Broadcasts

Learn more about the history of the factory and how it has evolved with an interactive from The Open University.

The fascinating stories behind the production of some of our favourite products.