A brand with a long paper trail
The modern Robinsons name has passed through a few hands, as old British grocery brands often do, usually with paperwork that sounds less romantic than the products deserve. Robinsons held a Royal Warrant from Queen Elizabeth II from 1955, and that warrant lapsed in 2022 following her death. In 1995, Unilever bought the food business of Reckitt and Colman and sold Robinsons on to Britannia Soft Drinks, the parent company of Britvic, for £108 million. Today Robinsons is manufactured by Britvic Ltd, within Carlsberg Britvic, formed in January 2025 after Carlsberg’s acquisition of Britvic plc. That is the corporate version. The cupboard version is simpler: people still recognise the bottle.
Before apple and blackcurrant came barley water
There is no strong product-level origin story supplied for Robinsons Apple & Blackcurrant itself, so it would be cheeky to pretend this particular flavour was born on a specific afternoon with a named inventor and a triumphant spoon. The better-sourced heritage sits with the Robinsons brand. The business traces back to 1823, when George Robinson and Alexander Belville founded Robinson and Belville Ltd, originally a shipping and trading company that also made Patent Barley and Groats. By 1825, the Robinsons story was linked with barley water as a health drink. Fruit drinks came into the wider family story too, including accounts of Mary Ann Robinson selling homemade fruit juices from her family’s farm in Droylsden, Lancashire.
Norwich, Wimbledon, and the respectable side of squash
Robinsons became strongly associated with Norwich after production moved to Carrow, near Norwich, in 1925. The brand’s best-known heritage moment came in 1930, when Eric Smedley Hodgson developed Lemon Barley Water by combining Robinsons patent barley crystals with lemon juice and sugar. From 1935, Robinsons became linked with the Wimbledon Tennis Championships, a connection that lasted for decades and gave the brand a very English summer sort of status. It is funny, really, that something so ordinary in the kitchen cupboard could also sit beside tennis whites, strawberries, and people saying “lovely placement” as if that is normal conversation.
Where this bottle fits in
Apple and blackcurrant is part of the later, broader Robinsons squash family rather than the old barley water origin story. That matters because British grocery heritage is often a tangle of brand names, recipes, owners, and packets that have changed while the habit stayed put. Robinsons squash has included a range of fruit flavours, and in 2015 the brand removed added sugars from its squash ranges. For the shopper, though, the appeal of this bottle is less about boardroom reshuffling and more about getting the Robinsons taste and format they remember. Add water, stir if you can be bothered, and there it is: the drink that appeared at tea time, after school, and whenever someone was “not having fizzy.”
A small bottle of British normality in Canada
For British expats in Canada, Robinsons Apple & Blackcurrant can carry more emotional weight than a bottle of squash has any right to. It is the sort of thing families tuck into parcels, the thing grandparents kept in the kitchen, the thing that makes a Canadian cupboard feel suddenly less foreign. Nobody needs a grand speech about it. It is squash. But it is the right squash, in the right flavour family, with the familiar Robinsons name on the label. The Great British Shop is happy to leave it at that, because some groceries do their best work quietly.
