Proper Cordial Real People

Matthew and Amy here. And yes, this is a story about cordial. But it starts somewhere a little more personal than that, so bear with us.

When we decided to start a family, we assumed, like most people do, that nature would just take its course. It didn't. What followed were a few of the hardest years of our lives; years of hoping, waiting, and quietly wondering if it would ever happen for us.

Matthew, being the kind of person who responds to a problem by reading everything ever written about it, spent those years going properly down the rabbit hole. The human metabolism. The endocrine system. The role of nutrition in hormonal health. What we came to believe about refined carbohydrates. Why we personally knocked seed oils on the head. The beautiful and occasionally maddening art of balancing macro and micro nutrients. At one point Amy genuinely considered confiscating the laptop.

We overhauled what we ate, took our health more seriously than we ever had before, and slowly things started to change. It still took time, and there were plenty of moments where a large glass of something strong seemed like the only appropriate response, but over Christmas 2021 we finally got the news we'd been waiting for.

We called him Joey.

Becoming parents only deepened the obsession. Amy, never one to do things by halves, had already started investigating environmental toxins, PFAs, microplastics, phthalates, and before long we'd overhauled our cookware, our textiles, and our entire relationship with plastic. Matthew has been banned from reading research papers after 9pm.

Which brings us, finally, to cordial.

We went looking for one that ticked our boxes. No added sugar, no artificial nasties, real fruit, glass bottle. Shouldn't be hard, right? Rocks comes in glass, but one look at the sugar content and you're basically handing your kid a bag of Haribo in liquid form. Belvoir is closer, genuinely lovely brand, but they're so wary of Stevia's aftertaste that they've swung too far the other way. It tastes like someone described cordial to a person who'd never tasted it. Drinkable? Technically. Enjoyable? Debatable.

So we did what had by this point become our default setting: we made our own.

After a lot of kitchen experiments in Beverley, East Yorkshire, and a heroic amount of taste-testing from anyone who'd stand still long enough, we cracked it. A natural sweetener blend of Stevia and Thaumatin that gives you full, rounded sweetness without the sugar spike, the calories, or that lingering artificial aftertaste. Real fruit juice in quantities that actually mean something. Glass bottles, always, because we're not going back.

Joey's Drinks was born. Named after the little boy we worked so hard for, but made for anyone who simply wants a proper, delicious glass of cordial and refuses to settle for anything less.

That's you, by the way. Welcome. We're really glad you're here.

Matthew, Amy & Joey
Beverley, East Yorkshire