Are Bassett's Sweets Halal? Jelly Babies, Wine Gums & the Sherbet Exception

Two Bassett’s products are safe for Muslim consumers to eat. Three aren’t. All five come off the same production line, under the same 176-year-old British brand — which is exactly why checking the specific product matters more than checking the brand name.

Bassett’s, now owned by Mondelez International (the same parent company behind Cadbury, Toblerone, and Oreo), holds no halal certification for any product in the UK. That single fact means every product needs its own ingredient check — and the results split sharply down the middle.

Jelly Babies and Wine Gums — Pork Gelatine

Jelly Babies and Wine Gums get their chewy, firm-set texture from gelatine. On the UK ingredients panel, this is listed simply as “gelatine” with no source specified — and the European confectionery industry default for unlabelled gelatine is pork-derived. Mondelez has not disclosed an alternative source for either product.

Pork gelatine is haram without ambiguity, across all four Sunni madhabs. There is no halal-certified version of Bassett’s Jelly Babies or Wine Gums sold in the UK.

Product	Texture ingredient	Status
Jelly Babies	Gelatine (pork-derived, undisclosed alternative)	Haram
Wine Gums	Gelatine (pork-derived, undisclosed alternative)	Haram

The “Wine Gums” name sometimes raises an alcohol question — there’s no wine or alcohol in the product; the name is a historical holdover from its 1909 launch. The gelatine concern is the real issue, and it’s current.

Liquorice Allsorts — E120 Cochineal

Liquorice Allsorts don’t use gelatine — the texture comes from wheat flour, sugar paste, and liquorice extract. That might look safer on the surface, but the coloured sugar-paste layers running through the sweet use E120 (cochineal/carmine), a red dye made from the dried, crushed bodies of the female cochineal insect.

HMC, HFA, and most mainstream Sunni fatwa bodies rule E120 haram because it’s derived from an insect not permissible to eat. It appears throughout the coloured layers of the sweet, not in an isolated part you could pick around.

The Exception — Sherbet Fountain and Sherbet Lemons

Not everything in the range fails. Sherbet Fountain — the paper tube of fizzy sherbet with a liquorice dip stick — is sugar, citric acid, sodium bicarbonate, and a liquorice stick made from liquorice extract, sugar, wheat flour, and treacle. No gelatine, no E120.

Sherbet Lemons, the hard-boiled lemon sweets with a sherbet centre, use the same clean profile in their standard UK recipe.

Product	Gelatine	E120	Verdict
Sherbet Fountain	Not present	Not present	Generally acceptable
Sherbet Lemons	Not present	Not present	Generally acceptable

Neither carries halal certification, so this isn’t a certified claim — it’s an ingredients-based read. Recipes can change without notice, so it’s still worth checking the current pack rather than assuming last year’s formulation holds.

Full Product Verdict Table

Product	Key concern	Verdict
Jelly Babies	Pork gelatine	Haram
Liquorice Allsorts	E120 (cochineal)	Haram
Wine Gums	Pork gelatine	Haram
Sherbet Fountain	None identified	Generally acceptable
Sherbet Lemons	None identified	Generally acceptable

Halal Alternatives

If you want a gummy sweet with the same shelf presence as Jelly Babies or Wine Gums, without the pork gelatine:

Product	Why it works
Bebeto Jelly Sweets	Turkish halal-certified, plant/fish gelatine, no pork
Rowntree’s Jelly Tots	HFA-certified in the UK, gelatine-free
Vidal Sweets	Halal-certified range, widely stocked in UK halal retailers

Rowntree’s Jelly Tots in particular are the closest direct substitute for Jelly Babies — see our Rowntree’s brand page for the full breakdown. For a wider comparison of the Turkish halal-gummy market, see Is Bebeto Halal?

Summary

Question	Answer
Is Bassett’s halal overall?	No — most of the range is haram
Why are Jelly Babies and Wine Gums haram?	Pork-derived gelatine, undisclosed alternative
Why are Liquorice Allsorts haram?	E120 cochineal, insect-derived
Is anything in the range safe?	Sherbet Fountain and Sherbet Lemons — no gelatine, no E120
Best halal alternative	Bebeto or Rowntree’s Jelly Tots

Look up E441 or E120 in the E-codes database any time you’re checking a sweet’s ingredient panel.

To scan a full ingredient list for halal status in seconds, use the ingredient scanner.

How we reached this verdict

We checked the following Tier-1 sources before publishing this verdict:

• HMC / HFA: No halal certification for Bassett’s in the UK or any other market.
• Manufacturer (Mondelez): Public UK ingredient panels confirm unlabelled “gelatine” in Jelly Babies and Wine Gums, and E120 in Liquorice Allsorts. No source disclosure or halal alternative has been published.
• Sunni fatwa scholarship: Pork and pork derivatives are haram across all four Sunni madhabs (Hanafi, Maliki, Shafi’i, Hanbali). E120/cochineal is ruled haram by HMC, HFA, and most mainstream fatwa bodies as an insect-derived colouring not permissible to consume.

Madhab note

The four Sunni madhabs converge on the pork-gelatine ruling — Jelly Babies and Wine Gums are haram across Hanafi, Maliki, Shafi’i, and Hanbali positions, with no material divergence. On E120/cochineal, Hanafi, Shafi’i, and Hanbali schools generally rule it haram as an insect derivative; some Maliki scholars historically permit small insects, which is the one area of divergence worth knowing if you follow that school specifically.