Red Vines: The Story Behind America's Red Liquorice

Red liquorice in America has always had a more famous rival sitting on the same shelf, and Red Vines has spent the better part of a century being the candy people discover second. That is a shame, because Red Vines has the better claim to actually being liquorice. The standard red twist contains genuine liquorice root extract — the same ingredient that defines traditional black liquorice — where its better-known competitor's red varieties contain none at all. The company behind Red Vines also has one of the stranger production credits in American food history: it made the liquorice boots Charlie Chaplin ate, with visible relish, in a scene from a 1925 silent film that is still referenced a century later.

What 'Red Liquorice' Means in America

UK shoppers encountering 'red liquorice' for the first time are often confused by the term, and reasonably so. In Britain, liquorice means one thing: the black, anise-adjacent confection associated with Pontefract cakes, liquorice allsorts and traditional sweet shops, made from the extract of the liquorice root and recognisable by a flavour that people tend to either love intensely or actively dislike. American 'red liquorice' is a separate cultural category that has no direct UK equivalent — a soft, chewy, twisted candy, usually fruit-flavoured rather than aniseed-flavoured, that took the shape and format of traditional liquorice twists without necessarily sharing the ingredient. The name stuck for the shape rather than the flavour, and an entire confectionery category grew up around a product that, in many of its commercial forms, contains no liquorice extract whatsoever.

The Company That Made Charlie Chaplin's Boots

Red Vines comes from the American Licorice Company, founded in Chicago in 1914 before relocating operations to San Francisco. The company's most unusual early production credit has nothing to do with candy as most people understand it — American Licorice Company made the liquorice boots that Charlie Chaplin famously eats, boiled, with visible relish, in the 1925 silent film The Gold Rush. It is one of the most referenced scenes in early cinema, and the boots were real liquorice, manufactured by the same company that would go on to make Red Vines.

The first version, launched in the 1920s, was called Raspberry Vines, despite the flavour reading as a generic red fruit rather than anything distinctly raspberry. A formula change in the 1950s produced the Original Red Twist that defines the brand today, and the Raspberry Vines name was retired in favour of Red Vines. American Licorice Company also produces Sour Punch, putting both major sour candy and red liquorice categories under the same corporate roof. The company markets its production as a small-batch process passed down across five generations.

Real Liquorice, Properly Labelled

Red liquorice in America has long lived in the shadow of a larger, more heavily marketed competitor — a Hershey-owned brand with seventeen flavour varieties and a national advertising budget that dwarfs anything American Licorice Company has ever spent. That competitor's red twists, however, generally contain no actual liquorice extract at all; the product is liquorice-shaped and liquorice-marketed without containing the ingredient that gives liquorice its name. Red Vines Original Red Twists are different: corn syrup, wheat flour, molasses, caramel colouring, liquorice extract, citric acid, artificial flavour, anise flavour and Red 40. The liquorice extract is genuinely present. Despite being red rather than black, Red Vines' standard twist is made with the same root extract that defines traditional black liquorice — a meaningful point of difference for any retailer fielding a question about what's actually in the product.

The Hollow Centre and the Cinema Straw

Red Vines has one structural quirk that separates it from most other liquorice-style candy: the twist is hollow rather than solid. The manufacturing process leaves a tube running through the centre of each piece, a by-product of the extrusion method rather than a deliberate design feature — but it has become one of the product's defining characteristics anyway. Bite the ends off a Red Vine and it functions, briefly and with limited structural integrity, as a drinking straw. This has been part of American cinema culture for decades, less a marketed feature than an accident of manufacturing that consumers discovered and adopted for themselves. It remains one of the more reliable conversation points in any discussion of the brand, alongside the rivalry itself.

A Following of Its Own

Red Vines has built its own celebrity following over the decades, separate from and sometimes in direct opposition to its larger rival. LeBron James was photographed eating Red Vines in 2020, prompting the kind of online debate that red liquorice rivalry tends to generate. The brand's marketing leans into its smaller scale and longer continuity rather than competing on flavour-range breadth, positioning itself as the more traditional, more authentically liquorice option in a category where the bigger name often isn't.

Cinema Candy and the Concession Counter

Red liquorice in general, and Red Vines specifically, occupies a particular place in American cinema culture that doesn't fully translate to UK retail. American cinema concession counters have sold liquorice twists for decades as a lower-sugar, longer-lasting alternative to chocolate — chocolate melts in a warm cinema or a hot car, liquorice doesn't, and a bag of Red Vines lasts through an entire film in a way that a chocolate bar bought at the same counter rarely does. This practical advantage, more than any marketing campaign, is part of why red liquorice twists became and remained a fixture of American cinema snacking, and why the rivalry between brands carries the specific cultural weight it does. For a UK retailer, the same practical logic applies: a long-lasting, non-melting sweet works well for any setting where a customer wants something to last — long car journeys, festivals, outdoor events — rather than something consumed in a single sitting.

What Sweet and Glory Stocks

The Red Vines range at Sweet and Glory covers Original Red, Black Liquorice in two sizes, Sugar Free Strawberry Twists, Sugar Free Black Liquorice Twists, and the Original Red Jar format for pick and mix and counter display.

For retailers building a liquorice or sour pick and mix section, see the pick and mix retailer guide for display formats and margin guidance, and the liquorice guide for the wider category including genuine black liquorice formats. The range is available with no minimum order. Browse the full candy range. Free first parcel on orders over £150 ex VAT (additional boxes £7.10 each). Free pallet delivery over £650 ex VAT. Dispatched from Manchester.