Ty Gwyn Cider may be familiar to readers of Welsh Country Magazine. Run by husband-and-wife team Alex and Laura Culpin, they are an award-winning producer of craft cider based in the Black Mountains.
The UK’s ‘real/proper/craft’ (however you wish to slice it!) cider scene is full of passion and vigour. It attracts a lot of media interest – and TV’s ‘The Ciderologist’, Gabe Cook, is a big supporter of Ty Gwyn.
But no one in the craft-cider world could have foreseen the impact of the Covid pandemic. Businesses such as Ty Gwyn are actually about rural tourism as much as they are about selling cider. With trade customers and visitor numbers both hit by the lockdowns in Wales and England, Ty Gwyn had to think hard about how best to ride out the storm.
A small corner of their cider farm had always suggested itself as an ideal location for a shepherd’s hut or similar, but Laura and Alex wanted to do something slightly different. They enlisted the help of a local custom-hut builder, Neil Cox, and the idea of ‘The Cider Shack’ was born.
A TV production company with a track record of getting their programmes on the BBC heard about it and gave Neil a call. They were working on a series called ‘My Unique B&B’ and The Cider Shack would be a brilliant fit.
The episode called ‘Alex and Laura’s Tiny House’ has since aired on BBC1 and BBC2, and is available on the iPlayer.
Bookings have been pouring in for the The Cider Shack – and for Yarlington Dairy, a newly converted dairy building at the other end of the farm. All this feeds into the bigger picture for Ty Gwyn. Many people not only enjoy Ty Gwyn Cider while staying at the cider farm, but return home to badger their local hostelry into placing an order.
“It’s been a fascinating journey”, say Alex and Laura, “We’ve had to evolve and really dig deep to survive. But now it feels we’ve turned a corner and have a fantastic new string to our cider-business bow!”
