Moorlands Farm Cyder wins in Norwich
Welcome to the first of what will become an annual newsletter from Moorlands Farm cyder & apple juice. What a year it has been after our launch at the Hull Truck Food Festival in Feburary 2010. We have attended many beer festivals and cyder days with what can only be described as highly successful in terms of people trying our medium sweet cyder for the first time and thinking it was lovely and a very refreshing taste. Customers keep asking us why our cyder tastes so much like apples when other ciders do not, all we can say is - we use 100% locally sourced freshly pressed apples whenever possible.
The starting point of our cyder which leads me in a strange phenomenon in as much that all we wanted to do was produce cyder from the apple juice we pressed. We had not given much thought to producing apple juice as a stand alone product but after a period of time we developed a perfect blend of apples for both apple juice and cyder. With our apple juice now being a comparatively large part of our business as a drinks producer.
We were approached by Phil and Matt from The Real Cider Company, Hebden Bridge who wanted to include our cyder on their wholesale list, a deal was done, cyder delivered to them and hey what do you know.... our first wholesaler was signed up! We are now looking for good wholesalers in other areas to promote sales of both our cyders and apple juice to a much larger customer base. Yes, in the previous sentence we did say both our cyders because as of September 2010 after one of our large storage vats containing cyder from the 2009 season we felt this as a medium dry cyder may find a few customers who wanted a drier but still very appley taste that Moorlands cyder was becoming famous for. We were not prepared for what was to happen next. Our medium dry cyder was so well received we struggled to keep up with demand but keep up we did. Now we have two cyders and one apple juice in our range... not bad after only eight months on the market.
Our sights and aspirations for Moorlands Farm Cyder products was by now far more than we could have ever expected or anticipated.
Then it happened, one evening in early November the phone rang and three words that kept going around in my head were "you have won." Moorlands Farm medium sweet Cyder had won the East Midlands and Yorkshire cider competition, first win. Absolutely unbelievable. Our medium sweet cyder is now automatically entered into the National Cider Competition held in Reading in May 2011.
Anyway, feet back on the ground, head out of the clouds. We must now concentrate hard on 2010 production late into December. We will try to repeat 2009 cyders but please remember real cider is a live product as are the apples we use so small changes in flavour from season to season will occur but we hope all products will always be excellent. Our cyders are an enjoyable drink to have whether as a drink with friends, to accompany a meal or a barbeque or on its own.
This first newsletter is now nearly finished but we must just let you know that our new site www.moorlandsfarmcyder.co.uk should be coming online to January 2011 and will be fully utilised to bring you breaking news etc and also for you to contact us to let us know what you think about our products.
In January 2011 we will be planting what we hope is the first of many new orchards at the home of Moorlands Farm Cyder in North Newbald and by mid 2011 we should have moved our cyder making facility into a custom designed refurbished farm building on the farm.
We will keep you all informed with regards to what is happening on the farm via the website.
Rob Gibbon, Moorlands Farm Cyder
