Beaminster family behind Isaac Cider win prestigious awards

Isaac Cider, based at Coombe Down Farm, near Beaminster, was awarded three silver medals in the British Cider Championships at the recent Royal Bath & West show.

It was recognised for its Calculus and Alchemy ciders in the Medium Cider category, while the Alchemy cider won a silver medal in the Taste and Presentation category.

Fran Wood, her husband Giles and two sons Bertie and Rollo work together making the acclaimed cider.

The small firm was persuaded to enter the contest – the biggest in the UK – by a local admirer of the drink, Fran said.

She said: “There’s a man called Bob Chaplin who lives in Shepton Mallet who said he thought we had such a good batch that we should enter the competition.

“It was great news when we found out how well we’d done. We are extremely proud of our achievement and grateful to everyone who has worked so hard to make this happen. It makes it all worthwhile. We will definitely enter it again.”

Although there have been orchards on the farm since the early 1970s, Isaac Cider is ‘quite a new’ enterprise and makes around 40,000 litres of the beverage a year, Fran said.

“My father-in-law planted the orchards and Giles and I moved to the farm in 2000 and planted another 18 acres.

“We started making Isaac Cider about two years ago.”

The brand is named after Sir Isaac Newton – the family discovered through some ancestry research that they are descendants of the great renaissance scientist.

Newton’s eureka moment came when an apple fell from a tree, formulating his theory of gravity and the varieties of Isaac Cider like ‘alchemy’ ‘calculus’ and ‘refraction’ draw upon similar themes.

While Rollo makes the cider and Giles looks after sales, Bertie designs the labels, Fran said, and the striking designs is what makes Isaac Cider really stand out, she thinks.

They make a ‘very good single variety’ from dabinnett apples, Fran said.

“Everyone’s cider tastes differently, like a wine and it is dependent on the soil and the season. As a small cidermaker it’s very difficult to make it taste consistent every year.”

The future for Isaac Cider means continuing to ‘grow it organically’, Fran says.

“We’ve got a very small little farm shop which used to be the old milking parlour.

“We’re growing Isaac Cider organically, we’re not in supermarkets, we’re keeping it vey local at the moment but at some stage we’ll have to come to a decision about what to do.

“We have a real variety of customers, both young and old and lots of returning customers which is great and a lot of holidaymakers seem to come by as well.”

See isaaccider.com for more information.