Hello Ciderstore customers,

It’s our 1st Birthday next Tuesday, so we thought we’d celebrate by creating a Cider Selection featuring many of our best sellers at the great price of £18.99 (+p&p); this will only be available for a limited period.

After having bought ridiculous quantities of cider in May, we waited in vain for summer. We decided to stop adding to the stockpile until we’d sold some of our existing cider!.

Fortunately our decision to open the warehouse to the public has proved successful and 3 months on, and several thousand bottles lighter, we can resume building our catalogue. In the last week we have added 4 ciders from Hecks of Somerset, as well as Special Reserve from Biddenden with more to come.

happy birthday Ciderstore!

Local Food Shop
Localfoodshop.co.uk is owned by the producer community, so 93% of the purchase price goes directly to the producers, supporting the local economy, reducing food miles, and keeping Britain’s farms viable.

They have a drinks category called “Beer, cider and perry” so that’s not bad.

For producers the deal is £10 a month to be listed with an additional pre-launch discount offer, and they promise to organise all of the IT side of e-commerce (since it’s all done through their site anyway) and negotiate good deals on freight.

For cider and perry producers this may well offer an opportunity, provided they can find a way to undercut the expensive courier prices which currently restrict the online bottled drinks delivery market. Maybe if they get big enough, the real cider and perry can be delivered in the same trip as the potatoes, groceries, fresh meat and fish, thus giving the supermarkets a run for their money.

Now there’s a thought.

Wetherspoon’s free wifi with your pint

Thanks to a partnership with ItBox, all customers with a Wi-Fi-enabled laptop will be able to connect to hi-speed Internet – free –for 30 minutes.

It really couldn’t be simpler, power up the laptop, order your drink or food from the bar and ask for a Wi-Fi voucher; this contains an access code for your computer. You will then connect to a network free for 30 minutes – order another drink and go on line for another 30 minutes.

Wetherspoon’s head of purchasing, Paul Hine, explains why the scheme has been introduced: “We really are in a mobile environment at the moment, with more and more people using the Internet for business and pleasure – 24/7.” “We felt that our pubs offer comfortable and private surroundings, to come to enjoy a drink or a meal and also connect to the Web.”

The service is available throughout the day at all Wetherspoon pubs and Lloyds No.1 bars. Leaflets detailing the new service are available at the bar.

Pages on the ukcider wiki that link to Wetherspoon

If any other online shop or producer has a really good special offer on cider or perry I’ll be happy to give the same sort of publicity to them, also free of charge.

Quick to reply was Charles May of Abbey Stores, Salisbury with an offer on the new season’s Cider by Rosie. You can go into his shop and buy four pints for £7.00, or else have a full 20 litre Bag-in-box delivered anywhere in the UK by courier.

It’s particularly satisfying to help promote Cider by Rosie because not only is it a great real Dorset cider made by an amazing woman, but it’s also the only cider with a real human presence on the web which is kept up to date with stories and anecdotes from Rose herself.

The diary of a Dorset Cidermaker is maintained on the ukcider wiki and there you can read all about the passing of the seasons and the engineering efforts that go into producing local traditional cider on an ever increasing scale. It’s a good read, highly inspirational and entertaining, go and have a browse and take your time at ciderbyrosie.com

Normally sold at £1.49 online, that’s a massive 1/3 off the standard price; supermarkets average around £1.59 with some as much as £1.79!

Hurry while stocks last at ciderstore.com