Sunday 23 October 2011

Cowbridge Food and Drink Festival 2011

The last weekend in October, the 29th and 30th, is again the Food and Drink festival in the Vale of Glamorgan historic town of Cowbridge.

We've been every year for quite a few years, with baby in papoose one time!
Always a great selection of exhibitors, demonstrations, and stalls to buy from. My 4 year old son has to be dragged away from the cheese producers freebies, and we always succumb to either the hot pork rolls or the Thai dishes and soups.

Always an abundance of Welsh producers, you can see the list here.
The important ones for me will be:

Otley Brewery Award winning real ale bottles & presentation boxes
Penlon Cottage Brewery Bottle conditioned beer

and of interest to cider fans might be:

Gwatkin Cider Co Ltd Real farmhouse cider & perry
Gwynt-Y-Ddraig Cider Ltd Draught & bottled Ciders & Perry

A couple of the talks certainly appear worth attending:

Saturday
2.15pm James "Arfur" Daley,   (you may know him as Brew Wales)
Gwatkin Cider with Llanblethian Orchards
Arfur and his partner are local cidermakers, collecting fruit from local orchards. With the help of Gwatkin Cider, they will talk about the process of cidermaking, their local plans and offer tasty cider samples.

Sunday
1pm Bev "The Beer" Robins
Otley Brewery
Exploring brewing traditions in Wales as part of the "housewife's duties". And celebrating Otley Brewery's past, present and future with the launch of "Oxymoron". Including a few good slurps of light ales and traditional bitters, including past winners of the Champion Beer of Wales.

There is usually a couple of beer festivals going on although its not on the website, so i'm just assuming the details are the same as past years. Ring and check before attending to confirm they are going ahead.
If they are, I'm hoping to attend the one at the Vale of Glamorgan pub on the high street as i did last year. An excellent real ale pub normally they have stillage out in the courtyard, it was packed last year.
At the Duke of Wellington literally over the road is usually the cider festival. This Brains pub has recently had a complete refurbishment so i'm sure we'll go and check that out also.

EDIT:  No cider festival at the Duke this year, see comments below.

6 comments:

  1. No cider fest at the Duke this year.

    ReplyDelete
  2. Thanks, i'll edit that in.
    Have you heard if 'The Vale' one is still on as usual?

    ReplyDelete
  3. Not heard anything to the contrary. Will aim to get a beerlist from the Vale this week and post it in the usual place.
    Have a similiar post about Cowbridge going out tomorrow morning.

    ReplyDelete
  4. I was going to do a scheduled post for the first time ever to go out this week whilst i'm down in Dorset (until friday), but then decided to 'schedule it' whilst sitting here to make sure i got it right! just as well really!
    Look forward to the list, good luck with the talk.

    ReplyDelete
  5. Arno from down south26 October 2011 at 09:41

    All sounds good.

    A pity you can't comment on the brews at the "local" to where you were staying in Dorset. I'm sure that there used to be a song that spoke about 'The Pub with No Beer'. Still, we got some exercise walking there and back, on the unlit roads.

    ReplyDelete
  6. yes, the 'St. Leonards Hotel', a Greene King pub which had no cask ale on because they were waiting for deliveries settle another 24 hours. An example of poor cellar management, i did actually email Cask Marque, although i never heard back or received acknowledgement from them.

    ReplyDelete