Thornbridge’s future in 2006

I never get a press pack through the post anymore, always emails, which I rarely keep, unless I think there is something of value for future work. It didn’t used to be like that — when I started writing about beer towards the end of 1996 (What’s Brewing, a feature on Moor Beer, which of course was under a different owner and based on a farm then), I kept the majority of the press packs that came my way, including ones from brewers no longer in the game (King & Barnes) as well as ones that have changed and kept up with what has been happening in beer. 

Moving stuff around yesterday I came up on a press pack from Thornbridge around about 2006, 18 months or so after they’d started in 2004. I had visited the place sometime in 2005 and wrote something about the Hall (see below), which is where they were then brewing (with a Scottish and an Italian brewer), in my book The Big Book of Beer (bloody awful title). Given their current status (IMO) as the godfathers of the modern Brit beer scene, I find it interesting to see the direction that they seemed to be going in. Yes, there is Jaipur and St Petersburg, Wild Swan and Lord Maples, but then there is the future…which seemed to be beers made with dandelion, strawberry or herbs, all I seem to recall being grown on the estate. I wasn’t that excited to be honest, having given my heart and soul to Jaipur. These beers didn’t seem to happen and Thornbridge took the path that still excites me today, but if there’s one point I want to make here is that whenever one tries to predict the future of beer, it’s never that easy, in fact we could. be talking about various futures rather than just one. 

and here’s the extract from the book

Thornbridge Brewery, Ashford in the Water, Derbyshire
A trip to Thornbridge Brewery, based at Thornbridge Hall in the village of Ashford in the Water, is as much a visit to the land of Homes & Gardens, as it is to see and taste the fruits of John Barleycorn. The Hall boasts sweeping staircases, high-ceilinged rooms, gorgeous views over ornate gardens and windows by William Morris and Edward Byrne-Jones. It also houses a new 10-barrel brewery which has been set up by local businessman Jim Harrison (who owns the house with wife and entrepreneur Emma), along with Dave Wickett, the owner of the Fat Cat pub and its adjoining Kelham Island Brewery in Sheffield. Initially used to brew Kelham Island ales to cope with increased orders after Pale Rider’s championship title at Olympia 2004, the brewery is now producing Thornbridge’s own brews including Craven Silk, an aromatic, rich and fruity session bitter whose palate is enlivened by the addition of elderflower into the mix. The elderflower is part of Jim’s brewing plans as he hopes to use other herbs, flowers and fruits from the estate to create Thornbridge’s special beers. 

DW

Stuart Howe at Sharps sent me a bottle of DW, which he had brewed in collaboration with the late Dave Wickett. I thought I’d drink it. I’ve had it when it was younger but this was older and had had time to settle. On the nose, a filmic contrast between a scowling, tough, dockyard dweller, neckerchief wearing, shoulder bulging, granite-like hardness Belgian and a Jean Genet type, implacably bald, beret-wearing, muscle-bound with a sailor hat atop: there is a  yeastiness, fruitiness, peachiness; a peach dessert sweetness on the nose; a dessert wine Muscat swipe on the nose, a dirty troll like dig into the hop sack on the nose; it is vinous, vine-like, Vinland-like, Varus vs the barley hordes, my big fat barley beer, the idea of the Rhine as a boundary between wine and beer;  sweetness, dessert wine London clubland, the femininity of Muscat. 

And so I drank it. Fatness, sweetness, dryness, sweetness I was only joking, smokiness, peachiness, round ripe peaches, the dryness of the mouth’s assault on the ripe skin of a peach, the release of juice, an RSM of hop bitterness bawling from across the parade ground to keep all things in order; the marmalade sweetness glides across the brioche like breadiness and big fat uncle Charlie — just about keeping himself in order — bawls along, saying all the wrong things, but we all know we love him. And it all ends as it should end: with a big alcoholic wave of papaya, pineapple, Billy Smart big top ring sawdust dryness and then a wonderful world tucks you into your bed. 

Dave Wickett

Tonight I read with great sadness about the death of Dave Wickett, founder of the Kelham Island Brewery and the man who did more than anyone to bring Sheffield to its current status of one of the great beer cities (if not the greatest) in the UK. I knew him a bit, through work with the British Guild of Beer Writers and through general beer writing. He was a member and always supported our events. In fact, I first met him when he had a saffron beer brewed for a Guild dinner in 1999/2000. I remember writing an article about fish and beer not long after and interviewed the then head brewer about it: 'it was a one-off for two reasons,’ I was told. ‘It was for something special, such as the reopening and the meal, but saffron costs an arm and a leg. It's very expensive. If we sold it over the bar at one of our pubs it would be well in excess of £3 (!!!!).' Trust Dave to help out. 

Then there was the time I organised a trip to Sheffield for the Guild and we met at the Fat Cat, a pub which I immediately fell in love with. This was also the time I really got to grips with Kelham’s Best Bitter, a beer I enjoyed as much as Pale Rider, one of those beers to change people’s perceptions of what you could do with American hops (he was a good friend of Garrett Oliver and I recall the Brooklyn Smoked Porter Kelham did in 2006). Dave the visionary. After we had been round Kelham, we then went out to see this new brewery in a stately home out near Bakewell. Dave was involved with it at the beginning and they had an Italian brewer. Dave the visionary once more. 

On the pub front The Fat Cat was and is a fantastic place and stands as a great testimony to Dave’s vision: great beer, a constant collusion of ambiences and the chance to plant yourself into a local and listen to other people’s lives (naturally the Fat Cat is in Great British Pubs). A further example of the measure of his standing in the beer world is the fabulous DW that Stuart Howe at Sharps brewed in honour of Dave a couple of years ago with the proceeds going to a Cornish hospice charity. 

Dave had been ill for some time and I knew things were not getting better so in some ways the news is not surprising, but it still shocks and saddens. One last thing: despite the plethora of controversies, egos and marketing ups and downs, the beer world remains a convivial world that I am always glad to dive into but tonight that world will mourn the passing of Dave Wickett. 

Dave Wickett and Garrett Oliver at the
time of Brooklyn Smoked Porter