About Ty Madoc Cider
About Us
Hi! I'm Tasha, and welcome to Ty Madoc Cider Farm!
We're a small scale family cider business based in the Brecon Beacons! Ty Madoc Cider is simply our family, our orchards, and a lot of love for good times and good cider!
We didn't really set out to start a cider business. We all had "proper" jobs until the Covid pandemic hit. Suddenly life slowed down, plans changed, and instead of sitting still, we (well... Gen) decided to plant an orchard. We had absolutely no idea where it would lead us. We just knew we wanted to build something together that we'd be proud of years down the line.
Fast forward a few years, and those tiny MM106 trees have grown into a family business that keeps all four of us super busy.
Rob, my brother, is our resident magician. He's the one who turns our apples and pears into booze (and honestly, I still think it's witchcraft). From pressing and fermenting to bottling, he's happiest when he's in the cidery, usually covered in juice and plotting his next blend. If he's not there, then he's probably covered in engine oil and lying on the floor somewhere. Follow the muttering... you'll find him!
I'm the chatterbox of the family. If you've met us at a festival or event, replied to one of our social media posts, read something on the website, or received one of our emails, chances are you've been chatting with me. Or me and the dog. Roo is in charge of HR. I look after the design, the photography, the technology, and the storytelling behind Ty Madoc Cider. I'm usually found at our shop in Hay-on-Wye, The Wobbly Owl, and chances are I'm chatting instead of working! Some of us were just put on this earth to natter... what can ya do?
Gen is our ideas person! (Although "ideas person" doesn't quite cover it.) She's wonderfully organised, endlessly proactive, and has an incredible eye for creating beautiful spaces. From designing the landscaping around the farm to dreaming up peaceful corners where people can slow down and reconnect with nature, she's leading the vision for our wellbeing and mindfulness experiences. If you've ever visited somewhere and thought, "This just feels lovely," there's a good chance Gen is behind it. Her priority is to create spaces that bring a little more kindness and a little more love into the world. Somehow, she also manages to keep the rest of us organised while she's at it. More witchcraft, probably.
Chris is our practical genius. While the rest of us are busy running in different directions, Chris is probably already halfway through making our ideas happen. Whether he's sorting the fencing, building a pétanque pitch, talking to the bees, or tackling the zillion jobs that appear around the farm, he's happiest when he's creating something wonderful. He's always finding ways to improve the farm, whether that's making it run more smoothly, become more sustainable, or feel even more welcoming. He's also managed to keep our fish alive despite the cat's best efforts, and frankly, that deserves to be celebrated!
And Roo is the dog. But he's also my perfect, precious angel and I want you all to know this.
Between the farm and The Wobbly Owl, there's always something happening and a kettle on! Everything we do starts in our orchards in the beautiful Bannau Brycheiniog, and we're only just getting started.
From 2027 onwards, we're excited to open the farm in even more ways. We're busy creating dark sky spaces, plunge pools, and bell tent platforms. We're dreaming up orchard banquets beneath the trees, supper clubs celebrating brilliant local food, and seasonal events that bring people together to enjoy good cider, good company, and the landscape we feel so incredibly lucky to call home.
Honestly, the best part of this job is the people. It's watching someone discover a new favourite cider, hearing stories across the bar, welcoming visitors onto the farm, creating one-off hen dos and special events, and meeting so many wonderful people along the way. We genuinely believe food and drink have an amazing way of bringing people together, and if one of our bottles ends up on your table surrounded by friends or family, then we've done something right.
We're so glad you found us, and we hope we'll get the chance to welcome you in person soon!
The Story So Far
We've had our fair share of surprises along the way! We had a plan, but that plan was largely to take things one opportunity at a time, love what we do, and try to say "yes" to all the things that felt right.
Somehow, our one baby orchard has grown into everything you see today.
2018 | The Beginning
Every story has to start somewhere, and ours started with an extremely muddy field and a lot of tiny trees!
Back in 2018, we planted our very first orchard at Ty Madoc. It was November, it had been raining for four years(ish), and it was dark by 3 pm every day. But our trees needed to go in, so if you come up to the farm you'll see that most of them are planted in lovely straight lines. Some of the rows, however, have a distinctive wonk. It was dark! It's surprisingly tricky planting trees by torchlight!
Anyway, at the time it was simply an investment in the future of our family. Honestly, if you need a lesson in patience, plant an orchard. You plant trees knowing they'll take years before they really reward you, but we loved the idea of creating something that could last for generations. And that was better behaved than sheep, actually. Pruning trees is far easier than shearing sheep, I'm just saying. They (usually) stay where you left them.
2020 | Finding Our Feet
Like so many small businesses, ours really took shape during the Covid pandemic.
We started taking our handmade soaps and hand creams to local markets, packing up the car and hoping someone would like what we'd made. Around the same time, we pressed our very first batches of apple juice, using fruit from our orchard and learning as we went.
It was a year of experimenting, making mistakes, celebrating little wins, and discovering just how much we loved creating something from our own land.
2021 | Cidering Begins
This was the year Rob made his very first batches of cider. It all started with our 90L hydropress (which now comes to schools and community events with us!), a couple of tanks, and YouTube.
Watching apples we'd grown ourselves become proper bottles of cider was unbelievably cool. Rob also started experimenting with fruit soft drinks, and suddenly this little germ of an idea was beginning to look like a real drinks business.
There were plenty of late nights, the family crammed around a whiteboard, lots of learning, many, many tastings, the odd explosion (unbelievably sticky, you have no idea), and more than a few "Well, let's see what happens!" moments.
2022 | Taking the Leap
This was one of the biggest years we've ever had.
We were given the opportunity to take on the management of a neglected former Bulmers orchard, giving well over a thousand more trees a new lease of life. We also planted another orchard of our own and sold our livestock (see earlier point about trees being much easier than sheep!).
This was also the year Chris and I left our full-time jobs to throw ourselves fully into the family business. The plan was that we'd jump first and join Rob, with Gen following as soon as we knew it was viable. It was exciting, terrifying, and possibly just a little bit mad, but we believed in what we were building enough to give it everything we had.
Looking back, we're so glad we did.
2023 | The Year of "Yes!"
This felt like the year we started saying "yes" to opportunities that would have seemed completely impossible just a few years earlier.
We traded at Hay Festival, took Ty Madoc to much bigger events, met thousands of wonderful people, and started to realise that what people loved wasn't just our cider. It was hearing the story behind it.
Those conversations still make this job the best in the whole world.
2024 | The Wobbly Owl Lands
If there was ever a year of equal parts joy and sleepless nights, this was it!
First, we completely rebuilt our old pressing shed so that we could massively increase production, finishing just in time for apple pressing season. It was one of those projects where you spend months biting your fingernails and praying that everything would come together before the fruit needed picking.
2024 also brought us an opportunity we simply couldn't ignore. We bought 13a Castle Street in Hay-on-Wye, a building with an incredible history (and such nice exposed beams, seriously). It had once been the town's fire station before becoming Richard Booth's very first bookshop. Today, it's home to The Wobbly Owl.
We got the keys just a month before Hay Festival descended on the town and opened just one week before it began. In hindsight, this was either the best idea we'd ever had or absolutely bonkers. We ate so many biscuits I can't even begin to tell you. But people loved it (and the tech worked!)
Since then, it's become a place where locals and visitors alike can pop in, have a chat, discover local produce, and (of course!) sample a little cider.
2025 | Putting Down Deeper Roots
Last year was all about investing in the future of the farm.
We transformed the farmhouse into a much more sustainable home and HQ, improving the insulation, installing air source heat pumps, updating the solar panels, and making better use of rainwater. Sustainability has always been an integral part of what we do, so it felt wonderful to finally make these improvements.
We also built our very first dedicated event space on the farm, which meant we could welcome visitors in completely new ways. Hen dos, parties, workshops - it was such an exciting time!
We also had the added joy of finally bringing Gen into the business full-time, so the gang was all here. Ty Madoc Cider had truly become the family business we'd always hoped it would be.
2026 | Remembering Our "Why"
After a whirlwind few years, we finally gave ourselves the time to pause.
Like so many small businesses, it's easy to become completely wrapped up in the next job, the next project, or the next event. So we stepped back and asked ourselves a simple question: Why are we doing all of this?
The answer came with surprising clarity - It isn't really about cider. Or soaps and cosmetics. Or juices.
We love all of our products, but they're simply the things we make.
What we're actually trying to create is something a little bigger. We want people to feel welcomed and warm. We want visitors to leave happier than when they arrived. We want to share kindness, celebrate local producers, look after the land we're lucky enough to farm, and create spaces where people can slow down and just enjoy being together.
That realisation inspired a bit of a rebrand, but more importantly, it reminded us what Ty Madoc has always been about.
What Next?
I get asked what the next stage of the plan is pretty frequently. The truth is that the gang has so many ideas, and we're already rattling through them!
Over the next few years we'd love to welcome people onto the farm in completely new ways.
We're dreaming about dark sky evenings where you can wrap up in blankets and watch the stars, orchard banquets with long tables laid beneath the apple trees, cozy supper clubs celebrating local food, wellness retreats, yoga in our ancient woodland, and even a few bell tents so people can spend a little longer enjoying everything the farm has to offer.
At the heart of it all, we'll keep doing what we love most, which is looking after the land and the trees.
So we're creating our own biochar to improve the soil, planting more wildflowers and lavender for pollinators, restoring our ancient woodland, growing more of the botanicals we use in our products, finding even better ways to reuse our apple pomace, and making sure every year leaves the farm healthier than we found it.
One of the projects we're most excited about is opening The Orchard Room at The Wobbly Owl, creating a welcoming, intimate space for workshops, tastings, talks, and supper clubs right in the heart of Hay-on-Wye.
What we've really discovered through this whole process is that orchards don't stand still. Every spring brings blossom, every summer brings pruning, every autumn brings picking, and every winter brings more pruning. Every year seems to bring another adventure that we never saw coming.
We honestly can't wait to see what happens next, and we'd love for you to come along for the journey!
