The lockdown has forced pubs, bars, brewers – in fact the whole industry – to examine how we can still bring our customers the best beers in these very trying times. Here at Wishful the best word to describe how we feel about the extraordinary circumstances we all find ourselves in is…Grateful

We are grateful to the brewers near and far who continue to produce superb beers whilst their normal operations are severely disrupted often needing to move 90% of production away from keg/cask and into bottle/can.

We are grateful to our suppliers who have adapted their operations to cope with the new environment forced on them. We see the Directors of some of these companies – who are not themselves furloughed – in vans making deliveries whilst others have completely revised their online ordering to allow loyal customers continued access to the best beer.

And we are of course most grateful to our customer new and old who have continued to support us at WD since the lockdown was announced. Your words of encouragement, that we should keep going, have been really important to us. We are so so fortunate – so much more so than many of our fellow traders in Ricky – that we are still open and have such loyal and supportive customers.

And in return, we are trying to find the very best beers and ciders we can and get them on the shelves and in the fridges pronto!!

This week we have some absolute gems that have come in:

• Deya Steady Rolling Man in cans – No need to say anything else
• Alphabet Brewing – Charlie Don’t Surf and A to the K, new in cans plus the return of Juice Springsteen
• Lost & Grounded/Burnt Mill collab – Big Thaw 2 in cans
• Thistly Cross – Elderflower Cider, new in bottles plus the return of Whisky Cask cider in bottle
• Umbrella – Cider new in bottles
• Buxton – Grinlow, in cans is back
• Four Pure – Juicebox in cans also makes a welcome return
• Thirst Class Ales – New in bottles In at the Deep End plus Mosaic pale
• 3Brewers of St Albans – Blonde new in bottles plus the return of Classic Ale also in bottles
• Mad Squirrel – Evolve, new in cans
• Bad Co Brewery – Four new brews in cans Cloudy Pale, DIPA2, DIPA3 and Milkshake IPA
• Sussex Small Batch – Two new sensational stouts in cans Topical and Reece’s

And just to whet your appetite we are working on some Verdant and some more Vibrant Forest – both in cans – for next week…watch this space!!
We are sure that this selection alone will mean you will be making your plans to come into WD when next you are shopping for essentials, but also please don’t forget that for every 6 bottles and cans you buy you get the seventh free!!

A closing thought in these troubled times about what guides us here at WD. It’s about a definition of hospitality we saw quoted from an old dictionary by a fellow operator in the industry “The act of looking after strangers and friends both with kindness and generosity.” We cannot say better than that.

Take care, stay safe, please drink good beer at home or in your garden and nowhere else!