Love Your Local visits The Black Bear in Whitchurch.

Watch Love Your Local visits The Black Bear in Whitchurch. - Shropshire Star on Dailymotion

Transcript

00:00So we're here in Wychurch at the fantastic Black Bear pub and we're here with Landlord, what's your name sir?

00:05It's Alistair, my name's Alistair.

00:07Alistair, tell us about the Black Bear, it's gorgeous, tell us about it.

00:10Absolutely, so the Black Bear is a 16th century pub, it's absolutely riddled with character,

00:16it's been part of Wychurch, part of the culture of Wychurch for a long time now,

00:20just opposite the church you can see behind me, so it's sort of really interlinked with the town

00:23and it's culture, so the garden is the biggest change we made when we took it on about six

00:32years ago, something like that, it's the second pub in our group, the garden was a big change,

00:36it was a car park, it was a functional, useful feature for the pub, but we decided that this

00:40would be a real benefit. In the last two years it's been sort of growing and becoming what it is now,

00:46which is a lovely, mature, beautiful courtyard garden which we're particularly proud of. I'm

00:51very glad you've come today on a sunny day to see it as well, which is terrific. Well I came into

00:55the pub and I literally thought, well it's an old pub, I wouldn't be surprised if there's no space

00:59out, but maybe you know a six foot by six foot courtyard, I came out here, I was blown away,

01:04it's gorgeous isn't it? Exactly right, I've got a feeling Gerry thought exactly the same thing when

01:07he first visited the pub, he said what we really need here is a space outside and this, I realise I'm

01:13entirely biased, but I think this is a stunning bit of the town, I really do. Yeah and what a backdrop

01:18behind there that the church was well. Exactly, exactly there, plus the local community calls last

01:22orders for me nice and loudly, very useful, very nice. So is it more a pub for food, just for popping

01:30in for a drink, a bit of both? Definitely a blend of both, we like to think we've really sort of brought

01:35on board a chef currently, his name's Simon, lovely man, he's got a real gentle touch and he's got a

01:40knowledge of pub food and the style that both Gerry and Wichert, the town are looking for. He's combined

01:47that with the sort of history of the pub which is an old world kind of boozer, I mean you've been

01:52in the pub, you've seen it's got a real character which says you know, ale drinkers pub and it's just

01:58got a lovely sort of character to it which we think is terrific. So we think we sort of managed to blend

02:03the two, so I now say it's a sort of 50-50 blend of good food we're very proud of and that sort of

02:08drink culture which is a little bit more classic. And you've even got your own special Gerry's Ale on

02:12haven't you? Absolutely. So as a company we decided a little while ago, entirely for selfish reasons,

02:18we wanted to brew our own beer, we've done a lot of work on sort of tweaking it a little while

02:23and now it's brewed for us locally by Magic Dragon Brewery, a terrific guy named Richard who we know

02:28very very well and he's happy to put up with us when we make tweaks and changes to it as well

02:34and it's become one of our most popular, very pale, very easy drinking, dry style of ale,

02:37quaffable I think is the go-to word.