Behind the Cup
Cwpan started, as most good things do, with a conversation over something warm to drink.
My partner is a trained herbalist with a deep knowledge of botanicals, plant medicine and the wild things that grow at the edge of the Brecon Beacons. I'm the ideas person — design, creativity, an inability to leave a good thing alone. Between us we make a reasonable team.
It started with Noddfa Nos — our herbal sleep elixir, built around hops, valerian and chamomile, blended into a dark spiced syrup base. Making it, we kept coming back to that base. The dark sugar, the molasses, the warming spices. It tasted like something. Something Welsh. Something familiar and ancient and completely our own.
That's Cwpan. The Welsh word for cup. Because everything we make goes in one.
We live and work at the edge of the Brecon Beacons, where the valley ends and the waterfalls begin. The landscape is in everything we make — the pine forests, the cloud inversions the locals call the breath of the dragon, the particular quality of quiet you only get when the road runs out.
We're not a factory. We're two people who make something we genuinely believe in, by hand, in small batches, from ingredients we'd put in our own cup.
Which we do. Every day.
Yours, Shelby James and Dr Jones
Cwpan · Blaen Y Cwm · Edge of the Brecon Beacons