If ever one of the beers at The Crown in Broad Hinton should not be up to the popular pub’s high standards then the new landlady, Russian-born Alla Wells, will spot it.

Customers at The Crown can be assured they have some of the best kept beer in the region since new landlords, Mrs Wells and her husband Dave, took over last month, because she is a professional beer taster.

Before moving in as landlady at the pub, owned by Swindon brewery Arkell’s, Mrs Wells spent years providing professional consultancy to breweries across the UK.

Also a qualified lawyer and teacher, Mrs Wells lived in St Petersburg before marrying Dave and moving to the UK 12 years ago.

Now that she has achieved her ambition of getting a pub of her own she is making sure all the beers at The Crown are in top quality condition.

She said: “Word soon got around when we arrived and the locals drank the pub dry of beer on our first night behind the bar.

“Since then we’ve almost quadrupled the amount of beer we’ve sold and added Arkell’s JRA and Moonlight to our other regular beers and our customers seem to like them.”

Brewery director George Arkell said: “This is just the sort of landlady we love.

“Alla appreciates good beer and can offer advice to customers on what to taste for and how to drink real ale for maximum enjoyment. Beer is so much tastier than vodka, she tells them.”

It’s a second career for Mr Wells also who was previously a professional photographer.

Mr Wells said: “I met Alla while working on a job in St Petersburg and we kept in touch as pen pals before getting to know each other better when I returned to the city.

“Little did we know then that 12 years later we’d be living in one of Wiltshire’s prettiest villages with a five-year-old boy and running one of Arkell’s best pubs.”