"It's just now we have two houses," Colin Desmarais told The Day in April. He was explaining why Mystic Drawbridge Ice Cream, a fixture on West Main Street for nearly 35 years, was opening a second shop at the head of the river. The second house is the old general store at 47 Main St. in Old Mystic. Its job is production more than retail. Put it next to B.F. Clyde's Cider Mill, a short drive up North Stonington Road, and Old Mystic starts to look like the working end of Mystic. Downtown sells to the summer crowd. Old Mystic is where the cider and the ice cream get made, and both places let you watch.

Downtown Ran Out of Room

The move started with a space problem. The Day reported that the downtown shop had already doubled from its original size. Even so, it could not keep up with demand from the counter plus the events, restaurants, hotels and grocery stores that wanted its ice cream. Desmarais said the business had turned some of that work down. For a few years he had been looking for a bigger place to do the churning that was then squeezed into the back of the West Main Street shop.

The Old Mystic General Store space came open, and Desmarais told The Day he had bought sandwiches there as a kid. He called Old Mystic peaceful and a change of pace from downtown, about five minutes away by River Road. He also passed along something customers kept telling him. "Oh, we love your ice cream, but we don't come down in the summer. It's just too crazy."

Patch reported that the Mystic Drawbridge General Store held a soft opening the weekend of July 25 and 26, 2026, in a building that has stood in Old Mystic since 1790. Colin Desmarais runs the business his parents, Cheryl Robdau and Rod Desmarais, started in 1991.

The Schedule Is Built Around Production

The shop's hours show what it is for. It opens Thursday through Sunday, 7 a.m. to 5 p.m. On its own page it says it stays closed Monday through Wednesday "to catch up on ice cream production/baking prep needs." The ice cream is made fresh on site. Desmarais told The Day before opening that customers would be able to watch it being made and buy it "fresh out of the machine."

What's on offer in Old Mystic is deliberately smaller than downtown. The West Main Street shop sells roughly 50 flavors, along with sundaes, egg creams and fountain sodas. The general store keeps a short, rotating list of daily flavors and fewer toppings and specialty creations. In their place you get the general-store side of the business:

• Scratch-made pastries and baked goods by Carla Gennuso, who the shop told Patch is "in early every single morning"
• Coffee and lattes
• Local goods from Moromi, Autumn Moon Creamery, Mystic Cheese Company, Drew's Honeybees and Julie's Salsa
• Pints and quarts to take home, which Desmarais described to The Day before opening

The shop is still growing into the space. In April, Desmarais told The Day the plan was for all of the company's ice cream to be made in Old Mystic "likely by next summer," which would free the downtown kitchen to make waffle cones. That puts the full move around summer 2027. The extra capacity is also meant to cover wholesale accounts, event catering and local markets.

The Press Up the Road Has Been Family-Run Since 1881

The general store is Old Mystic's newest production room. B.F. Clyde's Cider Mill at 129 North Stonington Road has been one since the nineteenth century. The mill calls itself the oldest steam-powered cider mill in the United States and says the same family has run it since 1881. Fourth-, fifth- and sixth-generation relatives work there now. The American Society of Mechanical Engineers lists it as an engineering landmark, dedicated in October 1994. ASME's record dates the mill's Boomer & Boschert screw press to 1897, when Clyde bought and installed it.

The shop sells sweet cider, hard cider, wine, cider donuts, baked goods, jarred goods and local honey. The mill lists 14 apple wines and 8 hard ciders. It opens every September 1 and keeps the same hours all season, 9 a.m. to 6 p.m., seven days a week, rain or shine. In an October 6 report, WFSB found the mill "in full fall mode," with visitors watching the cider being made and pets welcome on the grounds.

Watching the press is a narrower window than shopping. Clyde's says it typically presses on four mornings a week during the season, and that the times change with the needs of the business. Set that against the general store's hours and the two operations line up on a few specific mornings:

Thursday, Saturday and Sunday mornings are the only times both doors are open and the cider press is running. On Tuesday the press runs while the ice cream side of the street is shut for its own production day.

The Window Is About a Month Wide

The cider calendar is the one that runs out. Clyde's posts an opening date but no closing date. Yankee Magazine describes the mill's operating season as running from September through November. So from the last days of October, the pressing season has roughly a month left. On that schedule, the steam press runs on fewer than twenty more mornings before the season ends. Since the mill says pressing times vary, check before you drive over with the idea of watching.

A morning built around a pressing day might run like this:

1. Coffee and a pastry at the Mystic Drawbridge General Store when it opens at 7 a.m. on Thursday, Saturday or Sunday.
2. A walk past the Old Mystic History Center at 39 Main St., on the same street, in the 1856 Mystic Bank building.
3. The short trip to Clyde's on North Stonington Road for the 10 a.m. pressing, cider donuts included.
4. A stop back at the general store on the way home for a pint or quart of whatever was churned that day.

Desmarais pictured exactly this kind of loop. He told The Day he could see his shop becoming a stop for people visiting B.F. Clyde's.

Parking and Practicalities

Old Mystic is set up for short stops. The general store has no seating. Desmarais told The Day this was because of current zoning and because he didn't want to cause parking problems. He pointed to parking at the playground across the street and said he was working on more at a nearby church. He also noted that many people live within walking distance, and that people walk and bike in the area. For anyone in the village, the morning above can be done on foot.

The History Center keeps short hours: Tuesday and Thursday 10 to 4, and Saturday 10 to 2, by appointment. That makes a Thursday or Saturday the easy day to fit it in. The center, once known as the Indian and Colonial Research Center, runs a museum, library and exhibit gallery in the old bank. On August 29, 2026, it announced a $4,400 grant from the Charles B. Allyn Foundation to replace its oil tank, the kind of unglamorous repair that keeps a building from 1856 open through another winter. In April it asked for old home videos for an oral-history project, especially footage of Old Mystic businesses, neighborhoods, events and everyday life. Someday the general store's first season will belong in that archive too.

Two Houses, One Village

Taken together, the head of the river looks less like a quiet extension of downtown and more like its workshop. The Clyde family has run the business since 1881, and its press on North Stonington Road has been in place since 1897. Since late July, Mystic Drawbridge has been making ice cream on site in a 1790 building on Main Street in Old Mystic. If the plan Desmarais described to The Day holds, every scoop sold on West Main Street will be churned there by next summer.

Geb Masterson grew up on this stretch of shoreline and follows the small changes, like a general store reopening as a production kitchen, that shape what daily life in a village actually looks like. If you'd like a local's read on Old Mystic and the head of the river, Geb Masterson would welcome the conversation. Request a Private Consultation.