A foodie in Topsham

The first task was to secure bread supplies and we found that there were two options at our end of town. On the right we had a branch of a small chain of bakers with the bread being baked in a shed at Exeter Airport and with the branch probably making more out of snacks than bread. Bread not great. And on the left we had a place which called itself a 'deli' but was actually a small shop selling snacks, a variety of cakes and tarts of their own confection and a variety of bread bought in from another wholesale baker, probably the Teign Valley Bakery. This bread was much better. Interesting how in Devon we find two middle sized commercial bakers but no artisan bakers; one can only suppose that the margins in artisan baking are too small to make a living, even in a foodie place like Topsham. One has to do bread as a side line in a snack bar instead. While in Epsom we have one snack baker making and selling bread (up north variety) which I do not care for and the only middle size commercial bakery we have access to is an Italian baker through Alio's, most of the market having been eaten up by the so-called in store bakeries, the bakeries which take a lot of their stuff in half cooked and optionally frozen.

Next task was cheese supplies and here we were well served by a specialist cheese shop. On the day I visited it was carrying perhaps 40 cheeses, a lot of which were local and all of which were English. None of this foreign stuff here thank you. I settled for three hard yellow cheeses, one of which was a cheddar (Montgomery) and all of which were very good. Not particularly dear either - must have been a lot cheaper than Rippon Cheese in Pimlico - although these last have the excuse of a much bigger range and much higher business rates. The cheese was topped up with a small cube of artisan butter, that is to say butter which did not look as if it had been cut and wrapped by a machine and which probably came from a dairy in Devon. Still eating the butter, which is fine, although while I have not tested whether I can distinguish it from the higher grade butter we usually have from Sainsburys, I rather doubt it.

Third and last task was the booze. So off to the local offy where I selected a bottle of 2001 Chateau Musar from Gaston Hochar, that well known grower from the Bekaa Valley in the Lebanon. You don't want that said the chap behind the jump - the proprietor I should imagine - dreadful stuff. Can't stand it although some people seem to think it is great. Buy it at your peril! Which I thought was rather an odd line to take, but intrigued I bought a bottle and we got around to drinking it yesterday evening. We decided that what we had previously thought of as a rather pretentious epithet - amusing - was actually right on this occasion. Not a fancy wine, but we liked it. It was, indeed, amusing. The offy also sold a small selection of decent looking cigars and I strongly suspect the imagined proprietor of being a puffer himself.

Despite checking with Professor Google I am not much the wiser about Gaston. Easy enough to buy the what I bought at Topsham online, for, as it happens, much the same price, but all I have learned about Gaston is that he, or his forbears, have been doing it since around 1930 using a variety of grape of which I have never heard before.