Luckily the next words saved the day. ‘We just decided to focus on local beers since we had less space.’ I couldn’t argue. Looking along the four shelves of ales and ciders I didn’t see any that would had been brewed too far from Oxfordshire. The Cotswold Brewing Company, Cherwell Valley Brewery, Warwickshire Beer Company and, of course, Hook Norton Brewery all featured. And it made sense,  I can’t imagine people were going into Jones’ to buy more beers that are widely available through supermarkets (and most likely more cheaply) so it is logical for them to focus on the niche area of the market.

Jones’ is primarily a wine merchants and I am led to believe a very good one at that. It is also now somewhere where the people of Banbury can get a coffee and sandwich on their dinner hour. This has taken away from the range of beers available from the shop but not, thankfully, from the huge value of the shop as a merchant of local beers. The cost has been the lack of availability of lesser known beers from a wider area…the people of Banbury are either going to have to support local (no bad thing in my opinion) or get in the car!