La Maison d'Armorine

Yvonne and Raymond Audebert were making sweets at Quiberon by 1946, and the Niniche came out of that first workshop. It is a lollipop of salted butter caramel, later spun into a long run of fruit flavours, and it was named Meilleur bonbon de France. The sweet now sits in the culinary heritage register of France. Raymond Audebert added the part that fixed it in local habit. Through the summer he sold warm caramel Niniches late in the evening to people on the Quiberon seafront walk, and the stop became part of the walk itself. Three generations on, his grandson Alain Audebert holds the house, which counts more than eighty years of trade. Caramel is still the centre of the range. Salidou is the tender salted butter caramel, sold as sweets, as a spread and as a sauce. Around it sit the Palourde hard caramels, berlingots, old-style pralines and nougats. The biscuit side makes the Coeur de Beurre, which pairs a Breton sable with Salidou cream, and the chocolate side makes the Secret de Druides, a menhir with the same cream inside. The Espace Visite on Rue des Confiseurs keeps early-century confectionery machines on show and runs a film about the family. Further counters trade at Carnac and on Belle-Ile-en-Mer in Brittany.