Cider Made Simple: All About Your New Favorite Drink (2015)

It wasn’t that long ago that I learned Spain was famous for its ciders, and this struck me as unbelievable. How could such a hot, dry place be known for the same drink as sodden Somerset? The answer lies in a band of green running from the edge of France across Spain’s northern sea coast—in fact, it’s called España Verde (Green Spain). It contains two of the country’s wettest regions, Asturias and the Basque Country, and these happen to be precisely where the apple trees thrive.

On the day I arrived, the skies over Bilbao were liquid. Darting out from underneath the broad cantilevered airport roof was like entering a waterfall. An hour east, Donostia-San Sebastián, in the heart of the cider country, gets about 173 centimeters [68 inches] of rain a year. (New Orleans gets 64 inches.) Basques live at the tail end of the Pyrenees, an area where the lower hills have been an open invitation to conquerors passing between France and Spain. But, while the elevations may be lower here than farther up the spine of the Pyrenees, the Basque hills are nevertheless so steep that the trip along the ribbon of asphalt between Bilbao and Donostia produces a sense of vertigo. Along the way, clouds accentuate the effect, clinging to the sides of the spiky peaks, bathing them in water that keeps them emerald green year-round.

Another feature of the Basque lands that intrigues a visitor is the way the towns are placed at the bottom of valleys. Even in small villages, Basques build sizeable buildings, so as you wheel around a wide turn up on the saddle between two rises, you often look out at the tops of buildings that descend to the valley floor below, making the towns themselves appear tall and vertical. I had an especially good sense of this as I got lost in the heights above Gernika. I was looking for the famous oak tree under which Basques have gathered to decide their fate for centuries. But as I climbed, following one smaller lane after another, I eventually ended up in front of a farmhouse with nowhere else to go. On the way back into town, I could see the whole valley filled up with those strange, high structures, making the little town of sixteen thousand feel like an urban metropolis. Abandoning maps, I decided to drive by instinct. I figured the most famous landmark in the country couldn’t be that hard to find.

Most people in the province of Gipuzkoa speak Basque, and of course most people also speak Spanish. The Basque Country straddles Spain and France, and Gipuzkoa, the province where most of the cider is made, borders France; if a Gipuzkoan speaks a third language, therefore, it’s often French. Finding someone who speaks English is no simple task. For my visit to the Isastegi cidery in Tolosa, Aitor Izaguirre arranged to have his wife, Ainhoa, come in after work and provide the service. As we were making introductions, she was spelling out names for me, and I acknowledged her relationship, thinking she shared a name with Aitor. “Ah, no; we don’t do that here. I keep my surname. He is Aitor Izaguirre and although we are married, my surname is Lobedegi.” I was being introduced to one of the many fascinating idiosyncrasies of Basque culture. Casual visitors don’t see them, but they stud the Basque Lands like invisible monuments—markers of a culture older than most in the world.

A wife keeping her surname wasn’t especially odd. But then she started explaining how names work, and that’s when we got to the curious part. “My first surname is my father’s first,” she began. “My second name is my mother’s first. My third is my father’s second, which is my father’s mother’s [maiden name]. I can go, go, go, go. My mother’s first one, which is my second, is my mother’s father’s first one. At the same time, my mother’s father’s father’s first one. I know eight—easy.” Just with their names alone, Basques outline their personal history and their relationships to community, all but invisible to those of us who look confusedly on.

The Basques appeared to the Romans, who found them in 218 b.c., to already be an old people. They are so self-contained that they have their own language, unrelated to any other, their own sports, their own breeds of farm animals, their own laws and taxes, and their own food. (They even have their own font, a typeface that resembles rough-hewn lumber and is visible on any storefront—or bottle of cider.) The one thing they lack is a country. Basques have the misfortune to reside in the easiest access point in the Pyrenees, a place passable even in winter, and for millennia invaders have swept back and forth through Euskal Herria—Basque Country. As far back as the Roman period, the Basques had to contend with outsiders, and they decided early how to handle this. Essentially, “If you must claim Euskal Herria to please your king, do so, but leave us alone.” They kept their ways, ignoring the invaders who planted flags and spoke foreign tongues. After the Romans came the Visigoths, then Muslims from North Africa. The Franks, Normans, and Vikings all fought the Basques as well. Finally, of course, it was the Spanish king who claimed Euskal Herria for himself.

Through all these invasions, the Basques developed ways to preserve their culture. One of the most important was a collection of ancient laws called the Fueros that existed for centuries even before they were written down in the eleventh century. Even as foreign kingdoms claimed Euskal Herria, by ancient tradition the Basques continued to meet to uphold their commitment to the Fueros, and they did it under an oak tree in the town of Gernika. The town is the seat of the Basque semiautonomous government, and the first stop I made. If Basques have a spiritual capital, it is here.

Gernika

The legislative building in Gernika is modest by comparison to some of the world’s grand halls, and the current Gernikako Arbola (their meeting oak), planted in 1986 and a descendant of earlier trees, is itself not a soaring giant. But for those who have learned the long history of the Basque people, including the horrors that happened in that city, it seems suitably hallowed.

The first decades of the twentieth century marked a flowering for Basque nationalism in the Euskal Herria. In the early months of the Spanish Civil War in the 1930s, the Basques, siding with the legal government, won brief autonomy. It was not to last. The leader of the insurgents, Francisco Franco, after a failed assault on Madrid, set his eyes on the industrial port of Bilbao. Franco appealed to the Nazis and Italians for support, and the fascist war machine began an assault on the Basques by bombing civilians in April 1937. Hundreds were killed, but it was nothing compared to what happened on April 26. Choosing a market day when the streets of Gernika were swollen with villagers from the town and neighboring countyside, the planes spent three hours methodically dropping 90,000 kilograms [99 tons] of explosives and reducing the town to dust. It was one of the first raids on civilians that would come to mark WWII.

International outrage followed the incident, heightened by Guernica, a mural Pablo Picasso painted for the 1937 Paris World’s Fair (Picasso used the Spanish, rather than Basque, spelling). But it did nothing to help the Basques, who saw their very brief moment of self-rule end in August of that year. Decades later, after their tormentor Franco was planted in the ground, the Basques won some autonomy, which they oversee from the government buildings in Gernika.

There is a strange twist to the story of Gernika that serves as a fitting Basque coda to the events of 1937: The ancient oak, such an important symbol of Basque self-rule, was not damaged in the raid. It was on the edge of town, but apparently the Germans didn’t realize what it meant to the Basques. So many conquerors have come to the Basque Country over the millennia, and like so many before, they didn’t understand the people they were trying to conquer. The fascists have all faded away, but the Gernikako Arbola is now in the center of the rebuilt Gernika in an honored location.

It’s difficult to overstate the importance of the Fueros, both as a symbol but also a statement of being. The Fueros are the document that makes those invisible monuments visible. Writer Mark Kurlansky wrote a wonderful history of the Basques, and he describes them this way, “They comprised both commercial and criminal law, addressing a wide range of subjects, including the purity of cider, the exploitation of minerals, the laws of inheritance, the administration of the farmland, crimes and punishments, and a notably more progressive view of human rights than was recognized in Castilian law.”

Including the purity of cider. Here is where Basque history intersects with our own; like so many other visible and invisible artifacts, cider is an ancient fixture in Basque culture.

As early as the eleventh century, cider played such a key role in Basque life that they felt it warranted protection in the Fueros. This legacy lives on in Gipuzkoa, which is blanketed by apple trees. People have always made cider here. Although there are many local commercial cideries now, farmers still make their own cider. I asked makers where they learned how to make cider and got confused looks. At Sarasola they told me, “Everybody makes cider.” At Isastegi, Ainhoa Lobedegi told me, “Every farm had its own press, so they knew how to make it. Wine was something for Christmas maybe. My father makes cider. They make maybe two thousand liters for home. His friends, too.”

In one of the more lurid anecdotes, Kurlansky describes the case of a French judge and witch-hunter in the 1600s who helped carry out the Inquisition. He was incredibly suspicious of the Basques, whose ways he didn’t understand, and which all seemed to point to infiltration by the devil. “This is apple country; the women eat nothing but apples, they drink nothing but apple juice, and that is what leads them to so often offer a bite of the forbidden apple.” Well, at least he didn’t mention the dangers of the terrible fermented juice of the apple.

Celebration of Cider: Txotx Season

Here’s one thing you need to know about Spanish cider: It is meant to be consumed with food. Eating is a big deal all across the Iberian Peninsula—it may be the thing that most unites Basques with their countrymen. In the course of a day, you’ll find people eating at breakfast, during the mid-morning, again at lunch, then stopping off for pintxos (Basque tapas) before late dinner. The two largest meals are lunch and dinner and, in the Basque Country, it is typical to have either cider or Basque wine. In the restaurants I visited, diners split about 50/50, with perhaps the slight edge to cider. Unlike the niche place cider has in France and England, in northern Spain it is front and center.

Why does the cider go so well with local food? It doesn’t, universally. I learned that the more delicate fillets of hake couldn’t stand up to the briny and tart ciders. For those, perhaps a glass of the local white wine, Txakolina, is a better choice. But much of Basque cuisine relies on saltier fish or heavy, bloody steak—flavors that require a bold partner. On their own, Basque ciders can seem one-dimensional in their acidity. These foods draw out their underlying sweetness, though, and make the subtle apple flavors explode; they offer a service to the food as well, cutting through the intense, heavy dishes, refreshing the palate as they go. Once you develop a taste for the funk and acid of Basque ciders, it’s a pleasure to drink them alone. Even the biggest fans have to admit, however, that they are at their best on the dinner table.

Tart Spanish Ciders

As cheese lovers must eventually contend with Camembert and Stilton, so the cider fan must come to terms with the world’s most unusual expressions—those made in Asturias and the Basque Country of northern Spain. These ciders are made tart, both because of the use of acidic apples and the production of acetic acid during fermentation. Analogous to the place lambics occupy in the beer world, Spanish sidras—and especially the Basque sagardoas—are the furthest, sour frontier. Their purpose in life is revealed at the dinner table, where the local cuisine, meaty and salty, needs a vivid partner. Spanish ciders aren’t for everyone, but for those who love them, all other ciders seem tame and feeble by comparison.

Which brings us to the most enthusiastic celebration of cider in the world—the annual txotx season. Txotx begins in late January, when the year’s first cider has matured and can be served fresh from the giant chestnut-wood casks, and lasts until April, when the warm temperatures force the cider-makers to bottle up their remaining stocks. (In Basque, the “tx” combination is pronounced “ch,” so txotx sounds like “choach.”)

The word comes from the little wooden peg that used to act as a valve in the mammoth Spanish tuns, called kupelas; people sampled the cider by removing the peg, sending a slender arc down to waiting glasses. Until about fifty years ago, the celebration of fresh cider was more informal, something done on every farm, but as industry came into the area, commercial cider-makers became more common. In the 1960s, when txotx was becoming formalized, locals brought their own bread and stood around the cellar sampling different casks. Eventually, cideries began cooking food themselves, and now hundreds of thousands of people flow into the Basque cider houses to drink up fresh cider and feast on a traditional menu of Basque farmhouse fare. Even though January is not the most pleasant month to do a tour of European cider country, I timed my visit specifically to arrive at the start of txotx—it just sounded like too much fun to miss.

Because the towns are compact, Basque Country feels largely rural. It takes only moments to leave the contained little villages, and then you’re zipping around twisting roads and shooting up steep hills. In Gipuzkoa, it doesn’t take very long before you’re passing through orchards, and signs for sagardotegi (cider houses) are everywhere. I set out to find Sarasola my first day in Spain. It’s a maker of one of the funkiest ciders in the world, and one I developed a taste for in the United States. When I approached the building I took to be Sarasola’s, a woman at the sagardotegi (cider house) gave me a sour face. I was at the wrong one; Sarasola was next door. This is a problem—if you can call it that—with around seventy cideries in an area half the size of Rhode Island. They’re lined up literally next to one another.

Recollections differ, but at the Cider Museum in Astigarraga, they reckoned that the standardized menu got fixed sometime around the end of the 1960s. The museum’s Ainize Mitxelena explained, “People wanted to drink a good cider, so they came to this village to taste the drinks at the farms. And people, when they went to the different farms, they went with their [own] food. And then, when these new cider houses are open, they begin to give this menu. Why? Because at every farm they have the meat, the fish—the cod—the cheese.” Everything on the menu is traditional farm fare, and it seemed the customers started to expect the whole experience.

Now when you walk into a sagardotegi during txotx season, you know exactly what the menu will be. Or you do after your first visit, anyway; as I strolled into Sarasola, I wasn’t sure what to expect. In the informal manner of the Basques, the front door there feels more like the back door—it opens into the cellar, set into the hillside, with a long row of kupelas (casks) seemingly leading only deeper into the cellar. However, if you push on, soon scents draw you toward the kitchen—and at mealtimes, that means a grill crackling with the main course—and just past that is a cozy dining room with large, chunky wooden tables.

A man poked his head out of the kitchen and spoke rapid-fire Basque (or Euskara, as the Basques call it), and I replied in slow English while pantomiming myself typing. We had engaged in dodgily translated e-mail communication beforehand, and he seemed to expect me. He grinned and gestured to the door, following me through and depositing a plate of blood sausage and chorizo and a bottle of cider on the table. This was, it turned out, a bonus treat. The real first course, a codfish omelet, arrived a quarter hour later, and with it came Javier Quintero, a Colombian who spoke English and acted as my guide for the tour.

Later, when I txotxed at Isastegi, they served food the old way with no plates. Out came a giant omelet and a rustic loaf of bread, and we used forks to pile the former onto thick slices of the latter. At Sarasola, the omelet was sized for two people and came with plates. The Basques have an ancient connection to cod, which is not actually native to their waters. Cod came in the holds of Viking boats in the ninth century. The Basques were perhaps the most accomplished sailors and shipbuilders in the world, and had been providing Europe with whale meat for two centuries before the Vikings came. The Vikings dried cod, which was light and didn’t spoil, and the Basques adapted their own technique of whale preservation to make salt cod. Prepared this way, it could be rehydrated into something similar to fresh cod, and they have been eating it ever since. All that history was present in the omelet placed before me—another of the invisible monuments.

I had one mouthful, but then Javier declared it was time for txotx. In its current context, the word is strongly connected to the act of drinking from the cask. When you’re at the sagardotegi, periodic calls ring out: “Txotx!” People drop their food and rush to a kupela. After the call has been made, a kind of dance begins. One after another, they will collect a splash of cider from a stream that comes straight from the barrel. The way it works is this. The cider-maker or someone from the cidery positions himself at the valve of one of the chestnut tuns. The kupelas vary in size, but most are so large that, even resting on their sides, they’re taller than a person. To try to keep the spillage to a minimum, cideries place a bucket a little less than two meters [about six feet] in front of the kupela where the stream of cider will land—but if drinkers do their part, it will stay dry.

The first person crouches with his glass just over the bucket, where the cider will deliver its greatest impact. Drinkers hold the glass so the stream hits the side, not the bottom, for maximum agitation and aeration. The cider-maker opens the valve, and as soon as the cider starts splashing in his glass, the first drinker lifts it, following the stream upward toward its source. While he’s doing that, the next person in the line positions her glass to catch the stream when the first one exits. One after another, people jump in line, and the dance begins. In the course of a busy evening, the summon will come scores of times. This is why the museum’s Mitxelena says, “Now ‘txotx’ is an invitation. We say ‘txotx!’ Come!”

A long time after the Vikings, during the first Carlist war in 1836, the Basques developed a recipe for preparing salt cod that came from privation. During a siege on Bilbao that year, the people had to live on their salted stores. They learned to make a sauce called pil-pil by slowly moving the cod in a pan over low heat, thickening the oil into a creamy sauce. (The name is meant to evoke the sound of sizzling oil.) That was the second dish I received at Sarasola, a variation on the traditional menu, which is often a different preparation of cod.

The next course is the main event, a thick steak. At Sarasola, the meat comes glistening with flecks of rock salt, so not only is it rich and meaty, but salty, too. At Isastegi, the steak is served rare, so bloody, in fact, that Aitor and Ainhoa asked whether I would like them to leave it on the fire a little longer. By that time, it was too late—I had acquainted myself with the Basque way. Bring on the bloody steak and give me a little more txotx! The whole thing is a staggering amount of food. By the time the last course came out, I was gasping for air. For dessert, it’s whole walnuts, a tangy dry cheese, and quince paste. Even stuffed like a Christmas goose, I still managed to find space to tuck in a few nuts and some of that cheese.

Spanish Cider

These are good examples of the range of Spanish ciders available in the United States.

BEREZIARTUA is one of the more approachable Basque ciders, herbal and not too tart, with a touch of rind-like tannin.

CASTAÑÓN, an Asturian cider, is bristling with surprising spines of tannin, but is balanced with sharp, green-apple acidity.

ESPAÑAR, another Asturian, is a nice entry point for Spanish ciders; it is tart but vinous.

ISASTEGI is a refined Basque cider, with clean, vinous acid and bright apple flavors; when “broken,” it turns silky and produces rose and sage.

SARASOLA is the Laphroaig of ciders—you can go no further. It is equal measures acetic and funky, with an earthy base, tart apple, and spice layers.

TRABANCO is the largest brand in Asturias, but don’t let that scare you—it has vinegar in the nose, and a palate that suggests pickle, brine, dried herbs, and salt all at once.

Breaking the Cider

One of the curious features of the traditional txotx meal is that you don’t get a glass of cider and take it back to the table with you. The reason has to do with the momentary state cider assumes after it has been poured from a great height. In both Asturias and the Basque Country, cider is served in a glass the size of an old-fashioned cocktail glass, but one so thin and delicate it’s like holding an eggshell in your hand. After the cider splashes into the glass, it is hazy and slightly opaque, clouded by millions of tiny bubbles.

“There is no other way to drink the cider,” says Miguel Mari at Isastegi. It must be served this way “to explode it.” You never get more than a finger, finger and a half, and according to everyone I spoke to, you must drink it immediately. “You drink what you want in one drink, and then you throw the rest,” Mari said, demonstrating by taking a healthy chug of his freshly broken cider and dumping a few remaining drops down a floor drain in Isastegi’s cellar room. At the time, I found the whole arrangement incongruous. Isastegi’s cellar has a line of the kupelas along one wall, big as Volkswagen vans and seemingly built to survive a hurricane. Yet here we were with our impossibly delicate glasses, pouring out only a mouthful to savor before we dumped the rest and returned empty-handed to our meal.

The agitation does a couple things. “The purpose of breaking,” Mari explained, “is to release the gases. To bring the scents.” What we perceive as flavor is largely aroma, not taste, and agitating the cider seems to break it open. It also enlivens the cider, giving it a sense of momentary carbonation. It both tastes and feels more lively on the tongue. Those tiny bubbles give the cider a silkier, mousse-like texture, and as soon as they escape, it becomes thinner, like water.

All of this is true, and I ran my own, vaguely blasphemous experiment to verify it. Unlike the Basques who live just down the road from these cideries, I was not going to get back to a txotx for some time. I wanted to enjoy my cider with my meal, so I took the glass back with me. (My hosts at Isastegi actually smiled encouragingly, so it’s apparently not too irreverent.) As the cider settles, it does seem to sharpen and flatten out. The acidity asserts itself and some of the floral and appley aromatics faded. But it’s also true that even in its slightly less-than-ideal state, it makes a spectacular partner for the food. I was happy to keep up my practice of collecting two fingers of cider and taking some back with me to the table to enjoy with the food. No one seemed to mind.

Throwing the Cider

Unfortunately, one does not always have a kupela handy. Sometimes you’ll be forced to drink your Asturian or Basque cider from a bottle. If you find yourself in such a situation, take heart—it’s still possible to properly aerate your sidra. The Asturians charmingly call this “throwing the cider,” and it’s a wonderfully evocative description.

The technique is easy to describe, but a challenge to master. You begin by holding the bottle high over your head in one hand. With your other hand, you hold the appropriate glass underneath, positioned, as when receiving it from a kupela, so that the stream hits the side. In the Basque Country they fit the bottles with little devices that send the cider out at a right angle, but in Asturias they go straight from the bottle. Either way, you pour the cider slowly to create maximum breakage (of the cider, not the glass). The agitated state will last perhaps a minute, losing effervescence by the second, so just pour out a splash and toss it back quickly.

The trick is hitting the target without being able to take in the whole operation at a glance. It takes practice, but I promise you the rewards are immediate. And, once you have it down, it makes quite a party trick.

Basque Cider Making

The city of Donostia crowds around a crescent bay, and the beach it cradles is one of the most famous in Spain. It’s an international city mostly known by its Castilian name, San Sebastián, but Gipuzkoans use the Basque. Indeed, on the small lanes that feed into the city, street signs with the official name “Donostia-San Sebastián” often have the latter designation blacked out by spray paint. This emphasizes, lest anyone mistake the coastal jewel’s provenance, that Donostia is a Basque town. In addition to the beach are Donostia’s famous restaurants—more decorated than in any city save Paris—bars serving pintxos, spectacular old cathedrals, and winding, cobblestone lanes. It’s also a great place to drink cider.

One blustery afternoon, I ducked into one of the little restaurants in Donostia’s old town for lunch. It is typical that restaurants serve only one brand of cider, and this was a Saizar house. Saizar was unknown to me, so I passed along my appreciation to the waiter. Was it a favorite of his, I asked? “No! We don’t think like that,” he told me. “We think of the ciders like they are our family. They are a natural product and every one is different.” We continued to chat about natural ciders—after visits to England, France, and now two Basque cideries, I was a convert. He spoke dismissively about national brands and fussy cider making. Only natural cider could really be considered real cider. “Once you start putting something in it, it’s not cider anymore—it’s like wine.” In all the cideries in the area, “natural” is the only way to make cider, and the waiter’s sentiments are broadly shared.

Basque cider is very much in line with the traditions of England and France. As in those countries, the apples are harvested in three periods during the fall, pressed, and the juice is put away to naturally ferment. The process is nearly identical to the English method. In late September, the low temperatures are still relatively cool, with highs around 21°C [70°F] (5°C warmer than Herefordshire, and 2°C warmer than Normandy). Larger cideries like Isastegi chill their juice to 10°C [50°F], and smaller ones like Sarasola use cellars to keep ambient temperatures in the same range. Fermentation takes four months, and the cider is allowed to go fully dry and still. Basque cider is not carbonated.

Yet still there are some differences. The character of Spanish cider is defined by its vivid acidity—this is true of Asturian cider as well as Basque. Apples are a big part of the explanation. Whereas sharps just inflect the ciders of France and England, in Spain they are the main show, making up at least 50 percent of the blend. The apples are unique to Spain, and in Gipuzkoa, the names are a mouthful: Mozoloa, Geza Gorri, Txalaka, Pelestrina, Urtebi Txiki, Sagar Beltza. There are hundreds of varieties in Asturias and the Basque Country. At the cider museum in Astigarraga, they sell unfermented juice, and you really get a sense of regional particularity. It’s unlike any apple juice I’ve ever tasted—tropical, with spiky acidity and notes of coconut and passion fruit.

The trees are also curious—tiny creatures that grow like shrubs at angles perpendicular to the rolling hills. This is by design, and even on the flatter areas they grow no more than two and a half meters [eight feet or so]. The reason has to do with the difficulty of harvesting on steep hillsides. Machines can’t scale the grassy slopes, so the harvest is all done by hand. The farmers shake the trees and then use tools called kizkia to gather the apples. This traditional implement consists of a wooden dowel with a steel spike coming off the end at a right angle; harvesters impale the apple and then whack the stick on the side of a basket to send it tumbling onto a growing pile. During harvest season, the sound of tapping fills the air.

Although hilly, Gipuzkoa doesn’t have a lot of elevation, which Isastegi’s Miguel Mari believes is good for fruit. “The maximum you can find apple trees growing is about 300 meters [985 feet] above sea level. Some people say—but they’re just saying, they’re guessing—that the higher the apple tree is, the finer the flavor of the apple. The lower the apple tree is, the bigger the apple but also it loses concentration, it’s more watery.” Mari takes no chances; Isastegi is on a perch above the small town of Tolosa.

And what of these enormous kupelas—what role do they play? Any time a fermenting beverage is placed inside wood, it becomes a unique ecosystem as the different compounds and organisms interact. It means that each kupela will contain a slightly different cider. Throughout an evening during txotx season, each one of a cidery’s kupelas will be tapped, and over time people begin to develop favorites. The vast majority of Isastegi’s cider is aged in steel tanks rather than kupelas—those are made to produce a consistent product. But after the txotx season, when it’s time to bottle up the remaining stocks from the wooden tuns, people return and put in their orders. They may buy up to three hundred bottles from their favorite cask.

At Sarasola, Quintero stopped in front of one kupela and announced that it was the best. It was set off slightly from the others, and he thought temperature may play a role. “You don’t feel it, but the sidra, he can feel it, eh? This is always the best of the best,” he said, patting it. He pointed out, though, that the dynamic environment inside the kupelas meant that the cider changed over the course of the txotx season. “Another mysterious thing I have seen is that maybe today you drink the first barril [barrel] and you prefer it. Two weeks later you come and try, and you don’t prefer this one. Two weeks ago it is good, right now, no. You like a different one. The natural temperature, the different position of the moon—I don’t know, but something.”

The Riddle of the Sour

There is no secret about what causes the pucker in Spanish cider—acetic acid. By itself, we call the compound vinegar, and most cider-makers consider it a fault. Not only is it not a fault in Spanish ciders, but more than anything else, it’s what defines them. When I boarded a plane to Europe, I went with the expectation that my many questions about ciders would be answered by the men who make them. But the more I learned about traditional practices, the more this facet of Spanish cider started to look like a riddle: Why do some ciders develop acetic acid while others do not?

Asturian Cider

The Principality of Asturias, east of the Basque Country, is another of those autonomous regions that line apple-growing Green Spain on the northern coast. In the United States, it’s easier to find Basque ciders, but Asturias is, by some margin, the capital of Spanish cider making. Asturians drink the most cider in Spain and make the most cider (80 percent of Spain’s total), the towns are studded with sidrerías, and the industry is big enough to support large producers like Trabanco and El Gaitero. But as in Normandy, Asturian cider has kept its heritage and devotion to sidra natural—natural cider.

The Spanish ciders very much form a continuum. Asturian cider was granted a protected designation for sidra natural that outlines where the apples must come from and of what varieties the cider may be made. But one taste of Sidra de Asturias is enough to confirm its authenticity. Like the Basques, Asturians like bright, tart ciders. They are fruitier and less tart than Basque ciders, full of fresh, green-apple life.

Sidra natural must be made still and dry—this is the cider made for throwing. The Asturians also carved out local designations for two other varieties, though—ciders of a type you won’t find in the Basque Country. “New Expression” (sidra natural de nueva expresión) is the name given to natural cider that has been cleaned up a bit through filtration. Fans believe that by removing some of the funkiness, the fruit flavors can move closer to center stage; critics charge that funk is Asturian. (I prefer the old expression.) Last is naturally sparkling cider. These also tend to be a little more market-friendly, but sidra’s native zing takes well to effervescence.

I harbored a suspicion that it had to do with temperature. Cold is a great way to retard the growth of bacteria, so perhaps it was the balmy Spanish air that encouraged the little critters. I then discovered that, while Spain is definitely warmer than England, it’s not hugely so, and temperatures are only a few degrees warmer than Normandy. And then I further discovered that the cider-makers take care to ferment at about the same temperature, around 10°C [50°F], as French and English cider. No luck on that theory; strike one.

If you recall the chapter on English ciders, there is the mostly lost style of rough, sour “scrumpy.” I first considered the question of acetic acid then, and Tom Oliver explained why it is no longer a problem (or benefit, depending on your preferences) of traditional cider making. He fingered the acetic acid bacteria that get harbored in the wooden barrels and flourish because oxygen seeps in through the porous fiber. I was confident this would emerge as the answer—until I started touring Basque cideries. Because, while it’s true that chestnut kupelas are to be found in every cidery in the Basque Country, so are stainless-steel vats. Bottles of Isastegi, for example, contain cider that never touched a wooden stave. That cider wasn’t picking anything up from wood. Strike two.

As my curiosity grew, I started wondering if it might have to do with the apples themselves. Did they contain special bacteria native to Spain? I did a little evening reading and found a theory that involved the kiskias. The writer suggested that puncturing the apples introduced acetic acid bacteria that flourished before the juice was even pressed. I’ve seen no other mention of this possibility, though, and it feels like another swing and a miss. Strike three?

The answer to the riddle still eludes me, but I did find some interesting reading in the technical journals. (“Interesting” may not be the word everyone would use first.) One study in particular was revealing. Researchers took apples from a single orchard and handled them differently to see what would happen. They divided the fruit in half and pressed one with a traditional (wooden) press and the other with a pneumatic (steel) press. They divided these two batches and aged them each in both wooden and steel kupelas, coming up with four different batches of cider made with different combinations of wood and steel. When they ran tests on the four batches, they found that each one was different.

There were three important findings: 1) The acetic acid was produced by the conversion of lactic acid bacteria, not by acetic acid bacteria (those are rough characters like acetobacter that cause spoilage); 2) It is the traditional press, which harbors yeast and bacteria from previous pressings, that is the main cause of acetic acid production, not the kupelas; and 3) The lactic acid bacteria from the traditional presses boosted malolactic fermentation, so that the ciders that touched only steel had about twice as much malic acid as those pressed traditionally. Perhaps this helps explain why the perception of sour is still strong even in all-steel ciders.

Whatever the answer, the Spanish cider-makers have it figured out, and the result is evident in every bottle. Sometimes you don’t have to know, you just have to taste.

I happened to visit Euskal Herria during one of the wettest weeks of the year. There was a dusting of snow on the high peaks and the air was sharp from icy winds. I arrived at Isastegi during a rare cloud break, just as the sun was setting—but it was still cold. Basque farmhouses are sturdy structures and often large—and Isastegi is housed in a grand building that glowed warmly from inside. Miguel, Ainhoa, and Aitor all greeted me at the door, and we stepped into the portion of the building that housed the cellars and dining room. Someone had started a fire that crackled merrily in a large stone fireplace, and we gathered around with our hands out toward the heat.

Later on, after the tour, more family members trickled in to join us for our txotx meal. As we were literally breaking bread (well, cutting—Aitor was manning the knife), Ainhoa tried to explain the place of cider in their lives. It was not an exalted one, but it was ubiquitous. “The Basque Country has always been rural; we have farms on our lands,” she told me. “We had our animals, our cows, our pigs, our hens; they ate and drank what they produced at home. Cider is part of that. The Basque people—any celebration is around a table. Big families. A farm needed a lot of people to work. So you need a lot of food, a lot of drink.”

Throughout the night, the call for txotx rang out regularly. Aitor’s father took a special interest in my cider education, and even though neither of us spoke a word of the other’s language, he used his hands and facial expressions to provide good instruction about how to catch, drink, and enjoy Miguel’s handiwork. A txotx meal lasts a long time, and we weren’t in any hurry. The Basques have a hidden culture, but it’s not secret. Next to that fire, with my belly full and my favorite kupela identified (number twelve), I had a fleeting experience of being a Basque. It’s a rare treat to find an access point into culture, but cider does that for anyone who visits Gipuzkoa in the txotx season. In front of those giant kupelas, we’re all Basque, at least for a couple hours.