Sidra-Cider from Spain

Sidra-Cider is an alcoholic beverage made primarily from the juices of specially grown varieties of apples and pears. In most places in the world, the term refers to fermented apple juice and pear juice, but the drink is known as hard cider or ciderjack in the United States and parts of Canada, where the term cider almost exclusively refers to non alcoholic apple cider.

Cider generally has a stronger alcoholic content than typical beer, usually over 5 percent, and appears golden yellow and often cloudy. To produce cider, apples are washed and mashed, pressed, usually in a stone mill or hydraulic press, then fermented in oak vats using natural or added yeasts.

he Spanish regions of Asturias, Cantabria and the Basque Country are well known for traditional sidra-cider, an alcoholic cider between 4 and 8 percent. Sidra-Cider, also Sagardoa in the Basque Country, is traditionally poured in very small quantities from a height into a wide glass, with the arm holding the bottle extended upwards and the one holding the glass extended downwards. This technique is called to escanciar or, in Asturian, "echar" and is done to get sparkles into the drink, thus giving it a sparkling taste like Champagne that lasts a very short time. Spanish sidra-cider is closely associated with "sidrerias" in Asturian, sidreries or "sagardotegiak", cider houses in Basque. In the Basque region of Guipuzcoa, it is a tradition to visit sagardotegiak between February and May to drink new sidra-cider from the barrel accompanied by a meal such as txuleton.