Among shared glasses and cider songs, I found the soul of Asturias

I recognize the expression on her face immediately—dread and disappointment. I’m in Nava’s packed town plaza, watching a young girl attempt something she’s likely performed a hundred times behind the bar: Escanciado, the art of pouring sidra (cider).

The correct technique requires that the bottle must be raised overhead, held from its end, and angled so that the stream hits the edge of a glass positioned at waist-height to aerate the cider. It requires skill, nerve and copious amounts of practice.

“I’ve been to the bars where they don’t even have to look at the glass when they pour,” I hear someone say in the crowd. But she’d missed, her eyes filling with tears, in front of a panel of judges made up of past winners and regional escanciador champions, each one looking for her to serve exactly 100ml into a glass—five times in a row. She’d begun hopeful, winning over the spectators, but once she’d faltered, the dominoes continued to collapse.

Last December, UNESCO inscribed Asturian cider culture as an Intangible Cultural Heritage to safeguard the custom for future generations. Having made Spain my home, my curiosity for regional traditions had brought me to the Festival de la Sidra in a small Asturian town, in lush, pastoral northern Spain, to understand why this drink is so intrinsic to the identity of a community. This tension and drama emanating from the stage was my first glimpse into understanding something: In Asturias, cider is more than a beverage.

During the competition, a feast exclusively for Nava’s residents caught my attention. I see platefuls of local gastronomic dishes such as cachopo, a giant fillet of beef rolled in breadcrumbs and stuffed with ham and cheese, and fabadas, a rustic stew of white beans and chorizo, being exchanged alongside cider.

I realized an act of community, camaraderie and unity brought about by shared plates and shared glasses was unfolding in front of me; no-one sat apart, no-one drank alone, and no crumb nor drop was left unaccounted for.

“It’s not just the liquid that’s protected, but everything that surrounds it: The people, the actions, the land, and the history that make it possible”.

- Marta Garcia Miranda, guide

Below the main plaza, smaller side streets had prepared a similar set-up for outsiders. We grab a table, a few glasses, and chose the cider-soaked chorizo and crusty bread to pair with our drinks before turning our attention to the people around us. So far, I’d only seen performative escanciado.

Here though, off-stage, ordinary people are taking a break from their meals, trying their hand at pouring this Asturian gold. Their method isn’t perfect, and their aim isn’t polished, but it doesn’t matter. All that matters is taking part in the ritual.

The following day, I join a tour led by sidra expert and tour guide Marta Garcia Miranda at the family-owned Llagar Sidra Castañón., a working cider press that produces one of the region’s most well-known brands of natural sidra. “There’s a whole world behind bringing a cider bottle to life,” she tells us, “a collection of meticulous processes involving apple trees, cider masters, barrel carpenters, cider house music, and gastronomy”.

Marta draws our attention to the fact that it’s not ‘Sidra de España’ (Cider of Spain). Sidra culture is the fruition of a deep connection that Asturianos specifically have with their land. It’s their identity in the glass. “This golden liquid is the heart of an ancient culture, a social ritual, and a symbol of belonging that unites a community across the world,” she says. “It’s a piece of the soul of Asturias.”

We learn that sidra is the product of generational knowledge of the land, passed down through families, its unique flavor a reflection of inherited family intel that’s curated a pick-n-mix process to select among the 500 endemic varieties of apples grown in orchards across Asturias. 76 of these bear the Protected Designation of Origin status, and you can spot which bottles carry this prized harvest by the ‘Sidra de Asturias’ label. With a glance in my direction, she adds that Brits are the biggest cider drinkers. But this was nothing like the cider I grew up with. Sidra is cool, but not cold. There’s no fizz and yet, it’s not quite flat either.

For Marta, the recent UNESCO accolade has elevated sidra to the category of living culture: “It’s not just the liquid that’s protected, but everything that surrounds it: The people, the actions, the land, and the history that make it possible”.

When I speak to Jairo Palacios Vigil, the organizer of the Fiesta de la Sidra, he echoes this sentiment that Asturian cider culture has less to do with what’s inside the glass itself. For him, it’s what you do with it instead. Traditionally, sidra is ordered by the bottle, and with each bottle, a single glass is passed from hand to hand until it’s emptied in that same sitting.

At Nava’s Museo de la Sidra, museum director Juan Stové tells me how  COVID-19 changed the ritual of sharing in most establishmentl for him, one of the most beautiful things about enjoying a bottle of cider is the camaraderie. “People don’t share the glass like they used to,” he tells me. “We may still see it among couples or family members but it’s harder to see it among friends. Waiters and cider servers don’t even think about it anymore; they just put one glass per person”.

But for Jairo, the old way of sharing and drinking is a rite of passage for those growing up here. “My first introduction to Sidra was a long time ago, at one of the ‘fiestes de prau’ (cider parties) my friends and I would attend every summer,” he says. “Whenever I remember those parties, friends and cider were always there”.

Sent to Spanish colonies and served on-route aboard luxury vessels, El Gaitero [cider] became a link between Asturias and its emigrant communities, carrying cider across the Atlantic, to find its place on Cuban family tables to Mexican celebrations.

This nostalgia is well-documented at Museo de la Sidra, dedicated to preserving the process, folklore, history, and significance of sidra in modern society. I learnt the steps of escanciado, of cider-pouring, and taking part in this tradition changed how I felt about the drink. Though my aim missed most of my glass, I felt I’d participated in a baptism of sorts, bringing me closer to the fellowship and merriment I’d been hearing about this ritual.

Visitors can also experience other customs, such as espiche—drinking sidra from the barrel—and going to a chigre—a pub-like establishment where sidra is the main tipple. Yet it was a modest exhibit on sidra’s Atlantic voyage that drew me in most.

Old crates stamped with the name of cider producer El Gaitero, monochrome footage of a glamorous steam-liner, and ads for voyages aboard the Reina Maria Cristina told the story of how, in the late 19th century, Asturias wasn’t only exporting coal and emigrants: It was exporting its cider too.

Sent to Spanish colonies and served on-route aboard luxury vessels, El Gaitero became a link between Asturias and its emigrant communities, carrying cider across the Atlantic, to find its place on Cuban family tables to Mexican celebrations.

Today, El Gaitero is still one of the oldest working cider mills in Austurias’ cider region, located in Villaviciosa, a small town further north Nava. It’s known for its bubbly variant of the regional drink known as sidra natural espumosa. This is a cider that doesn’t demand escanciado because of the carbonation—it’s a sidra made to travel.

However, while empanadas folded into local flavors from Colombia down to Chile, and ropa vieja (traditional beef stew) simmered its way from the Iberian Peninsula into Caribbean kitchens, sidra, by contrast, didn’t leave its mark in the Americas. It traveled across oceans and into new worlds but remained stubbornly rooted in Asturias.

The museum also celebrates the street parties that Jairo had referred to, and as we explore this section, someone in the tour group begins to sing, soon joined by others. As the only non-Spaniard in the group, Marta tells me they’re singing ‘Asturias, Patria Querida’, the regional anthem.

She tells me it was written by Cuban musician, Ignacio Piñeiro who was originally inspired to write this song to echo his father’s yearning for his beloved Asturian homeland. Later renditions became a hymn of rhythmic revolt during the Spanish Civil War.

Bearing witness to the chorus, I realize that this is a tradition that will very much endure—not because it’s been inscribed on a heritage list, but because it flows in song and shared glasses. And as long as there is celebration and community, sidra culture will thrive.

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The writer was supported on this trip by the Spanish Tourist Office www.spain.info and Turismo Asturias www.turismoasturias.com

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