Glossary · Serving
Espalme
Asturian. Kept in its own language here rather than translated into the nearest English word, because the nearest English word is usually cut on a different axis.
Definition
The rapid and complete disappearance of the foam raised in the glass by the pour. Not the foam itself — its collapse.
- Subject
- Serving
- Language
- Asturian
In more detail
The Asturian Academy defines the verb espalmar as cider giving off, when poured into the glass, bubbles that immediately afterwards vanish. The regional cider vocabulary defines the noun the same way: the fast, total loss of the surface foam. A cider that espalma well is one whose head goes at once.
English-language writing routinely inverts this, praising a cider for “a good espalme” and meaning a lasting head. Asturian has separate words for that: aguante is the persistence of the fine bubbles, pegue is the film of foam that clings to the glass, and romper is the initial break of the stream against the rim. A cider said to fai bon vasu — make a good glass — is one that breaks, holds and then espalmas correctly, which is three different behaviours in sequence.
It is trade and tasting-panel vocabulary rather than a legal term: it appears in no Spanish or Asturian instrument governing cider.
Where this is covered properly
The glossary defines; these pages explain. Each is described in its own words.
Related terms
Terms that belong to the same part of the subject, or that this one is routinely confused with.
Serving
Culete
The measure poured at one time in an Asturian cider house and drunk straight down. The regulating council puts it at not less than 100 millilitres, and six to the bottle.
Serving
Escanciar
The Asturian pour: the bottle held high overhead and the glass low at the hip, so that a thin stream falls a metre or more and breaks on the rim of the tilted glass.
Culture
Chigre
An Asturian cider bar, where *sidra natural* is poured by the bottle and shared, with a *culete* served at a time and the drip tray running constantly.
Cider
Sidra natural
Asturian and Basque cider fermented to complete dryness from pure juice, unfiltered, uncarbonated and bottled without added gas or sugar. It is poured from a height to raise a momentary foam.
Where to go next
- Cider glossary — The whole vocabulary, by subject and A–Z.
- Comparisons — Terms that are only really clear when set against the thing they are not.
- Search — Finds terms by their aliases and by their spellings in other languages.
Sources
What this page rests on. Where a source is marked as registered rather than read, CiderHQ is recording that the body is authoritative on the subject without claiming to have worked through the document itself. See our evidence policy for what each state means.
Denominación de Origen Protegida Sidra de Asturias
Consejo Regulador de la DOP Sidra de Asturias · designation authority · passage verified 2026-08-24
The regulating council for Asturian cider. Read on 2026-08-24, and it turned out to carry far more than a permitted-variety list: an agronomic and technological characterisation of each admitted variety, with total acidity, total polyphenols, vigour, flowering, ripening, cropping and susceptibility to fungal disease. The characterisation is credited to SERIDA’s fruit-research programme. Two things it settles are corrections to what CiderHQ previously held: Asturias sorts cider fruit into nine technological blocks rather than five, and it publishes acidity as sulphuric acid rather than malic. The figures are transcribed into `data/trials/serida-asturias.ts` and cite this source, because this is where they were read.
Vocabulario sidrero — the Asturian cider vocabulary
Sidraturismo Asturias / Comarca de la Sidra · specialist organisation · passage verified 2026-08-25
The Asturian cider-tourism body’s own glossary, and the only source CiderHQ has found that defines the glass-behaviour vocabulary — romper, espalme, aguante, pegue, restallu, filado, espoleta — as a set of distinct terms rather than as loose synonyms. It is the source that corrected this site’s definition of espalme, which had it exactly backwards. A promotional body rather than an academy, so it is cited for vocabulary in use and not for the physical claims it makes alongside them.