Glossary · Culture
Llagar
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.
Also written lagar. Each is a name for the same thing, which is why none of them has an entry of its own.
Definition
An Asturian cider house: the press, the cellar of chestnut vats, and the room where the new cider is tasted and sold. The word means both the press itself and the building around it.
- Subject
- Culture
- Language
- Asturian
- Also written
- lagar
In more detail
The llagar is the social centre of Asturian cider as well as its workshop. From the new year the espicha season brings people in to taste from the vat, and the pour is done straight from the barrel — the origin of the long pour that later moved to the bottle.
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.
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.
Culture
Espicha
An Asturian cider gathering held at a *llagar*, at which cider is drawn straight from the vat and eaten with standing food — traditionally the occasion at which the new season’s cider is judged.
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
Cider house
A building or licensed premises where cider is made or sold. In the West Country it meant the farm’s making and storage building; in modern usage it usually means a bar specialising in cider.
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.
Servicio Regional de Investigación y Desarrollo Agroalimentario (SERIDA)
Principado de Asturias · research institute · retrieved 2026-08-24
The Asturian regional agri-food research service, and the technical authority behind the Asturian cultivar classification and the analysis of sidra natural. SERIDA’s own site has not been opened; what CiderHQ has read is SERIDA’s varietal characterisation as republished by the Consejo Regulador of DOP Sidra de Asturias, which credits it explicitly. The Asturian measurements therefore cite the Consejo rather than SERIDA — citing the body that did the work, at a document CiderHQ has not seen, would be exactly the kind of borrowed authority this register exists to prevent.