Glossary · Culture
Sagardotegi
Basque. 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 sidrería vasca. Each is a name for the same thing, which is why none of them has an entry of its own.
Definition
A Basque cider house: a working cidery with a dining room, open from January to spring, where guests eat a set menu and drink from the kupela, the great vats, at the cry of txotx.
- Subject
- Culture
- Language
- Basque
- Also written
- sidrería vasca
In more detail
The sagardotegi season traditionally ran while the new cider was in vat and before it was bottled, and the meal is fixed — cod omelette, salt cod with peppers, a large beef chop, cheese with quince paste and walnuts. Guests leave the table to fill their glasses at the vat rather than being served.
Where this is covered properly
The glossary defines; these pages explain. Each is described in its own words.
Region
Basque Country
The Spanish Basque provinces, where dry *sagardo* is drunk standing at the barrel through a defined winter season, poured on the call of *txotx*, and eaten with a fixed cider-house menu.
Style
Euskal Sagardoa
Basque cider under its own protected designation, made from Basque-grown apples in the *sagardotegi* tradition of barrel service and dry, high-acid, still cider.
Related terms
Terms that belong to the same part of the subject, or that this one is routinely confused with.
Culture
Txotx
The call — and the small wooden peg it names — announcing that a vat is open in a *sagardotegi*, at which guests come with their glasses to catch a thin jet of cider straight from the barrel.
Culture
Sagardoa
The Basque word for cider. It is usually parsed as *sagar* (apple) and *ardo* (wine) — apple wine — and the drink is central to Basque food culture.
Culture
Llagar
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.
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.
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.
Euskal Sagardoa / Sidra Natural del País Vasco protected designation
Eusko Label / Basque Government · designation authority · registered as competent for this subject
NEIKER Basque Institute for Agricultural Research and Development
NEIKER · research institute · retrieved 2026-08-24