Protected designation of origin (PDO) · Cider
Euskal Sagardoa / Sidra Natural del País Vasco
The Basque protected designation for natural cider, whose current specification runs across the French frontier as well as the Spanish one — no sugar, no water, no filtration, and carbon dioxide only from the ferment itself.
Written on the label as Euskal Sagardoa.
This record was taken as at 2026-08-23 and describes an instrument administered in Spain.
- Kind
- Protected designation of origin (PDO)
- Product
- Cider
- Country
- Spain
- Regions covered
- Basque Country
- Register
- Applied for on the EU register of geographical indications as a joint Spanish–French file, PDO-ES-FR-02309, and still recorded there as applied rather than registered. Granted a French appellation of origin in its own right on 5 February 2025. The specification behind the file was revised on 19 July 2024.
- Record taken as at
- 2026-08-23
- Registered on
- Applied 2017-05-11; specification revised 2024-07-19; not registered at EU level as at 2026-08-25
CiderHQ records the structure of a specification: that it defines an area, that it restricts the fruit, that it sets a minimum strength or a sweetness band. Where a figure was not verified against the register itself, this page says a threshold exists and stops there rather than reproducing a number it cannot trace. Knowing that a limit is written down, and where it is written down, is worth more than a plausible figure.
Designation rules change. Specifications are amended, and the amendments do not announce themselves. Anyone relying on this commercially — labelling a product, drafting a claim, buying under the name — must read the current specification on the register itself rather than any summary of it, including this one.
Read the register: Eusko Label / Basque Government · European Commission · Euskal Sagardoa Fundazioa, Astigarraga, with the Iparraldeko sagarnoen sindikata
What the specification requires
Each requirement is recorded as a claim with its jurisdiction, its as-of date and the source it rests on. Requirements that could not carry all three are not shown.
Every stage — harvest, making, bottling, and any bottle-conditioned sparkle — must happen inside the defined area. Under the specification of 19 July 2024 that area crosses a national frontier: the three Basque provinces of Spain, and on the French side the territories of Soule, Basse-Navarre and Labourd, whose communes the document lists individually against the 2023 French official geographic code.
Primary authority Spain and France (protected designation of origin, applied for) · recorded as at 2026-08-23 · Euskal Sagardoa Fundazioa, Astigarraga, with the Iparraldeko sagarnoen sindikata, European Commission
Basque cellars have historically bought a large share of their fruit from outside the region; the origin clause is what the designation is chiefly for. The cross-border extension is also what makes this file unusual — very few protected names are drawn to include territory in two member states.
The cider is the product of alcoholic fermentation of apple must, with or without malolactic fermentation, made without added sugar, without added water, without filtration, and carrying carbon dioxide of endogenous origin only.
Primary authority Spain and France (protected designation of origin, applied for) · recorded as at 2026-08-23 · Euskal Sagardoa Fundazioa, Astigarraga, with the Iparraldeko sagarnoen sindikata
Four constraints in a single sentence, and each of them rules out a normal industrial practice. This is the whole of what the seal guarantees about the liquid.
The specification forbids, in the cider: concentrated musts, sugars or syrups of any kind or origin; artificial sweeteners and dextrins; water at any stage of production; artificial increase of the natural alcoholic strength; the addition of wine, other fruit ferments or alcohol of any origin; esters, aromas and similar substances; added carbon dioxide; unauthorised preservatives; and pasteurisation.
Primary authority Spain and France (protected designation of origin, applied for) · recorded as at 2026-08-23 · Euskal Sagardoa Fundazioa, Astigarraga, with the Iparraldeko sagarnoen sindikata
Like the Traditional Welsh Perry specification and unlike Austrian fruit-wine law, this designation is defined mainly by a list of things a maker may not do rather than by numbers the finished drink must hit.
The fruit must come from the authorised local cultivars named in the specification, sorted into four classes — *ácidas*, *amargas*, *ácido-amargas* and, added in the 2024 revision, *dulces*. The sweet class holds four cultivars only: Aran Gorri, Mamula, Muga Gorri and Ondo Motxa.
Primary authority Spain and France (protected designation of origin, applied for) · recorded as at 2026-08-23 · Euskal Sagardoa Fundazioa, Astigarraga, with the Iparraldeko sagarnoen sindikata
This is a Basque classification of Basque fruit, and it is neither the English four classes nor the Asturian technological blocks. Reading it through either of those is the mistake the international work on this site exists to prevent.
Half of the varieties planted must be acid and bitter types.
Primary authority Spain and France (protected designation of origin, applied for) · recorded as at 2026-08-23 · Euskal Sagardoa Fundazioa, Astigarraga, with the Iparraldeko sagarnoen sindikata
A rule about the orchard rather than the cellar. It is what stops the classification from being decorative: a grower cannot satisfy the designation by planting whichever authorised cultivar crops best.
The specification requires the cider to be produced by fermenting pure apple juice, without added water, concentrate or sugar, and without added carbon dioxide.
Primary authority Spain (protected designation of origin) · recorded as at 2026-08-23 · Eusko Label / Basque Government, European Commission
The specification sets analytical limits — including a minimum alcoholic strength — that a batch must meet before it may be certified under the designation. The figures are held by the regulating body and are not stated here unverified.
Primary authority Spain (protected designation of origin) · recorded as at 2026-08-23 · Eusko Label / Basque Government
The designation regulates the origin of the fruit and the making of the cider. It does not regulate the *txotx* season, the practice of drawing cider directly from the barrel, or the food served alongside it, all of which are customs of the *sagardotegi* rather than requirements of the specification.
Primary authority Spain (protected designation of origin) · recorded as at 2026-08-23 · Eusko Label / Basque Government
About Euskal Sagardoa / Sidra Natural del País Vasco
Basque cider is made a short distance from Asturias and is a recognisably different drink: drier still, more austere, with a lactic-edged acidity and very little carbonation. The cellars of Gipuzkoa and its neighbours ferment in large wooden or steel kupelas and open them to visitors through the winter and spring, and that seasonal practice — the txotx — is what most outsiders encounter first.
The designation was created to fix a specific problem. For much of the twentieth century Basque cellars supplemented local fruit with apples bought from outside the region, sometimes from far outside it, and the word sagardoa on a bottle said nothing about where the crop had grown. The designation ties the name to Basque orchards and Basque varieties, and requires fermentation of pure juice with nothing added, so that the cider’s composition follows the fruit.
What it emphatically does not do is regulate the drinking. Standing in front of a barrel while a thin stream is caught in the bottom of a glass is a custom of the house and of the season; no clause requires it, and cider certified under the designation is sold bottled and drunk anywhere. Nor does the designation certify quality or exclude the good cider made in the region outside it — Basque cellars that source fruit more widely, or that make styles the specification does not cover, are making cider, not counterfeits.
Styles this designation covers
Categories whose definition or characteristic practice this specification governs.
Sidra natural
The still, dry, unfiltered cider of Asturias and the Basque Country, wild-fermented from local high-acid fruit and poured from a height to raise a momentary sparkle.
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.
Where it applies
The areas named by the specification, each described in its own terms.
What people ask next
Questions readers ask about the things this page mentions. Each one goes to the section that answers it rather than to a page written to receive the question.
- Where is cider made in spain — Chiefly in Asturias and the Basque Country along the northern coast, with smaller traditions in Galicia, Cantabria and Navarre — the wet, cool part of Spain where apples do better than vines.
- What is basque cider
Where to go next
- All protected designations — Every reserved name on CiderHQ, grouped by country, with what each kind of instrument does.
- Cider and perry in Spain — How cider is legally defined and taxed in the country administering this name.
- How CiderHQ handles evidence — Why a requirement here states a structure rather than a figure.
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
eAmbrosia — the EU geographical indications register
European Commission · designation authority · registered as competent for this subject
The single authoritative register of EU PDO, PGI and TSG names, carrying each product specification. Cider and perry designations across France, Spain and elsewhere resolve here.
Euskal Sagardoa Fundazioa, Astigarraga, with the Iparraldeko sagarnoen sindikata · designation authority · passage verified 2026-08-25
The current specification behind the Euskal Sagardoa file, retrieved as PDF and read on 2026-08-25. It is a cross-border document: the protected area now runs from the three Basque provinces of Spain across the frontier into Soule, Basse-Navarre and Labourd, with the French communes listed one by one against the 2023 official geographic code, and the name itself acquires French forms. Read alongside the EU register, which still records the file as applied rather than registered. It also adds a fourth apple class, *dulces*, to the acid, bitter and bittersharp classes the earlier versions used — four cultivars only: Aran Gorri, Mamula, Muga Gorri and Ondo Motxa.