Sagardotegiak - The Txotx Ritual

Traditionally, the cider houses would offer allow buyers to taste cider from the different barrels, or kupelas, before choosing the one they liked best. To fend off the effects of drinking on an empty stomach, clients would bring along terracotta dishes containing some kind of prepared food, plus beef rib chops (txuleta) to barbecue at the cider house itself. Hence the origin of today’s txotx ritual and the cider house menu: salt cod in an omelette or fried with green peppers, and a charcoal-grilled beef rib chop, with Idiazabal cheese, quince jelly and walnuts for dessert; all washed down with the cider taken in on the numerous trips to the kupelas to the cry of txotx!