Basque Country
Guest of Honour 2026
Sagardoaren Lurraldea, the land of cider, has a leisure and tourism offer linked to cider and that offers visitors the culture and tradition of the Basques, the cider culture and the experience of the “Txotx ritual”, one of the most deeply rooted gastronomic events in our territory, through various tourist experiences.
Sagardoextea
Sagardoetxea, the Basque Cider Museum is the ideal place to get to know the culture of cider. The museum currently has three different areas that allow you to get in touch with the history and reality of the apple and cider: the apple orchard, the museum and the tasting centre.
Tourist Experiences at Cider Houses
The Land of Cider offers an enormous number of options and special places for enjoying an oeno-tourist experience combining gastronomy, leisure and culture. Cider houses are gastronomy; they are culture; they are tradition. There are few places with a personality as particular and as authentic as that of the cider houses, marked to such a degree with the identity of their location. For this reason, they are the perfect setting in which to celebrate various oeno-tourist experiences, as well as guided visits, cider tastings, etc.
Cider House: Gastronomy and Culture
Sagardoaren Lurraldea offers you one of the most deeply rooted traditions, and one of the gastronomical events most closely identified with the Basques. A Cider house is not a restaurant, but a cellar with its own rules of proper behaviour which form part of the tradition. Although these are quite simple, they arouse the visitors’ curiosity, which makes this custom not only be kept alive, but also to be considered as a unique experience.
Txotx ritual at basque cider houses
Cider houses are temples in the land of cider. They have kept our culture alive and have been the main focus of its dissemination, offering the world a unique experience. Cider houses are the cellars where the artisans produce natural cider (sagardoa), following the traditional method step by step, from the reception of the apple, to bottling. Moreover, the cider houses themselves are a gastronomic attraction, offering us the chance to taste the new cider from different barrels and enjoy a good meal, an experience that is popularly known as the txotx ritual.
Cider houses have a great gastronomic attraction, allowing us to taste the new cider from different barrels and enjoy a fine meal. But cider houses are not restaurants. In fact, the menu is always the same. A cider house has its own norms of conduct, passed down from generation to generation. All of this means that the cider houses attract the curiosity of thousands of visitors from all over the world year after year.
Some of the cider houses, following the canons of the ancient tradition, only open their doors from January to April for the tasting of the new cider. Others offer their services all year round.
Tasting the typical cider house menu.The menu consists of a cod omelette, fried cod with green peppers, steak, cheese and quince preserve, walnuts and cider taken following the “txotx” style.
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