This is the third in a trio of articles for our Cider Week. On Tuesday, we published my piece on Basque cider. And on Thursday, we published Sarah Parker Jang’s report on a new cider movement Champagne.
Today’s piece comes from Charlotte Cook—a writer, traveler, and brewer who publishes the Drinking in Strange Places newsletter. Charlotte has written for Everyday Drinking about Kazakhstan’s cider and Bavaria’s unique Zoigl beer culture.
During a recent period of melancholy—a sort of brown study where I quit my job, left London, and got signed off work because my brain fully stopped working—I decided that instead of feeling agitated in my flat, I should go and feel agitated in Spain instead.
I’m very lucky to have been able to spend extended periods of time in Spain, mostly in the south around the Costa Brava and Valencian hills. Now, for the first time, I went to Asturias in the north of Spain, which in comparison to the arid and sun-beaten south, is green and dramatic, with a distinctive Celtic influence. Here you can see tartan and bagpipes, people drink cider rather than wine, and the food culture is noticeably different from the rest of the country. The plazas are still filled with people enjoying the sunshine, drink in hand, but it’s quieter than cities such as Malaga, the car horns are used with more restraint, and even in a busy bar you can hold a conversation without shouting.
Asturias isn’t the chaotic and cacophonous Spain I’m used to, but for a person who needed a little break from everything, it’s the perfect place.
I flew into Oviedo airport from Gatwick, with the plane flying low over the wild and tempestuous coast of the Bay of Biscay, before landing at a small airport about 40 minutes outside of the city. From there it’s a short bus ride through the hills to the regional capital.
Other cities in northern Spain, such as San Sebastian and Bilbao, have been receiving rave reviews and floods of visitors, with tourists arriving in droves to bar hop and eat. Oviedo has escaped much of this, despite being the 2024 Spanish Capital of Gastronomy. The main draws of the city being its annual film festival (they even have a statue of Woody Allen) and its sculpture. Walking around Oviedo is like taking a stroll through a sculpture park. Municipal art is everywhere in the city centre, and the Parque San Francisco contains the most photographed statue in the city, that of Mafalda, a cartoon in which the eponymous pre-schooler quips on Argentine life and the state of the world.
Although it doesn’t see anywhere near as many tourists as nearby regions, Asturias still sees a steady flow of visitors. Spaniards head north to escape the relentless heat, and there is a constant trickle of hikers, pilgrims, and lost souls who begin the long walk to Santiago along the Camino Primitivo, a less-trodden but ancient pilgrimage route.
The flavors in Asturias are quite different from the rest of Spain. The first of these unique flavors is Asturian cheese, namely Queso de Cabrales, deeply salty and inoculated with wild moulds from the caves they are aged in, with the milk is rich and fatty, due to the excellent pastures on which the cattle free-range.
People tend to think of wild inoculated cheeses as being inherently strong and powerful, but like any form of fermentation, this depends how you treat it. If you left sour beer to continually ferment in the presence of lactic acid bacteria you would end up with pure vinegar. But when you control the process, you can end up with a delicately crafted and well-balanced drink. The same is true of cheese making, winemaking, baking, pickle-making, kimchi production—and, of course, cider.
Cabrales, despite the mildly misleading name, does not usually contain goats’ milk (though some producers do produce goat and sheep versions). Rather, it comes from the Cabrales region of the Picos de Europa mountains. It is pretty powerful, yet the penicillium fermentation does not wholly dominate, and there are usually background flavors of wildflowers that become earthier as the cheese ages, and it retains a thick creaminess that other cheeses loose to crumbliness as they age, and this prevents the Cabrales from becoming too overwhelming. It’s a big and punchy cheese, but full of nuances that keep your palate interested.
One accompaniment you see all over Spain is membrillo, a quince paste, this reduces the funky sharpness of the famous Cabrales cheese without overwhelming the really quite delicate flavor. The other classic accompaniment is Asturian cider.
The main dish of Asturias is also quite unique. Fabada is a stew made from white runner beans, known as Fabes de la Granja, a fatty bean prized in Asturias and priced accordingly. As you walk around the market in Oviedo, whole display cases are dedicated to the beans, with different grades proudly presented in a way more commonly reserved for prized cuts of meat. Small plastic bags filled with water are taped to the counters to show how much the beans will grow after a night of soaking. These are expensive beans, with the best ones costing around 15-20 euros per kilo.
Fabada is all about the beans. And they are accompanied by morcilla, bacon, chorizo, and pimento dulce, cooked for hours, and topped up with cold water to enhance the silky fattiness of the stew. There are kits in all the supermarkets, ready prepped with everything you need to make fabada at home, but nothing ever beats picking out each individual element at the market.
When you taste the intensely rich stew, you can understand why cider rather than wine prevails in the north—the sour and fizzy is needed to cut through, cleanse the palate, and prepare you to dive in again.
Cider is omnipresent in Asturias. As you walk around the town center of Oviedo on a Sunday morning, as families returning from church mix with football fans heading to an entirely different type of cathedra, cider is everywhere. Before 11 am, people will be drinking a bottle of cider for the table. Spaniards are famed for their ability to drink until the wee hours and still make it to work, school, or church as if nothing has happened. And having a little tipple of cider in the morning isn’t seen as such a stain on your character as it is at home.
In Asturias, cider isn’t drunk by the pint, but rather the bottle is poured for you, from a height, in order to stimulate a little bit of natural carbonation from the fermentation. Cider splashes all over, but nobody minds—it’s a social experience that everyone enjoys.
You drink your serving in one, and then wait until the waiter comes back to repeat the ritual. If you are less patient, then there are special machines that sit on the table and dispense it for you. The cider itself is rustic, with a strong acetic character, and a decided funkiness from the wild yeast and bacteria fermentation that takes the drink to about six percent abv. It’s bone dry, challenging, and yet incredibly delicious. But be careful. Since someone else is pouring it for you, you can drink far too much and struggle to get down from your bar stool.
Luckily, there is always Cabrales and fabada on hand to help mitigate the worst of the cider damage. Luckily most of the punters on the street with all the cider bars are likely also as wobbly, so no one really minds.
Unlike in the south you don’t get tapas when you order a drink, instead you will get small plates of snacks such as crisps, nuts and olives, but where Asturian food really shines is with the pinchu. Small snacks that are bought from the bar and range from cheese to calamari and goose barnacles, served on a toothpick and eaten as soon as they come to the table.
In Oviedo you have no shortage of cider options, should you wish to make a night of it then simply head down to Calle Gascona in the city centre where you can bounce from sidreria to sidreria. Here a giant cider barrel heralds your arrival, and every establishment will have delicious pintxos to keep your blood sugar levels up.
For a more sedate evening then Sidreria Gran Via on the Avenida de Galicia, a short walk from the San Francisco park, is a good option. Here the cider is local, the food distinctly Asturian (including goose barnacles and sea urchin when in season) and the local cheese platter features a variety of Cabrales. Practice your Spanish before coming to this one, as English isn’t much spoken in this neighborhood bar.
Spain is always going to have a little part of my heart, and I thought that the chaos of the south was part of that, but having spent a week amongst the statues and relative calm of Oviedo, I think that exploring more of northern Spain, the food and drinks will be my next port of call before the southern sunshine.
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