Barkaiztegi Cosecha 2010 Sagardo Natarala
A bit of a rare treat this one! I’ve been wanting to try some of the cider from the Basque country for ages now. And whilst I was in Amsterdam going to the Unlike Us conference and visiting pals, I got given a bottle of Barkaiztegi by one of them.
The bottle is a proper tall wine bottle sort of affair, with a real cork and everything but the stuff inside isn't at all pretentious or posh tasting like, say an Aspalls premier cru. This is good honest bittersharp country cider. Or perhaps I should say sagardo — the Basque word for cider. Its sharp. Like lemon burning sharp. Bit like the Roger Wilkins famrhouse cider I reviewed last year.
Weighing in at a medium strength 6%, this is definitely the sort of cider one could go out and party with. The supersharp tang would refresh the hell out of me at a festival. The cider is lightish yellow, a little like a cloudier old rosie. Its definitely very cloudy with some lumps of sediment at the bottom of the bottle. You'd want to pour it in one go.
Running the cidermaker’s website through a translate tool I learn that the Irizar family have been running a restaurant and cider house in San Sebastian since 1930. Not a bad run. And a very nice bit of cider too. Whilst I finish off the bottle, I am going to have a read about the history of Basque cidermaking. Until next cidertime, agur…
2012-03-18 by Charlie Harvey