HERITAGE
Txotx: the winter the barrel calls you over
On 14 January 2026, Petritegi in Astigarraga tapped open the season's first cider house, the starting gun for a ritual that runs to April across some seventy sagardotegis in the hills behind San Sebastián. At the cry of "txotx!" the room rises, queues at the horizontal oak barrel, and catches a thin jet of cider straight from the cask — standing, in Gipuzkoa's wettest months. Paired with the Tamborrada's 20 January drums, the off-peak here is not a discount but the whole point.
Mondmodel Intelligence ·
The Txotx Call
The cider season — txotx — runs roughly January to April, and the whole ritual turns on a single word. When someone calls "txotx!" the guests stand and walk toward a horizontal oak barrel. A peg is pulled and the cider arcs out in a thin, angled jet; you catch it standing, at the bottom of the glass, a couple of centilitres at a time. Then the peg goes back and you return to the table until the next call. This is not table service but participation — you pour for yourself, straight from the cask. The custom belongs to Gipuzkoa, densest around Astigarraga and Hernani, the hills south of San Sebastián where the apple orchards run oldest.
Fill only the bottom of the glass at each txotx — the cider is meant to be drunk at once, while it is alive. A half-full glass is wrong; go back to the barrel more often instead.
Petritegi and the Season's Opening
On 14 January 2026, Petritegi in Astigarraga pulled the first peg and opened the season. This is not a single farm's ceremony but a starting gun: over the following weeks some seventy sagardotegis in the hills behind San Sebastián open their doors and keep them open until April. Astigarraga is the heart — a small municipality where the cider houses sit close together, many held by the same families for generations. The seasonal pattern is old and fixed: you come when last year's must has finished fermenting in the oak casks, not when the weather is fine. That the first barrel opens in mid-January is the whole point, not an inconvenience.
Book ahead for January and February weekend evenings — they fill with locals on the poteo. Weeknight sittings are calmer, and you get closer to the barrel.
The Sagardotegi Table
The cider-house menu is fixed and largely unchanged for generations — four courses eaten standing or at long benches, broken up by repeated walks to the barrel. The sequence opens with a salt-cod omelette (tortilla de bacalao), follows with salt cod and fried green peppers, and then the big course: a grilled txuleta, a thick bone-in rib steak cooked over embers and carved at the table. Last comes the dessert that is not a dessert — Idiazabal, a sheep's-milk cheese of the region with its own denomination of origin, served with quince paste (membrillo) and walnuts. Between courses someone calls "txotx" again, and the whole table rises.
There is no wine list — the cider is the drink, all evening. Come hungry: the txuleta is generous, and the cod arrives in two courses before it.
Off-Peak as the Point
San Sebastián gets around 1,500 millimetres of rain a year — more than double Barcelona's — and the coast is the Atlantic's "Green Spain", not a Mediterranean sun-coast. The viable coastal season runs roughly May to October, which makes January to April genuine low season. That is exactly why the cider season falls there. On 20 January, San Sebastián's saint's day, the drums of the Tamborrada sound around the clock through the city — in the middle of the txotx months. To drive up to a cider house in Astigarraga on a rainy January night, or to stay in Gros facing the Zurriola swell, is not to pay a price for the wrong season. It is to come when Gipuzkoa is most itself.
Stay in Gros, across the river from the old town: close to the Tamborrada drums on 20 January, and a fifteen-minute taxi up to Astigarraga's cider houses. Do not drive back after txotx.