The Asturian bottle of cider, unique in the world

Its key date of birth is 1880, whose shape is the current one.

LA SIDRA.- We have been drinking cider for over 2,000 years, but when was the bottle of cider born the way we know it?

Ethnographer Inaciu Hevia Llavona (1965), author of reference about cider and traditional cidermills and awarded in 2012 with the prize Fierro Botas for his essay “La Botella de Xixón. Orígenes y desendolcu hestóricu de la botella de sidra d’Asturies”, explains the reasons for its design.

Before the cider bottle was invented , this was poured from the barrel into wooden jugs or “zapicas”. The current pouring imitates the way cider is poured from the barrel.

The “Bottle from Xixón”, as it is popularly known the bottle of cider for having the name of the town engraved in its bottom, was made from 1844 in La Industria, until the factory in La Calzada was opened, Gijón Industrial, later Gijón Fabril.

The first designs were inspired in the bottles made in England, following the Bordeaux model. They use dark glass to protect the liquid from ultraviolet beams and they are adapted to cider measures, with a neck that allows the pouring by a characteristic curve, named “lady’s leg”, to diminish the cider exit speed.

The key date for the cider bottle birth is 1880, with the so-called “iron mould”, made with three-piece iron housing, whose shape has only changed by a few millimetres since then.
Cider bottles are recycled in a high rate, so we could be drinking cider poured from an over 100 years old bottle!