Eating salt cod omelette, feasting on txuleta (rib steak), wandering among the kupelas (cider casks) with a glass of cider and making friends along the way. Put like that, you’ve already won me over.

Every year, from roughly mid-January to the end of April, the Basque Country lives through what is known as the cider house season. I had always dreamed of going up to enjoy it with my godfather José Luis, a San Sebastián native through and through. The plan is tailor-made for me: eating salt cod omelette, feasting on txuleta, wandering among the kupelas with a glass of cider and making friends along the way. This year the stars finally aligned and we managed to make our diaries fit. So I talked my husband into it, another lover of good food and drink, and we headed north.

As it was my first time at a Basque cider house, my godfather told me I had to start with one of the good ones. He booked a table at Zapiain, one of the most renowned and, for many, the best. It is in the town of Astigarraga, just a few kilometres from San Sebastián. This small town is the epicentre of the cider houses, known in Basque as sagardotegiak. There is also a strong txotx tradition in Hernani, Usurbil and Urnieta. Although you can enjoy this plan all over the Basque Country (in Gipuzkoa alone there are more than 70 cider houses), these are the places that make up the true land of txotx.