The Basque Country has a network of 7 museums related to food and beverages called Gastromuseums. This interpretation centers help to contextualize the country’s wide gastronomic tradition and promote knowledge about the roots in which it’s based, beyond the mere fact of eating and drinking. They are a basic pillar of the tourist offer related to gastronomy for which the Basque Country is widely known.
The seven museums are: The Salt Museum, the feeding center Delikatuz, the Idiazabal Cheese Museum, the Txakoli wine museum, the Rioja Alavesa wine center Villa Lucía, the Sagardoetxea cider museum and the farmhouse and cider mill Igartubeiti. Today I want to focus on the latter, closely related to cider.
Igartubeiti is a 16th century wooden farmhouse that has conserved unusually well despite the years. To cross the door of this farm is to undertake a journey in time, as if for several centuries the life of the inhabitants of this house had been frozen for a moment.
It was a humble farm dedicated to the production of cider in which, in addition to its structure, its content has been very well preserved. There are different spaces inside, dedicated to the day to day life and tasks, such as the kitchen, the bedrooms, the stable, the cellar and the barn, as well as old farming and cheese making tools. But the jewel of Igartubeiti is undoubtedly an old apple press that still today, as an exhibition, is used once a year to make cider with the apples that are grown in surrounding orchards.+
To enter this world is a privilege available to all and a delight for the senses. Not in vain, it was one of the stages for the recording of Dantza, a very special film about traditional Basque dances.
