Museo de la Sidra
Recommended if you are already in the cider country. Short enough that children will not mutiny.
An hour of context that turns a pleasant drink into something you can actually read.
At a Glance
- — You want a big-format museum
Asturian cider is not just a drink that arrives in a bottle, and this museum is where the process makes sense: the apple varieties, the press houses, the barrels, the rituals around pouring and sharing. It is a small regional museum rather than a grand one, and an hour here makes every cider house you visit afterwards legible. Labels are in Spanish and Asturian; the objects mostly speak for themselves.
How it got here
Apple cultivation in Asturias dates back to the Roman era when the region developed a distinct agricultural identity centered on cidermaking. The practice survived through centuries of smallholdings where farmers pressed fruit for domestic use and local trade. This museum occupies a town that sits at the center of this rural tradition. By gathering the tools of the trade from traditional presses to copper vats, the collection maintains the methods of production used before mechanical industrialization. It preserves the cultural memory of the pomarada orchards that define the rural landscape and links the evolution of rural agriculture to the current state of regional cider production.
Where it sits
Nava sits in the eastern interior of Asturias among the rolling green foothills that descend from the Cantabrian Mountains toward the coast. Rain keeps the valley floor lush and the hillsides dense with apple trees for much of the year. Narrow roads wind through the villages where damp mornings often bring mist off the peaks. The landscape remains quiet outside the harvest months when the orchards become the focus of activity. Access follows the valley corridors that run east from Oviedo. Winters here stay mild but gray and summer afternoons provide relief from the heat found on the central plateau.
What to eat and drink
Sidra natural remains the essential drink of the province, poured from a height into a wide glass to aerate the fermented apple juice. Drink it alongside chorizo a la sidra, sausages simmered slowly in the local cider until tender. For a heavier meal, order fabada asturiana, a slow-cooked stew of white faba beans, pork shoulder, morcilla blood sausage, and chorizo. The climate suits the production of strong, pungent cheeses like Cabrales, a blue-veined variety aged in limestone caves to develop its sharp flavor. These dishes reflect the reliance on hearty legumes and orchard produce that characterize the mountain diet.
Asturias: the whole region
Asturias fits a whole coast, a mountain range and a serious kitchen into a province you can cross in two hours. Cider poured from a height, blue cheese, working fishing ports, and the Picos de Europa standing over all of it. It rains often…
Minimum 4 days · better 7 days · deep 10-12 days
In Asturias
In Asturias
In Asturias
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