I have an admitted fondness for drinks that taste a touch like one shouldn’t be drinking them. Kombucha, overproof liquor, and the bitterest of digestivos – all of which, in partaking of them, something in the back of my mind whispers: “Hey, uh…we sure about this?” 

I think it’s because I like pushing the boundaries in pursuit of finding new tastes, but also enjoy working through all the different elements that make up the taste on my palate, and the sheer complexity that exists at the boundaries of the taste spectrum. That exploration is exactly what makes eating and drinking so enjoyable to me. And in exploring the boundaries of taste, one is bound to find areas in which he likes, and dislikes, the stuff right at the very edge of that boundary. Enter the tongue-curling funk of Basque Cider.

Yes, they are not for everyone. I, admittedly, like a bit of kick or sick in my beverages: I like my Scotch peaty and smoked, my porters as ashy as Larry, my coffee, when I do indulge, like Rob Dyrdek’s former sidekick: big and black. 

But it isn’t all about just a kick per se. I don’t really care for this absurd, seemingly finally abating trend toward utter undrinkability of IPAs in order simply to push the IBU to ‘mouthful of pine cones and soap’ levels. Uniqueness is indeed a key component of having ‘flavor’. But uniqueness for the sake of uniqueness, like the dude who walks around Union Square with a huge iguana on his shoulder, to me defeats the purpose. 

But when the recipe is thousands of years old, and, somehow, has survived in tact whether in spite of, or precisely because of, that uniqueness? I’m sold. 

Normally that unique something that kicks you in the teeth and makes you question if it might have gone bad is what lets you know there is something special going on there. And in the case of cider, a drink often associated, rightly so, with a slightly more nancified group of devotees, it’s all about the funk. 

And Basque Cider is nothing if not funky. Funk that represents character. Character that emanates from ancient recipes and techniques that stubbornly survive generation after generation, beyond all reasonable expectations, due purely to the pride and persistence of the people who make it, and have for tens of hundreds of years. The unique blend of pungent, yeasty, musky, and earthy that resides in the sediment found in every bottle of Basque Cider, the often weird, Harlequin fonts of the branding on the bottles, the odd, and nearly impossible-to-achieve technique of the 3-foot pour that generates a slight effervescence, fake carbonation if you will, in an otherwise beautifully flat liquid: all unique to this oddball beverage.

But beyond the utter uniqueness of not just the beverage itself, but how this beverage is the perfect manifestation of the people who produce it is what continues to draw me to it.

Everything about the Basque fascinates me. The geography, the people, the food, the orthodoxy of their sporting endeavors – La Liga side Athletic Bilbao sticking vehemently to homegrown, or at least Basque-trained, players. To the region’s de facto cycling team Euskadi having adhered to a similarly exclusionary, patriotic model. To their flag, at once familiar in its Union Jack-ish composition, yet visually jarring with its bright red, kelly green, and white intersectional. Down to the unique, ancient syntax of their native tongue – a language that reads as though it was never really meant to be written (or at least not in English): a throaty stew of clicks and chicks, X’s and T’s joined in surprisingly frequent succession, juxtaposed as they are in ‘juxtapose’. All so old and old school that they somehow feel new and exciting. To the degree that famed micro-examiner Mark Kurlansky, a favorite author of mine for several reasons, whose ability to exalt even the most minute topic in such deep and captivating detail is as noteworthy as it is uncanny, was compelled to bathe them in a suitably glorious light via his The Basque History of the World.

The region itself exists at once solely on the margins of Europe and the modern world as a whole, and yet is perhaps the strongest single cultural history on the planet. Having grown up hearing whispers of political violence in the region, and knowing the same type of ardent ethnic patriotism was at the root of several generations worth of violent blood feuds throughout Europe in the wake of the splintering of both the Baltics and the Balkans, and learning of its harsh, remote geography, the name carries with it a certain air of toughness, if not subtle menace: like it should be entirely bygone, yet perseveres on the merit of its grit.

Perhaps not surprisingly then, given my penchant for wading into the most bitter and pungent of beverage territories, did I discover its signature cider was just as simple, and unique, and timeless as the region and the people it represents. In an increasingly crowded, if somewhat annoyingly un-self-consciously precious cider market, brands like Isastegi, Sarasola, and even Shacksbury’s reasonably adherent domestic facsimile are, quite literally, the antedote: at once the first known ciders, and yet the antithesis of the very vertical it birthed. 

I love it poured high, sediment and all, served with any number of first courses (with a traditional salt cod omelette, or a country steak, or any number of pintxos, the more charred and spicy the better). Or on the rocks, with a float of smoky mezcal, as an aperitif. In any setting, any season, it works, on its own; because like the generations of people who have made it, unaware of trends and craft and curation, there is flat out nothing like it. 

As for the 3 foot pour, best leave that to the experts. If you can find one. Or be prepared to sacrifice roughly 25% of the bottle to the surrounding surfaces. The Angels’ Share, if you will. If you know of an angel with a penchant for the funk. Which is fitting really, because funk, like the angels soaring in Heaven on gossamer wings, is eternal. Here’s to a fittingly funky ever after.