Spain and Portugal for Visitors

Spain is a tippler's country, with a splendid variety of drinking experiences to offer. Now I am not talking about Brit-style binge boozing here, drinking for the sake of it, getting ratted in Magalouf or sotted till you fall off the balcony in Lloret, though farbeit from me to censure if that is how the whim takes you. No, I am referring to traditional customs in which alcohol happens to play a part, the dipsomaniac side of Spanish culture, from the kalimotxo to the queimada, cider pouring to sangria and from the day-to-day tapeo to sherry by the bottle at a feria. Read on for my Top Ten Drinking Experiences in Spain.

11) Kalimotxo. Number eleven in a Top Ten list? The kalimotxo is not so much an experience as a sub-experience, being by any serious drinker's lights an abomination - it is cheap wine with Coca Cola, and is much favoured by Spanish youngsters with a real desire to get in a sociable mood as quickly and economically as possible. So I include it not for itself, but because if you ever try it it will probably be at the best party you ever went to in your life.

10) Tapear. Tapas are often thought to be a food thing - they aren't, that is a myth put around by cheapskate restaurateurs. The real point of tapas is to get a reasonably large amount of booze inside you without your becoming adversely affected. My choice for a tapas crawl would be the historical centre of a place like León, packed with bars and mesones, each specialising in a particular kind of tapa, but most places have a tapas barrio or route.

9) Sidra. Asturian cider is nearly flat, so its very slight fizziness is brought out by the elaborate pouring process, escancear. The right arm is held aloft over the pourer's head, the glass as low in his left hand as possible and tilted so that the stream of liquid strikes the side of the glass. It is filled about a quarter full or less, a culín, which you are supposed to drink quickly, almost in one, and throw any dregs into one of the containers you will see around the sidrería, cider-house. Repeat till bored, flat on your back or broke, which may take a while in all cases: sidra is fun, cheap and low in alcohol.

8) Aperitivos. Not quite the same as tapas, aperitivos are your pre-prandial drinks and snacks, especially before lunch, not instead of it. Going for aperitivos is a most civilized custom and has any number of variations, from charcoal-grilled fresh sardines washed down with beer at a chiringuito, beach bar, to barhopping around the historic centre of town. It is particularly heartwarming in small towns and villages in Spain to see how practically the whole population, all generations of it, turns out on a Saturday morning for a stroll and aperitivos.

7) Sherry by the bottle. Sherry is flamenco booze, and not just because it sometimes makes people take their shirts off and prance around like Joaquín Cortés. At Andalusian ferias (and their imitations in other parts of the country), you will flit from one caseta to the next, and the drink to order and share is a bottle or half-bottle of sherry - fino for preference, or manzanilla if you want to pass yourself off as a true sherry enterado - with a plate of olives as liver armour.

6) Queimada. Like grappa, Galician orujo is a kind of marc, the dirink made from what's left over of the grapes when the must has been taken off to make better wine. It is strong as hell, in terms of both taste and alcohol and, in a ceremony which has associations with witchcraft (many things do in Galicia, the feyest part of Spain), Galicians take the edge off it by setting fire to it in a bowl and burning off the strength.

5) Zurrito. The first time you are served the very small measure of beer that is a zurrito, probably in a Basque town, you will swill the beer around in the bottom your glass around and look at it patronisingly. An hour or two later, having had a zurrito in every bar in the barrio, you might be more respectful.

4) Cuba libre. Just because Castro resigned doesn't mean we need to stop drinking to the freedom of the island. Rum (or whisky) and Coca Cola is the Spanish nightlife staple, in the pub or at the disco, served in generous amounts with ice and lemon in a tall glass.

3) Sangria. The Spanish treat wine with a complete lack of reverence, to the extent that you need to go to a very expensive restaurant indeed before it will even cross the waiter's mind to offer you the cork to sniff. So they have no qualms about adding things to it, and a good sangria will also be made with a good or at least decent red wine, sweetened and diluted with lemonade and sugar, jazzed up with fruit and refortified with spirits, and on a warm day there is nothing so simultaneously satisfying, thirst-quenching and party-spirit creating as a good sangria.

2) Cava / agua de... Cava on its own is not all that often seen except at weddings, Christmas or birthdays (but is a good choice for a different kind of meal - a marisquada, a kind of seafood orgy, with which cava rosada goes down particularly well. But I digress). In other words, cava is more often drunk at the table than at the bar. But in the Basque Country, cava is jocularly referred to as agua de Bilbao and dispensed by the glass (as likely as not a frosted glass, at that), while agua de Valencia is a wonderful cocktail of cava and orange juice, with cointreau, vodka and/or other spirits according to the house recipe - it makes a fabulous aperitivo or a great introduction to Valencia's dizzying nightlife.

1) Vino. Spanish wine is among the best in the world, in terms of quality and interest, and there are so many wine experiences to be had they would need a "top ten" list of their own.