Galicia’s cider tradition is older than its beer tradition and more specific to the region. In Asturias and Galicia, sidra is not an alternative to wine or beer — it is the drink that the landscape produces, made from the apple varieties grown in the wet, green northwest of Spain that shares its climate more with Brittany and Ireland than with Andalusia or Castile. The Maeloc Extra Organic Cider is a certified organic Galician cider produced under the Maeloc label by Hijos de Rivera — the same A Coruña family brewery behind Estrella Galicia — bringing the organic ingredient discipline of the Jade range logic to a cider tradition that predates the brewery itself. Pale gold, crisp apple character, dry finish, 4.0% ABV in a 750ml bottle. If you are Spanish and living in Tokyo, this is the Galician drink that sidra culture was built around, in certified organic form.
Galicia’s organic sidra tradition, by Hijos de Rivera
Hijos de Rivera / Maeloc is the brewery and cider label behind this product, with the Maeloc brand representing a modern Galician cider expression produced under the parent company Hijos de Rivera — founded in 1906 in A Coruña and best known internationally for Estrella Galicia. The Maeloc label represents a modern Galician cider production, with the founding described as Modern Galician craft (parent Hijos de Rivera), applying organic certification to the Galician sidra category.
The style is an organic Galician cider: a fermented apple drink in the northwest Spanish tradition, not a flavoured beer or a fruit-addition product but an apple-based fermentation in its own right. The pour is pale gold, and the sensory profile is built on crisp apple character with a dry finish — a cider that reads as the fruit rather than as a sweetened approximation of it. The dry finish places the Maeloc Extra within the traditional sidra category rather than the sweeter commercial cider market, which is the distinction that Galician and Asturian cider drinkers consider important. At 4.0% ABV, it is a sessionable drink at the same strength as many session lagers, and the 750ml bottle suits the social format that sidra traditionally occupies: poured at the table to share rather than individual bottles for individual drinkers.
How Maeloc Extra Organic Cider Beer is drunk at home
¡Salud! (sah-LOOD) — the Spanish toast, applied to every glass at the table. In Galicia and Asturias, the traditional sidra toast involves pouring the cider from height to aerate it — the long pour from the bottle held above the head to the glass held low — a practice called escanciar that is as much theatre as technique. The Maeloc in a 750ml bottle invites that spirit if not the full ritual.
In Galicia, sidra belongs to the sidrería rather than the tapas bar — the specialist cider house where the drink is poured and consumed with specific Galician and Asturian foods. Jamón ibérico works alongside a dry cider in the same way it works alongside most Spanish drinks: the fat and the salt of the cured ham finding the dry apple finish in a combination where neither element overwhelms the other. Tapas broadly suit the Maeloc’s 4.0% and its crisp character — olives, cheese, small plates of seafood — the dry finish cutting through each element and resetting the palate cleanly. Paella, with its complexity and its saffron richness, is a more considered pairing: the dry apple finish of the Maeloc provides a refreshing counterpoint to the richness of the dish, the acidity of the cider doing work similar to a squeeze of lemon over a seafood plate.
Regional fiestas and Spain’s National Day on October 12 are the calendar anchors for the Spanish community in Tokyo, and the Maeloc 750ml bottle is suited to the shared-pour occasions that those gatherings generate — a bottle opened at the table and passed around, in the Galician sidra spirit.
How to drink it in Japan
The Maeloc Extra Organic Cider is a warm-season drink in Japan — April through September — when the crisp apple character and the dry finish suit the temperature and the outdoor occasions the spring and summer generate. Japan’s own apple-drink culture is well-developed, which means the Maeloc arrives in a market that already understands apple as a flavour worth paying attention to.
At Lawson, try it alongside a plain salted rice cracker or a mild cheese snack — the clean starch and the light salt provide the neutral accompaniment that lets the crisp apple character of the Maeloc come forward without competition. For a composed pairing at home, serve it with grilled oysters — kaki no teppanyaki, the oyster on the shell with a squeeze of lemon and a drop of ponzu — where the brine of the oyster and the acidity of the citrus find the dry apple finish of the Maeloc in a pairing that follows the same logic as sidra alongside shellfish in Galicia: the sea’s saltiness and the apple’s acidity in direct conversation. It is a pairing that connects the Galician coast and the Japanese coast through the same food and drink logic.
Certified organic Galician cider in 750ml bottles is not available through Tokyo’s standard retail channels. By the case from Omori Mart — 750ml × 12 bottles — the per-bottle cost is accessible for an organic cider at this format and provenance, and twelve bottles covers the spring and summer season comfortably.
Get Maeloc Extra Organic Cider Beer delivered in Japan
Maeloc Extra Organic Cider Beer is available from Omori Mart in a 750ml × 12 bottle case, delivered nationwide across Japan.
- Free shipping on orders over ¥15,000
- Pay at FamilyMart, 7-Eleven, or Lawson — or by bank transfer or card
- Nationwide delivery to any address in Japan
Rakuten and Amazon Japan do not carry this label. Omori Mart is where Spaniards in Japan find the Galician drinks that the standard import market does not carry — including the organic sidra that the northwest of Spain has been producing since before anyone was counting.
[Shop Maeloc Extra Organic Cider Beer →]
https://omorimart.com/product/maeloc-extra-organic-cider-beer-750ml-x-12-bottles/
¡Salud! in Galicia, where the apple orchards and the Atlantic coast have been producing sidra for longer than the Estrella Galicia brewery has existed, and kanpai at a Tokyo table in May — pale gold, crisp apple, dry to the finish, and the northwest Spain that most people in Japan have not yet tasted.
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