If you have stood in the Casco Viejo during fiesta week and watched a bowl of deep red punch pass from hand to hand down a long wooden table, you were almost certainly watching zurracapote. Not sangría. Most people who drink it at San Fermines call it the wrong name, reach for the wrong comparison, and leave Pamplona without knowing what they actually had. The difference matters, because zurracapote is not a variation of anything. It is its own drink, with its own origin, its own production process, and its own place in the culture of the festivals of northern Spain.
The gap between the two names is not just semantic. Sangría is wine with fruit and sugar, assembled and drunk the same day. Zurracapote is wine macerated for days with cinnamon, lemon rind, and peaches, a process that breaks down the fruit, infuses the spice into every sip, and produces something closer in character to a slow-steeped punch than a quick mix. What the peñas make and carry to their gatherings during San Fermines is the latter. It takes patience to prepare and a specific tradition to understand, and both of those things trace back not to Pamplona but to a town on the Rioja side of the border, a town most visitors to the fiesta have never heard of.
The research for this article draws on documentation from Calahorra (the drink’s place of origin), the Vivanco Foundation’s cultural archive in La Rioja, coverage by Infobae España, and primary accounts from Pamplona-based writers who have been observing and writing about San Fermines culture since 2008. What follows is what zurracapote actually is, where it came from, and why it has spent decades hiding in plain sight under the wrong name.
Calahorra Made It. The Rioja Spread It. Navarra Adopted It.
The documented origin of zurracapote is the city of Calahorra, in La Rioja: a town of roughly 25,000 people on the Ebro River, right on the provincial border with Navarra. Calahorra has a long tradition of peña culture, with six large clubs organizing the town’s social and festive life and the competition between them taken seriously. It was within this context, sometime in the mid-twentieth century, that one of those peñas, the Peña Philips, formally known as “Peña Philips, Hasta que el cuerpo aguante” and founded in 1954, developed the recipe that became zurracapote.
The occasion was Semana Santa. The peña was making something to accompany the traditional sweets of Holy Week, and what they arrived at was a cold, macerated wine punch: red wine steeped with sugar syrup, cinnamon, and citrus. There is no single document that records the exact date or recipe, but the attribution to Peña Philips in Calahorra is consistent across every source that has investigated the drink’s history. Calahorra now holds an annual competition among its six peñas to name the best zurracapote of the year, a formal acknowledgment of the local ownership of the tradition.
From Calahorra, zurracapote spread across the northern tier of Spain: through La Rioja, into Navarra and the Basque Country, across into Burgos and Soria, and eventually, in various local forms, reaching as far south as Guadalajara, Cuenca, Ciudad Real, and Granada. Each area adapted the recipe to local taste and local wine. In the Basque Country the drink is documented in Basauri. In Ribera Navarra, the zone closest to Calahorra, the tradition is strong enough that it has become part of the cultural furniture: something every peña knows how to make, though few can trace it back to its source.
The word itself encodes the drink’s geography. Zurracapote is most likely a compound of zurra, from Spanish (the act of soaking or macerating); -aca, a Basque suffix; and pote, a small glass of wine or a vessel. A Basque-tinged Spanish word for a macerated wine served in a communal pot. Which is exactly what it is.
How It Is Made, and Why the Process Is the Point
The recipe for zurracapote is not complicated. What sets it apart is time.
The base is red wine: traditionally clarete, the light, translucent red wine of La Rioja, though standard tinto works and some makers use white wine for a different character. To the wine go sugar (first dissolved in water into a light syrup), cinnamon sticks (steeped separately in water and then combined), and lemon: both juice and rind. Peaches, fresh and cut into pieces, are the most traditional fruit addition, though recipes vary by maker and season.
The mixture then sits. The Vivanco Foundation‘s cultural record notes macerations of five to seven days for the traditional large-batch version; a home-scale preparation can be ready in 48 hours. During that time, the cinnamon infuses into the wine, the sugar softens the edges of the acid, and the fruit breaks down, releasing its natural sugars and flavors into the liquid while absorbing the wine’s tannins in return. The peach pieces that come out of a well-made zurracapote after five days are themselves worth eating.
What you do not add is brandy. This is the technical distinction from sangría that most people miss. The Real Academia Española defines sangría as wine with water, sugar, and lemon, with no spirits. Zurracapote, in its traditional form, also carries no added spirits. The alcohol comes only from the wine. Some versions add aguardiente or a similar spirit, but that is a deviation, not the standard. The result, when made correctly, is a mild-to-medium drink: cold, spiced, faintly sweet, with the fruit present in both texture and taste.
The peñas of northern Spain make it at scale. A typical peña batch runs 16 liters or more, prepared in a large vessel and carried to wherever the group is gathering. You do not order zurracapote at a bar. You drink it because someone in your group made it days earlier and brought it in a container large enough to share.
What It Does at San Fermines
Zurracapote is not a morning drink. The mornings at San Fermines belong to other rituals: the encierro, the post-run crowd, the cafés that open early for txistorra and eggs and the kaiku y coñac tradition that has its own article on this site. Zurracapote belongs to the afternoon and evening: to the long tables set in the streets of the Casco Viejo, to the peñas gathered with their food and their communal vessels, to the hours after the encierro crowd has dispersed and the serious fiesta eating and drinking begins.
The peñas that carry zurracapote to their afternoon gatherings during fiesta week are bringing something they made in advance: a deliberate preparation, not a spontaneous pour. It circulates in plastic containers or traditional ceramic bowls, passed without ceremony because the point is the sharing, not the serving. The soaked fruit at the bottom of the container is a signal that someone did the work properly.
Most visitors to San Fermines encounter zurracapote without knowing it. They see the red punch, they think sangría, and they move on. Locals know the difference, and the Pamplona writers who have been documenting San Fermines culture for decades are direct about it. One, writing in 2011, admitted that he had spent years calling what he drank in the stands “sangría” before he understood it was zurracapote, and that the realization changed how he thought about what the peñas were actually doing.
What the peñas are doing is maintaining a tradition that predates their presence in Pamplona. Zurracapote arrived at San Fermines the same way most of the food and drink culture of the fiesta arrived: through the border geography of La Rioja and southern Navarra, through clubs and groups that shared recipes and customs across provincial lines, through proximity to Calahorra and the culture that radiated from it. The drink is real here. It just carries the wrong name most of the time.
Zurracapote in 2024: A Drink Being Rediscovered
Outside northern Spain, zurracapote is almost unknown. There is no international equivalent. No other country has adopted it. Until recently it had almost no English-language profile at all.
That changed in June 2024 when chef José Andrés, the Asturian-born, Washington D.C.-based founder of World Central Kitchen and arguably the most prominent Spanish chef in the English-speaking world, dedicated a piece in his Substack newsletter “Longer Tables” to zurracapote. He called it “a cousin of sangría, but lighter and usually with less alcohol” and described the key to making it as “a little time and patience.” He called it, without reservation, “your new favorite summer drink.”
The endorsement did not invent the drink. Zurracapote had been made in Calahorra since the 1950s, served at San Fermines for decades, drunk across the northern provinces without fanfare or international coverage. But José Andrés’s piece was, practically speaking, the first time a large English-language audience encountered the name and understood what it described.
For visitors to Pamplona, the practical implication is simple: if someone at a peña gathering hands you a cup of cold, red, slightly spiced punch and it tastes different from what you expected sangría to taste like, deeper, more complex, with an edge of cinnamon and macerated fruit: that is probably what it is. Ask. The name is worth knowing.
It is also worth noticing what zurracapote is not: a bottled, nationally distributed product. Compare it with Solán de Cabras, the mineral water brand sold across every Spanish supermarket and sponsored onto Real Madrid jerseys. One drink is industrial and national; the other is still mixed by hand in peña kitchens and carried to the table in jugs. Both are genuinely regional in origin, but only one stayed that way.
Frequently Asked Questions About Zurracapote
What is zurracapote made of?
Zurracapote is made from red wine, traditionally a light clarete from La Rioja, macerated for several days with sugar syrup, cinnamon sticks, lemon rind, and seasonal fruit, most commonly peaches. The mixture steeps without heat for three to seven days before serving cold. No brandy or spirits are added in the traditional recipe, which makes it lower in alcohol than many assume.
Is zurracapote the same as sangría?
No. The two drinks share red wine and fruit but differ in process and character. Sangría is assembled and served immediately; zurracapote is macerated for days, which produces a spiced, fruit-infused punch with a distinctly different flavor. Cinnamon, present in zurracapote and absent from standard sangría, is the clearest marker. At San Fermines, what the peñas prepare and share communally is almost always zurracapote, though most outsiders call it sangría.
Where did zurracapote originate?
Zurracapote originated in Calahorra, a city in La Rioja on the border with Navarra. The Peña Philips, a social club founded in 1954, is credited with creating the recipe for Holy Week celebrations. From Calahorra it spread across northern Spain: into Navarra, the Basque Country, Castilla y León, and eventually much further south. It is the typical drink of the La Rioja region and the surrounding areas, not a Pamplona invention, though it has a strong presence at San Fermines.
Where can I try zurracapote in Pamplona during San Fermines?
Zurracapote is not a bar order — you will not find it on a menu. It is a communal drink, made in advance by peñas and shared among members at their gatherings and in the streets during fiesta week. Your best chance of encountering it is at the long communal tables in the Casco Viejo during the afternoon and evening, particularly around peña gathering areas in neighborhoods like Navarrería and San Nicolás. If you are with a local group, ask what is in the bowl before assuming it is sangría. And at the bar, when the peña bowl is out of reach, the everyday order across Spain is a tinto de verano, not sangría either.
Every article on the Encierro blog is authored or reviewed by active bull runners with direct experience in Pamplona.