For Basques, The Bota Bag Is Always Half-Full

You have to admire a people who consider gorging on multiple hot dogs a warmup act before dinner thunders onto the stage.

To the Basque, explains Tim Ugaldea, a red-bearded jolly bear of a man who spoke to me through wine-stained teeth, the “chorizo” is so much more than a mere pork sausage.

“We call them God’s hot dogs,” Ugaldea says with pride.

The actual reference, I think, is short for: “Please, God, not another hot dog or I’ll explode like the Hindenburg!”

The chorizo was just one of the fascinating things I learned at Saturday’s Inland Northwest Basque Society picnic. Ugaldea, the president of the club, invited me to the annual gathering held in his South Hill back yard.

I didn’t know Spokane had any descendants of the small, hilly, Spanish-controlled nation in the western Pyrenees.

I gladly accepted Ugaldea’s offer. Never turn down a chance to study foreign cultures, especially if the research involves great amounts of food and adult beverages.

And when it comes to those aforementioned disciplines, the Basques are true party animals.

Take the bota bag, for example. This crescent-shaped, leather canteen is the wine delivery system preferred by Basques.

As demonstrated by Inaki Zabala, a true Basque can hold a bota at arm’s length and fire a horizontal jet of red wine into the corner of his mouth without spilling so much as a droplet.

This talent must be genetic. Attempting the same feat, I not only disgraced myself, but nearly drowned.

“In the Basque Country,” explains Zabala’s wife, Sally, “you go from your mother’s breast straight to the bota.”

These Basques are a fun bunch, which is refreshing. The news that usually comes out of Basque Country involves pipe bombs and kidnappings. Mirroring the turmoil between Northern Ireland and Great Britain, Basque separatists have long been engaged in a bloody struggle with Spain for independence.

Basque is the most ancient culture in Europe, Ugaldea explains, showing me a map of the homeland that is spread over the top of a covered hot tub. The Basque language is unrelated to any other language on Earth.

Although I had always associated Basques with herding sheep, Ugaldea and his pals quickly set me straight. Back home, Basques are mostly farmers or fishermen. Around the turn of the century, a wave of Basques migrated to America to make money in the cattle and sheep industries.

Many of them settled in southern Idaho, which today boasts a sizable Basque population.

Mind you, I was trying to absorb this travelogue of information while simultaneously being deluged with chorizos, lamb chops, rice and clams, beans, salad, bread, rice pudding, flan and mucho cabernet. So I may have hallucinated this last fact.

But I swear several of my new friends told me that Basque sheep ranchers use their teeth to castrate their livestock. The testicles, once removed, are then spat into a bucket.

Tradition is a wonderful thing, but you have to wonder how such a behavior ever got started.

Was the very first wool chomper just a forgetful man who left his pocket knife on a shelf back home?

Was this the erratic aftermath of a bota binge?

Or was he paying off a bad bet made during a furious game of Mus. That’s the name of the traditional card game favored by Basque men.

I watched a Mus match for half an hour and can’t even begin to explain what the rules are. Nor the significance of the dried garbanzo beans that kept being passed back and forth between the players.

At least I think the men were playing with garbanzo beans. For all I know they might have been sheep herders playing with …

Shut up and pass me the bota!