History and origin
Grape juice before it ferments — the tapa arrives all the same
Mosto is the juice that comes out of the grape when it is pressed, before fermentation turns it into wine: sweet, fruity, alcohol-free. It is a harvest drink — September and October are its months — and it keeps the taste of the grape exactly as it leaves the bunch.
One point of vocabulary matters: in Lower Andalusia, in Huelva or Jerez, “mosto” also names a young, already fermented wine of around twelve degrees. At Almería’s counters, by contrast, asking for a mosto means asking for grape juice. The vineyard, besides, is not far: the province has over a thousand hectares of vines, and the Almerían Alpujarra’s plots grow between 700 and 1,000 metres under the Laujar-Alpujarra PGI. In Alhama, the trellises of Ohanes grapes — the uva del barco — tell the other half of that story.
Its role in the tapa custom is the most generous of the three: mosto is the order that keeps the ritual intact without alcohol. Whoever is driving, whoever does not drink, whoever comes with children asks for their glass and gets their tapa like everyone else at the table. The round leaves no one out — and that is a good part of what makes tapeo work.
