Cruzcampo

Andalusia runs on Cruzcampo: the pale, ice-cold lager of Seville, poured a few fingers at a time in bars hung with ham legs across Spain's south, and one of Brand Finance's forty most valuable beer brands.

Two brothers from the Osborne sherry dynasty started brewing it in Seville in 1904 and named it for the Cruz del Campo, a medieval wayside shrine — the "cross of the field" — standing near the brewery. Their jolly beer-king mascot, Gambrinus, still grins from the label. The real house specialty, though, is temperature: Seville summers are furnace-grade, so bars compete on the coldness of the pour, and a proper caña lands with frost still on the glass.

Heineken owns Cruzcampo today through its Spanish business, giving an Andalusian icon the world's second-largest brewer as a parent. In the south, nothing much changed — small glasses, brutal cold, endless refills — while the brand has lately been winning a surprising second audience in Britain.

Light gold, brilliantly clear, with a lively, fine sparkle. The flavor is deliberately modest — fresh grain, a lemony hint, low bitterness — because delivery is the point: near-freezing, in a small caña that empties before the frost fades. Next to fried fish or a plate of jamón, it disappears with alarming ease.