Anise liqueur in Andalusia — Rute, Cazalla and Ojén

• Anisette / anís — spirit flavoured with aniseed. Sweet (dulce), dry (seco) or in between. Higher in alcohol than table wine.
• Matalahuva — the local name for aniseed (the seed of Pimpinella anisum). In Rute that seed is what you smell in the still-room.
• Cazalla — both a town in Seville province and a common name for a strong anise aguardiente from that sierra.
• Aguardiente — distilled spirit. “Aguardiente de hierro” is the dry, fierce style once linked to the Huelva mines.

Start here if you want to see the drink being made. Rute sits above the country of the Iznajar reservoir. Parish papers already list aguardiente makers in the mid-1600s. Anís de Rute is a protected name. Distilleries still working include houses such as Machaquito, Raza, Altamirano and Flor del Fresno. The styles are extra-dry, dry and sweet, from the same seed, run through copper stills.

The Museo del Anís, on Paseo del Fresno, occupies part of the old Destilerias Duende buildings (from 1908). Stills, labels, jars and a small tasting room are the visit. Machaquito also shows the process. There is a monument to anís in the streets. Rute is also known for nougat at Christmas; that is a shop, not a second museum. One morning in town is enough. The mountain walks around Rute belong to the reservoir and Subbetica pages, not to this glass.

North of Seville the Sierra Morena towns of Cazalla de la Sierra and Constantina once lived on wine and then on spirit. The local eau-de-vie kept the town name: cazalla, known as a hard, aromatic anise. There were dozens of stills. A few remain, making dry, medium and sweet anís and a sideline of coffee, mint and orange creams. The village is worth the stop if you are already crossing the Sierra Norte. It is not a substitute for Rute if the museum is the point of the day.

In Zalamea la Real and Alosno the same family of drinks grew up beside the mines. Miners took a dry aguardiente — aguardiente de hierro, “iron spirit” — because it was thought to help the chest. Whether that medical story holds or not, the glass was part of the working day. Production is smaller now. Treat this as a bottle you may find in a bar in the Andevalo, not as a visitor trail of still-rooms.

Ojen sits in the hills behind Marbella, in Malaga province. Spain’s first blast furnace stood here. Anise was distilled in the same industrial belt. The furnace is gone and anís is no longer made in the village. The name Ojén still appears on some labels bottled elsewhere. Come for the white streets and the view toward the coast, not for a working distillery.

Small lots of anise spirit are still made for local tables on the Contraviesa ridge and in the Alpujarra, on the Granada and Almeria side of the mountains. You will meet them in a village bar more often than in a shop with a tasting list. They are not a reason to reroute a Sierra Nevada day.