Is it just me, or does water out of a clay pot taste better than water out of literally anything else?
Mention a jarro de barro to anyone who grew up with one and watch their face change. Same goes for a matka in the corner of a nani's kitchen. And if you're one of my Picans or Geophagians, there's a decent chance that face comes with a very specific craving attached. So this one has been on my list for a while.
A jarro de barro is a Mexican clay jug, traditionally made from porous, low-fired terracotta and used to keep drinking water cool. The family goes by a few names depending on size and shape. A jarrito de barro is the little cup. A cántaro or botellón de barro is the big round-bellied water jug. An olla de barro is the cooking pot that café de olla takes its name from. Same clay, same smell, different jobs.
So why does the water taste like that?
There are two things going on, and only one of them is settled science.
The first is temperature. Unglazed terracotta is porous, so a tiny bit of water creeps through the walls and evaporates off the outside. Evaporation takes heat with it, so the water inside stays cooler than the room. Spain has the botijo, India has the matka and the surahi, Mexico has the jarro and the cántaro. Same trick, worked out by people in hot places long before anyone owned a fridge. And cold water tastes crisper. Nobody's arguing with that bit.
The second is the clay itself, and this is where it gets interesting for us lot. Water sitting in raw terracotta picks up the smell of the clay, and possibly a trace of whatever minerals are in it. A brand new jarro tastes the strongest, and most people say the clay taste mellows after a few days of use (which, honestly, some people are gutted about). I haven't found a proper study that pins down exactly which compounds are doing what, so I'm not going to pretend I have. But to me, it's mostly the smell. Taste is largely smell anyway, and wet terracotta sits right next to petrichor, that rain-on-dry-earth smell a fair few of my product tags are named after.
Why Geophagians in particular love it
For most people, clay pot water is a nice nostalgic thing. For anyone with clay cravings, it's something else entirely.
If you live with geophagia or pica, you'll know the craving isn't only about crunch. A lot of it is the smell. That dusty, damp, slightly iron-y hit when you open a fresh bag of terracotta. Jarro de barro water hands you that smell in every sip with none of the crunch. To me it's like watching the trailer for a film. It scratches the itch a little, then makes you want the real thing more. LOL.
I'm genuinely curious whether any of you use clay pot water to take the edge off terracotta cravings, say at work, where you can't exactly sit there snapping clay pots in a meeting. Does it help, or does it make it worse? I can see it going either way, so tell me.
This is 400 years old, by the way
Here's the bit I love. In the 1600s, polished red clay water jars called búcaros de Indias were made around Tonalá, in Jalisco, and shipped over to Spain, where they were a proper luxury item. People prized them for the aroma and flavour they gave the water. And then, once the water was gone, a lot of fashionable Spanish women ate the jar. Little nibbled fragments, like sweets. It was believed to give you a pale complexion, which was the look at the time.
It's in one of the most famous paintings in the world. In Velázquez's Las Meninas (1656), the young Infanta Margarita is being handed a little búcaro of water on a silver tray. The playwright Lope de Vega was already taking the mick back in 1608: "Niña de color quebrado, o tienes amores o comes barro." Roughly, pale girl, either you're in love or you're eating clay.
So if anyone ever tells you crunching clay is weird, the Spanish royal court would like a word.
Please read this bit: lead
I'm not writing a whole post about jarros de barro and skipping the boring safety stuff, because this genuinely matters.
A lot of traditional Mexican pottery is still finished with lead-based glaze. It's cheaper and it gives that lovely shine, so plenty of potters still use it, and lead can leach into whatever's inside, especially anything hot or acidic. Worse, the US FDA has found pots stamped "lead free" that weren't. So if you're buying a jarro de barro to actually drink from:
1. Go for one that's unglazed inside or certified lead-free. In Mexico, look for barro sin plomo, or organisations like Barro Aprobado that certify lead-free pottery.
2. Don't trust a "lead free" stamp on its own. Home lead test kits are cheap and worth having.
3. Anything labelled decorative or not for food use stays decorative. No exceptions.
4. Season it before first use with a long soak in clean water. No soap, ever.
And please, please don't nibble your jarrito. I say that as someone whose side hustle is literally selling clay pots to crunch. A market jarrito wasn't made to be eaten. You don't know the glaze, you don't know the firing, and that's not the same thing as clay that's been sourced for crunching.
So why don't I sell them?
Short answer: I don't sell jarros de barro, and I'm not planning to.
They're big, they're fragile, and I pack every order myself in (almost) plastic-free packaging. A 4 litre clay jug going through the post would arrive as very expensive terracotta crumbs. Which, admittedly, some of you would still eat. I also can't vouch for the glaze on pottery made for drinking, and I'd rather not sell something I can't stand behind.
What I do have is a lot of edible terracotta, which is basically the same craving coming at it from the other direction.
If it's the Mexican barro flavour you're after, the Cacahuates Japonés de Barro are tiny hand-moulded terracotta pebbles with a soft dusty crunch and loads of red-earth mineral, and I stock La Sobrina's soft Mexican mini clay pots and broken chips whenever I can get hold of them (they don't hang about). If you want the closest thing to biting the cup, the Indian terracotta tiny glasses are literally miniature kulhad cups, the clay chai cups you see all over India, and the Mini Matki are tiny versions of the matka water pot I mentioned at the start. For a proper petrichor hit, Shree Pots are super snappy and very earthy, and Terracotta Tumbles is the mixed bag if you can't decide.
One honest note. My terracotta is sold for crunching, not for holding water, and I'm not going to tell you it's lab-certified. Every listing says how it's been tested. If it doesn't say lab-tested, assume it hasn't been.
Drink from the jarro. Crunch the kulhad. Just maybe not the other way round.
Ta x
Disclaimer
My clay and chalk products are natural materials sold for sensory, hobbyist and ASMR use. They're not certified food-grade, and I don't sell them as food, supplements or medicine. I know members of the Pica and Geophagy community may crunch, chew, spit or swallow clay at their own discretion and risk, and I don't promote ingestion. This article is general information based on my own research and experience, not medical advice, and I'm not a doctor or nutritionist. Pottery made for drinking, including jarros de barro, can contain lead in the glaze: never eat it, and check it's lead-free before you drink from it. If you have any concerns about pica, geophagia, ingesting non-food materials or lead exposure, please speak to a GP or another qualified healthcare professional, especially if you're pregnant.
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