It started as a soldier’s complaint about strong wine and ended up on every terrace from Sydney to Stockholm. Two hundred years of the Veneto’s favourite drink, one date at a time.
After Napoleon, the Veneto passes to Austria, and it stays Austrian until 1866. The soldiers and officials posted there find the local wine too heavy and ask for water in it — spritzen, German for “to spray.”
By the early twentieth century the soda siphon has turned the splash into a spray. White wine topped up with sparkling water is a standard bar order from Venice to Trieste.
Aperol launches at the Padua trade fair in 1919, Select in Venice a year later, and bartenders start adding a shot of bitter liqueur. The spritz turns orange, or red, depending on the town.
Still wine gives way to sparkling. Prosecco from the hills north of Treviso becomes the base, and the recipe settles into roughly the one poured today: sparkling wine, bitter, soda.
Campari Group buys Barbero 1891, the company that makes Aperol, and pushes the Aperol Spritz around the world with an easy rule to remember: three parts Prosecco, two parts Aperol, one part soda.
The International Bartenders Association adds the drink to its official list, first as the Spritz Veneziano and later just as the Spritz. By 2019 it’s the ninth best-selling cocktail in the world.
For all the global marketing, the old regional versions haven’t gone anywhere. In Trieste, order a spritz bianco and you’ll get white wine and sparkling water with no bitter at all, which is about as close to the Habsburg original as you’ll find. Venice pours Select and drops a green olive in the glass. Padua sticks with Aperol, its home-town bitter. Over in Brescia the local cousin is the Pirlo, made with still white wine and Campari.
Our own version skips the Prosecco for something bottle-fermented. A col fondo like Col del Lupo’s Aldo is drier and a little cloudy from the lees, and it gives the bitter something to argue with. Not sure what col fondo is? Start here.