Spritz

What is a spritz?

The spritz is the Italian evening in a glass: prosecco, a bitter aperitivo like Aperol or Campari and a splash of soda, served over ice with an orange slice. The best known derivation tells of Austrian soldiers in the Habsburg era who diluted Italian wines with a shot of water or soda because they found them too strong, and from the splashing the drink got its name. The story is hard to prove, but the name undoubtedly comes from spritzen, the German for splashing, and the success story from the aperitivo in Veneto to the bars of the whole world is undisputed anyway.

What makes a spritz

• The formula: for the Aperol spritz the 3-2-1 formula has won out, three parts prosecco, two parts Aperol, one part soda
• The bitter: Aperol, Campari or, very Venetian, Select, the bitter makes the character
• The golden hour: the spritz is an aperitivo, it belongs to the warm hour before the evening and gets along well with everything low ABV, more on that in our Low ABV entry

Distinction: spritz, Collins and fizz

All of them live off soda, but the spritz is a sparkling wine drink with a bitter share, the Collins a built sour and the fizz a shaken little brother: three times bubbles, three times a different drink.

Remember: the punch is the big round, the sling the simple formula, the rickey the dry variant, the spritz the Italian evening, the nog the velvety family.

At our lounge

When the evening is still young, the spritz is one of the finest decisions of the hour: bitter, bright and ice cold. Ask about our aperitivo, the orange hour is part of it here.