spritzen

Spritzen is the German verb meaning to spray or squirt. In the 1800s, when the Veneto region of northeastern Italy was under Austrian Habsburg rule, Austrian and German-speaking soldiers and administrators found Italian wines too strong for their taste. They asked bartenders to add a splash — a spritz — of water. The resulting diluted wine was called ein Spritz. The request was so common that it became a drink category.

By the early twentieth century, the spritz had evolved from watered-down wine into something more deliberate. Bartenders in Padua and Venice began adding soda water for fizz, then bitter liqueurs for flavor. Aperol, created by the Barbieri brothers in Padua in 1919, became the defining ingredient. Select, another Venetian bitter, was the local alternative. The spritz was no longer a compromise. It was a cocktail with a formula: prosecco, bitter liqueur, soda water, served in a large wine glass with an olive or orange slice.

For most of the twentieth century, the spritz was a regional Veneto drink. Romans did not drink it. Milanese did not order it. It was as local as the dialect. The globalization happened in the 2000s, when Campari Group acquired Aperol in 2003 and launched an aggressive international marketing campaign. By 2018, the Aperol Spritz was everywhere — Instagram, rooftop bars, airport lounges. The German word for spray had become the Italian word for summer.

The New York Times published an article in 2019 declaring the Aperol Spritz 'not a good drink.' The internet erupted. The backlash to the backlash generated more publicity than any ad campaign could buy. A drink that Austrian soldiers improvised out of weakness preferences in occupied Italy became the most argued-about cocktail of the decade.