Cocktail · Light & sessionable
Aperol Spritz
Prosecco, Aperol, soda — golden hour you can hold.
How to order it: 3-2-1 build over ice, orange slice. Best consumed outdoors.
Flavor profile
The recipe
- 3 oz Prosecco
- 2 oz Aperol
- 1 oz soda water
- Build over ice in a wine glass
- Orange slice
The story
The spritz habit goes back to Habsburg soldiers stationed in the Veneto in the 1800s, who found local wines too strong and asked for a spray — spritzen — of water. Aperol itself arrived in 1919, created by the Barbieri brothers in Padua: a gentle, rhubarb-and-orange bitter at half the strength of its Milanese rivals. The two ideas merged into the modern 3-2-1 spritz, a Venetian regional custom until a masterful 2000s marketing campaign, post-Campari acquisition, turned it into the global shorthand for European summer. It endures because it solved daytime drinking: low-proof, bittersweet, and the exact color of the hour it was built for.
Adjacent pours