Aperol Spritz

Italy's orange-hued gift to summer drinking. Aperol, prosecco, and soda in the iconic 3-2-1 ratio. Bitter, bubbly, and impossibly refreshing. Spritz o'clock is always the right time.

The Aperol Spritz traces its origins to the Habsburg occupation of northeastern Italy in the early 19th century, when Austrian soldiers stationed in the Veneto found local wines stronger than they were accustomed to. They began asking bartenders to spray — spritzen in German — a dash of water into their wine to dilute it, and the custom took root in the region's kafeneia and taverns. Aperol itself arrived much later: brothers Luigi and Silvio Barbieri introduced it at the 1919 Padua International Fair after seven years of recipe development, producing a bright orange, bittersweet liqueur at just 11% ABV using bitter orange, gentian, rhubarb, and a proprietary botanical blend. The modern Aperol Spritz formula — three parts Prosecco, two parts Aperol, one part soda water — was not standardized until the 1970s, when it became the defining aperitivo of Veneto café culture. The International Bartenders Association added the drink to its official list in 2011. By 2019 the Aperol Spritz had become the ninth best-selling cocktail in the world according to Drinks International, powered by a decade of marketing that positioned it as a symbol of shared Italian pleasure. In 2012, thousands of fans gathered in Venice's Piazza San Marco to set a Guinness World Record for the largest Aperol Spritz toast.