Campari Spritz

For those who find Aperol too sweet. The Campari Spritz delivers genuine Italian bitter complexity with prosecco bubbles and a splash of soda. The sophisticated aperitivo choice.

The Campari Spritz is one of the most direct expressions of northern Italian aperitivo culture, combining Gaspare Campari's 1860 bitter liqueur with Prosecco and soda water in the Spritz format that has been central to Veneto and Lombardy drinking culture for well over a century. Gaspare Campari developed the recipe for his liqueur around 1860 in Novara, Piedmont, and began selling it commercially in 1861 from the Caffè Campari in the Galleria Vittorio Emanuele II in Milan, the magnificent iron-and-glass arcade that was under construction at the time. The liqueur's striking red color — produced by a combination of botanical ingredients whose exact identity has been a trade secret since the founding — and its intensely bitter citrus flavor made it immediately distinctive. The Spritz format traces to 19th-century Veneto, where Austrian soldiers occupying the region during Habsburg rule found the local wines too strong and began diluting them with a splash of water — spritzen in German — a practice that evolved into the wine-and-soda serve locals adopted. When Campari replaced the wine as the base, the combination with Prosecco's effervescence and soda water's lightness created a drink perfectly calibrated for the pre-dinner aperitivo hour. The Campari Group's promotional investment in the Spritz format through the late 20th and early 21st centuries made the Campari Spritz one of the most globally recognized Italian cocktails.