The Spritz Is More Than A Cocktail, It's A Vibe
A shorthand for a certain kind of afternoon. And for a few years there, the entire category collapsed into one bottle and one shade of orange, which is a strange fate for a drink that has been mutating across northern Italy since the Austrians occupied the Veneto and started cutting the local wine with water.
The good news: the spritz is finally getting interesting again. Sarti Rosa turned up and made everything pink. The Hugo crawled out of an alpine valley and took over half the menus in Europe. Bartenders started building spritzes on vermouth instead of aperitivo, quietly redrawing the creative boundaries of the spritz as we know it.
The Magic Lies In The Ratio
A Spritz is traditionally three parts sparkling wine. Two parts aperitivo. One part soda. Over ice, in a stemmed wine glass, built in the glass and stirred once.
That's the Venetian standard and it holds up under almost any substitution you throw at it. The soda is not optional and it is not a rounding error.
On the wine: use a dry prosecco, not an extra dry. The naming is counterintuitive and it costs people a lot of good spritzes. La Marca and Mionetto are the two most widely stocked bottles that won't fight your aperitivo.
Two structural notes before the recipes. Use ice aggressively, because a half-empty glass of ice dilutes faster than a full one. And pour the prosecco first, then the aperitivo, then the soda. Building in that order means the heavier liqueur sinks and integrates on its own, and you barely have to stir, which is how the bubbles survive.
Eight Spritzes For The Summer
01. The Aperol Spritz
The baseline. Still correct, still the one everybody orders.
Ingredients
Method
- Fill a large stemmed wine glass with ice.
- Pour prosecco, then Aperol, then soda.
- Stir once, gently. You are not making a smoothie.
- Lay a dehydrated orange wheel across the ice.
The Fix Nobody Makes
Aperol at 11% ABV is the lightest thing in the glass, so a heavy hand here does more damage to the balance than an extra half ounce of prosecco. If your spritz tastes like cough syrup, the aperitivo is high, not the wine.
02. The Sarti Spritz
Pink, tropical, and the fastest-moving spritz of the last two summers.
Ingredients
Method
- Build over ice in a stemmed wine glass.
- Stir once.
- Garnish with a grapefruit wheel.
Grapefruit Over Lime
Sarti Rosa comes out of Casa Sarti in Bologna, built on Sicilian blood orange with mango and passion fruit behind it, and at 14% ABV it runs sweeter than Aperol. The brand calls for lime, which gives you a color contrast. Grapefruit gives you a flavor argument instead: the pith bitterness pulls the drink back toward aperitivo territory and keeps the tropical notes from tipping into juice.
03. The Select Spritz
The Venetian original, and a considerably more serious drink.
Ingredients
Method
- Build over ice in a stemmed wine glass in the standard order.
- Stir once.
- Garnish with an olive. Yes, an olive.
- Add an orange wheel alongside it for color and aromatics.
On The Olive
This is not a bit. Select has been made in Venice since 1920 on a base of thirty botanicals including juniper and rhubarb root, and at 17.5% ABV it lands meaningfully more bitter and more herbal than Aperol. The brine of a good Castelvetrano is what a Venetian bar has been putting in this glass for a century.
04. The Hugo Spritz
Invented in a South Tyrolean bar in 2005 and now on more European menus than the Aperol.
Ingredients
Method
- Slap the mint once between your palms and drop it in the glass.
- Add ice, then prosecco, then St-Germain, then soda.
- Stir once.
- Garnish with a lime wheel and a second mint sprig at the rim.
Slap, Don't Muddle
Muddled mint turns bitter and leaves green shrapnel in a drink that should be crystalline. One firm slap between your hands releases the oil without bruising the leaf.
The spritz is the only cocktail where the garnish outlasts the ice. Build it accordingly.
The Garnish Guide, Vol. 105. The Antica Spritz
Vermouth instead of aperitivo. Deeper, spicier, and the one to serve people who say they don't like spritzes.
Ingredients
Method
- Fill a stemmed wine glass with ice.
- Add Antica Formula, then prosecco.
- Top with 1 oz soda and stir gently.
- Garnish with an orange wheel, or an orange peel expressed over the glass and dropped in.
Keep The Bottle Cold
Antica Formula is a fortified wine at 16.5% ABV, not a liqueur, and it oxidizes once opened. Refrigerate it and use it within a few weeks.
06. The Limoncello Spritz
The Amalfi answer. Bright, sweet, and dangerously easy to over-serve.
Ingredients
Method
- Build over ice in a stemmed wine glass.
- Stir once.
- Garnish with a lemon wheel and a mint sprig.
Use A Bone-Dry Prosecco
Standard 3-2-1 works here, but only if the wine pulls its weight. Pallini runs 26% ABV and carries real sugar, so a sweeter prosecco pushes the whole glass into dessert territory. Stick to brut or extra brut.
07. The Zero-Proof Spritz
The fastest-growing order behind almost every bar in America, and the one most bars still get wrong.
Ingredients
Method
- Fill a stemmed wine glass with ice.
- Add NA sparkling wine, then Lyre's, then soda.
- Dash bitters over the top and stir once.
- Garnish with a blood orange wheel.
Bitterness Is The Missing Ingredient
Most non-alcoholic spritzes fail because they're sweet and nothing else. Lyre's gets you most of the way. All The Bitter gets you the rest. Six dashes sounds like a lot. It isn't.
Bonus: The Negroni Sbagliato
Equal parts, no soda, and still a spritz to us.
Ingredients
Method
- Add Campari and Cocchi to an ice-filled rocks glass or stemmed wine glass.
- Stir to chill and combine.
- Top with prosecco. No soda.
- Garnish with a blood orange half-wheel.
Equal Parts, No Soda
The Sbagliato is a Negroni with prosecco swapped in for gin, not a spritz with extra steps. Campari at 24% ABV does the heavy lifting, and Cocchi's cocoa and orange peel notes bridge to the garnish better than a generic sweet vermouth.
The Spritz And The Garnish Wheel: A Modern Day Love Story
Two households, both alike in dignity. In fair Verona, where we lay our scene.
The Spritz ingredients and garnish wheel work together to create a low-complexity drink, so you can focus on unwinding and having a good time. No ancient grudges or new mutiny here.
Build Your Spritz Kit
Three citrus varieties cover most of the eight drinks above: orange, lemon, and lime. Add grapefruit and blood orange for the full range, including the Sarti and the zero-proof builds.
Every wheel is hand-sliced in New York, dehydrated with no sulfur and no added sugar, and shelf-stable for nine months and up. No prep, no waste, no browning on the rail.
