Australian_Gourmet_Traveller_2017

I

drank my first Spritz in a piazza in Venice one

golden afternoon in the early 2000s. It was a

revelation. This sparkling, incandescent drink

seemed the perfect thing for that lazy, liminal

hour between work and play. It tasted fantastic with

the selection of salty, savoury snacks on the table in

front of me. It felt like people had been drinking this

glorious concoction in piazzas in Venice for centuries.

It felt timelessly Italian.

Turns out that the version of the Spritz I was

drinking – a blend of sparkling prosecco, bittersweet

liqueur and fizzy water, served over ice in a wine glass

with a slice of orange and a green olive – was a

relatively recent arrival on the Italian drinking scene,

albeit one with a long and fascinating prehistory.

As Talia Baiocchi and Leslie Pariseau reveal in

their 2016 book, Spritz: Italy’s Most Iconic Aperitivo

Cocktail, the practice of pouring a dash of sparkling

soda water into still white wine to spritz it up

probably began in the early years of the 20th century.

When American cocktail culture arrived in the 1920s

and ’30s, bartenders across Italy’s north started

adding a dash of bitter liqueur such as red Campari

(to make what we now call the Bicicletta) or the

then newly invented orange Aperol.

But it wasn’t until the 1990s that bartenders in

the tranquil beach resorts in Venice decided to use

bubbly prosecco rather than still white wine as the

base of the Spritz, and increase the bitter liqueur

content. It’s this recipe that we’ve come to recognise

as the “classic”, and we’ve become familiar with it in

a relatively short space of time. When I tasted my

first Spritz in Venice, it wasn’t a common sight in

bars outside Italy; now you’ll find people drinking

Spritzes everywhere. Wine giant Jacobs Creek has

even jumped on the bandwagon, launching pre-mixed

bottles of Prosecco Spritz earlier this year.

A spirit of innovation is

making for intriguing

iterations of the effervescent

Spritz, writes MAX ALLEN.

Much of the modern popularity of the Spritz is

thanks to a concerted marketing campaign by the

makers of Aperol, Gruppo Campari, the huge global

drinks company that has owned the Aperol brand

since 2003. Indeed, thanks to this marketing push,

many people both in Italy and outside now assume

that ordering a Spritz automatically means you’ll get

an Aperol-flavoured sparkling drink.

Despite this, Baiocchi and Pariseau report that

there are still bartenders across Italy’s north who are

maintaining fiercely regional Spritz traditions – and

refusing to buy into the Aperol groupthink – by using

other liqueurs: Cynar or the local red Select bitter

liqueur in Padua; elderflower cordial and mint in

Alto Adige; Campari, sweet vermouth and prosecco

to make a Negroni Sbagliato – a Negroni-Spritz

hybrid – in Milan.

You can find a similar spirit of diversity and

innovation in bars and restaurants across Australia.

Some, such as Sydney’s 10 William St, stick proudly to

the classic formula (albeit without the soda water) and

do it bloody well. Others, like Embla in Melbourne,

swap out the Aperol for more obscure liqueurs such

as Rondo, an artisan organic aperitivo from Sud Tirol

in northern Italy.

Some take the drink on a journey elsewhere, as with

the Mirto Spritz at Sydney’s Banksii: a combination

of Sardinian myrtle liqueur, prosecco and lemon

zest. And some pay tribute to the drink’s colourful

northern Italian past by using more than one of

that region’s liqueurs. The Have It All Spritz, from

The Everleigh bar in Melbourne, incorporates

Champagne, Aperol, Cocchi Americano and Cocchi

Opposite: the

Aperol Spritz

at Sydney’s

10 William St

sticks to the

classic formula.

2013 Campbells The

Barkly Durif, Rutherglen,

$54 Yes, the durif grape

can produce big reds, but

the best examples, like

this, from one of the

region’s most seasoned

durif makers, combine

power with cellarworthy

poise and elegance.

campbellswines.com.au

2016 Chatto Isle Pinot

Noir, Tasmania, $75

Brilliant pinot, in every

sense of the word:

gorgeous, bright crimson

colour, full of snappy,

juicy red berries, but

with enough brooding

sinewy tannin to keep

it alive in the cellar.

chattowines.com

Putting on

the Spritz

SI

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54 GOURMET TRAVELLER