What Is an Aperitivo? Spritz, Vermouth and the Bitter Orange Bottle
An aperitivo is a time of day before it is a drink. It is the hour before dinner, and the whole point of what you drink in it is to make you hungry rather than full. That is why these bottles are bitter, why they are low in alcohol, and why they come with olives and crisps instead of a main course.
Once you know that, the shelf makes sense. Everything on it is built around the same idea: bitter opens the appetite, sweet rounds it off, bubbles and ice keep it light enough that you can still eat afterwards.
The bitter orange bottle
The orange drink you have seen on every patio is an aperitivo liqueur. It is a bitter-orange base - peel, herbs, roots - sweetened and brought down to a low strength. On its own it is too intense and too syrupy. Cut with wine and soda, it turns into the thing people actually want.
We carry two:
- Vincenzi Arancia Aperitivo, $31.99 for a full litre. Bright, orange-led, on the sweeter side. This is the one that gets looked at most on this site by a wide margin.
- Luxardo Aperitivo Italiano, $29.99. A little drier and more bitter, from a house that has been making Italian liqueurs since 1821.
If you like your spritz sweet and easy, take the Vincenzi. If you want the bitterness to actually show up, take the Luxardo.
How to build a spritz
The ratio is 3-2-1. Three parts sparkling wine, two parts aperitivo, one part soda water.
- Fill a large wine glass with ice. Properly full - a half-empty glass goes warm and watery fast.
- Three parts prosecco.
- Two parts aperitivo.
- One part soda water.
- Stir once, gently. Orange slice.
That is the whole recipe. The two mistakes people make are not enough ice and stirring it like a cocktail - both kill the bubbles, which are doing half the work.
For the wine, a dry prosecco is right: Bartenura Prosecco Brut or Borgo Reale Prosecco Brut, both $19.99, both from the prosecco range. Do not use a sweet sparkler here - the aperitivo is already carrying the sugar. If you are unclear on which sparkling wine is which, Moscato vs Asti vs Prosecco sorts them out, and Champagne vs Prosecco vs Cava covers the dry end.
Vermouth, which is not what most people think
Vermouth is wine. That is the part that surprises people. It is wine that has been fortified with a little spirit and flavoured with botanicals - wormwood above all, which is where the name comes from.
Because it is wine, it goes off. An open bottle belongs in the fridge and is at its best within a month or so. The bottle that has been sitting warm on the back of the bar since last year is the reason a lot of people think they dislike vermouth.
Three styles, and they are not interchangeable:
- Dry - pale, crisp, herbal. The martini vermouth. Twin Suns Dry Vermouth, $29.99.
- Rosso - red, sweet, spiced. The Manhattan and Negroni vermouth, and good on its own over ice. Yzaguirre Rojo, $27.99, or Lovatelli Rosso, $21.99.
- Bianco - white and sweet, floral rather than spiced. Lovatelli Bianco, $21.99.
The full vermouth shelf is small and worth a look. Rosso over ice with a slice of orange is the easiest aperitivo there is - no mixing, no sparkling wine, two ingredients.
Which bottle to buy first
If you are building this from nothing:
- Buy one bottle - Vincenzi Arancia, plus a prosecco. That is a spritz.
- Buy two - add a rosso vermouth. Now you have a spritz, a Negroni-shaped drink, and something to sip on its own.
- Buy three - add a dry vermouth and you can make a martini too.
The rest of the category lives in liqueurs and schnapps. If you are stocking a bar properly rather than just for one evening, how to build a home bar covers the full running order.
The short version
Aperitivo means the hour before dinner. The drinks are bitter because bitter makes you hungry, and light because you still have to eat. Three parts fizz, two parts bitter orange, one part soda, a lot of ice. Keep the vermouth in the fridge.
