If today you happen to be traveling in Europe, or even in Italy outside of Veneto, the Spritz, an iconic cocktail made with Prosecco (or white wine for the “sacrilegious”), Bitter and Selz water, is primarily served with Aperol (or Campari); the traveler outside of Veneto requests an “Aperol Spritz” and not, as is customary in the region of Saint Mark’s Lion, Spritz with Aperol (or Campari); the most curious thing is that this cocktail, which every Venetian considers the quintessential “Spritz,” is hardly found anywhere else: the one made with Select, a bitter that originated in the lagoon city in 1920. This is one of the many paradoxes that make us perceive the anomalies of something that was born in Venice but is known worldwide with an “additive” that the Venetian “de Venexia” rejects as “foreign” (which in Venice refers to anything that comes from outside, detached from the city and its rhythms and rituals). The Venetian capital, which gave birth to this cocktail, therefore uses a bitter unknown to most, whereas the two better-known ones, Padua’s Aperol and Milan’s Campari, are sailing towards astronomical sales and profits.
But let's get organized. There is almost unanimous agreement on the origins of this cocktail.
It derives from the German verb "Spritzen" which means "to spray".
In the 19th century, Austrian soldiers stationed in Venice considered the local white wine too strong and asked to have a bit of water splashed in it. The wine splashed with water (later replaced by seltzer) remained a tradition in Venetian taverns, taking the name Spritz and was seen by many as a sort of digestive; until the Great War, the Spritz was only "white", as it still is today in some taverns in Veneto. In its modern form as a cocktail, the first steps were taken after the First World War, thanks to two innovations: the first was the introduction of the kitchen siphon, which occurred at the beginning of the 20th century, transforming sparkling water into seltzer water, giving the cocktail a more harmonious and rounded taste; the second, and more important, was the addition of bitter, a particular type of amaro used as an aperitif and not as a digestive.
In the years following the First World War, two bitters destined for great success were born in Veneto: in 1919, the Barbieri brothers' company from Padova created Aperol, and the following year, the Pilla brothers' company from Venice invented Select. After their invention, it became customary in Venice to 'stain' the Spritz with bitter, thus giving the cocktail a shape similar to its current form. At that time, Campari already existed, born between Novara and Milan in the second half of the 19th century, but it was not popular in Veneto and was not used to prepare the cocktail. Moreover, the spread of Spritz was rather limited. In the years between the two wars, Veneto, like all of Italy, was predominantly an agricultural territory, and in peasant society, the consumption of alcoholic beverages was largely limited to table wine. Only in urban centers did society begin to modernize and discover the habit of the aperitif, which involved members of the middle class. Here too, Venice led the rest of the territory, allowing the Spritz to establish itself as the most widespread aperitif.
In the post-World War II period, what Pasolini called "the society in which the fireflies have disappeared"
(poetic reinterpretation of consumer society) witnessed the spread of household appliances, televisions, and motor vehicles, provoking a change in habits and cultural approaches with modernization, not only on a material level but also on a cultural one. Thanks to economic well-being and the decline of the peasant society, the habit of the aperitif spread widely, and the popularity of the Spritz increased. For a few decades, the cocktail remained confined to Veneto, but over time it crossed the region's borders: starting in the 1980s, it spread to Northern Italy, enjoying a real boom during the summer season on the Adriatic beaches at the end of the decade; from 2000 onwards, the Spritz as a cocktail witnessed a vigorous growth and a true internationalization, making it a very popular and widespread cocktail. Some data indicates an impressive progression.
In 2011, the International Bartenders Association, the organization that represents bartenders around the world, included it for the first time in its list of cocktails, of course in the Aperol version. In 2019, according to Drinks International magazine, it ranked 9th among the most consumed cocktails in the world. In 2023, CNN included it in the top 10 cocktails consumed in the United States.
