Spritz al Bitter
Spritz al Bitter is not a recipe so much as an order. Ask for a spritz in Venice and the question that comes back is which bitter, and the answer maps the region: Aperol for the gentle sunset version, Campari for the full argument, Select for the local orthodoxy. Campari is the reading most of the world's bars pour. The structure is fixed regardless of the answer: three parts prosecco, two parts bitter, one part soda, over plenty of ice in a large wine glass. Those proportions have been standard long enough to be printed on things. The soda is the part people skip and it is the part that names the drink. Spritzen is German for to splash, and the usual account is that Habsburg soldiers stationed in the Veneto in the nineteenth century found the local wine stronger than they wanted and asked for it cut with water. The splash stayed after the empire left.
Glassware: Copa Glass
Garnish: Orange Slice or the Venetian olive
Ingredients
60ml
The full-argument reading, at 25 per cent and genuinely bitter. Aperol is gentler and sweeter at 11; Select is Venice's own, drier and more herbal. The grammar holds all three, and the choice is the order.
90ml
The Veneto's wine in the Veneto's drink. Brut rather than extra dry: the bitter is doing the work and does not need sugar arriving underneath it.
30ml
The splash the family is named after, and the part people leave out. Thirty millilitres lengthens the drink and softens the bitterness without diluting it into nothing.
Instructions
Fill a large wine glass with cubed ice.
Add the bitter of your choosing.
Pour the prosecco, then the soda water.
Stir once gently.
Garnish with an orange slice, or an olive if you have poured Select.
Expert Tip
Fill the glass with ice properly. A spritz with three cubes in it is warm within five minutes and the ratio collapses as they melt, which is the single most common way one goes wrong. A large wine glass packed with ice keeps the drink cold and the proportions stable to the bottom. Put the bitter in first, then the prosecco, then the soda. Pouring in that order integrates the drink with one gentle stir rather than needing agitation, and every extra stir costs carbonation. Match the garnish to the bitter. Orange with Aperol and Campari, which are both orange-forward. An olive with Select, which is the Venetian convention and looks wrong until you taste it against that bottle's more savoury edge.
Behind the Spritz al Bitter
Flavour Profile
Where It Comes From
The usual account is military. The Veneto was under Habsburg rule for much of the nineteenth century, and Austrian soldiers and administrators found the local wine stronger than what they were used to, so they asked for it cut with water. Spritzen is German for to splash, and the name stuck to the practice.
Whether that is exactly how it happened is not established, but the shape of it is right: the spritz begins as diluted wine and becomes a cocktail only later, once soda had replaced still water and a bitter aperitivo had been added. That final form dates from the early twentieth century, and it took until the last twenty years to leave Italy in any quantity.
Which Bitter
The three answers are genuinely different drinks, and the choice is not a matter of brand loyalty.
Aperol is 11 per cent, orange-forward, sweet and only mildly bitter. It makes the most approachable version and it is the reason the spritz travelled: it is the one you can hand to somebody who says they do not like bitter drinks.
Campari is 25 per cent, considerably more bitter and more herbal, with a proper bitter-orange spine. The drink comes out darker, drier and stronger, and it tastes like an aperitif rather than like a soft drink with wine in it.
Select was created in Venice in 1920 and is the local orthodoxy: drier than Aperol, less aggressive than Campari, with a savoury herbal edge. In Venice it is what a spritz means unless you say otherwise.
The Proportions
Three, two, one: three parts prosecco, two parts bitter, one part soda. That ratio is fixed across all three bitters and it is worth keeping even when the bottle changes.
The temptation with Campari is to cut it back because it is stronger, and that produces a thinner drink rather than a gentler one. If you want gentler, change the bottle rather than the ratio. Aperol at the same proportions gives you the softer drink you were after, with the structure intact.
Ice and the Glass
The large wine glass is not affectation and neither is the volume of ice. A spritz is a low-strength drink built to be sipped over a long period, and its entire construction assumes it will stay cold without further attention.
Three cubes in a small glass warms in minutes, and as it warms the proportions shift: ice that was meant to be structural becomes dilution instead, and the drink goes flat and sweet. Filled properly, the same drink holds its shape for half an hour, which is what the aperitivo hour actually requires.
How to Serve It
Bitter, prosecco, soda, one gentle stir, garnish by geography.
Before dinner, with something salty. The aperitivo is a meal-adjacent institution rather than a drinking one, and a spritz without olives or crisps beside it is only doing half its job.
Make it at home
The Spirit
CampariAn Italian bitter aperitif, red, sweet and sharply bitter, made by infusing herbs, aromatic plants and fruit in alcohol and water. The recipe has been held privately since Gaspare Campari mixed the first batch in 1860, and the bitterness is structural rather than decorative.
Master the Techniques
More to explore
Frequently Asked Questions
What is a Spritz al Bitter?
Which bitter should I choose?
How does it relate to the Aperol Spritz?
Why is the soda important?
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Aperol Spritz
The Aperol Spritz became the most ordered cocktail in the world during the 2010s, which was partly a marketing achievement and partly deserved. Built properly it is bright, bitter and genuinely refreshing. Built carelessly it is flat orange squash, and it is built carelessly a great deal. The format is older than the bottle. The spritz tradition comes from the Veneto, where Austrian soldiers under Habsburg rule diluted the strong local wine with water and called it spritzen, from the German for to splash. Bitter liqueurs joined later. Aperol arrived in 1919 and turned out to suit prosecco better than anything else did. The three to two to one ratio of prosecco, Aperol and soda was codified and marketed by Campari Group from the early 2000s, and it is not an arbitrary commercial decision. It is the proportion at which the prosecco still leads, the Aperol seasons without dominating, and the soda keeps the whole thing light.
Americano
The Americano was born at Gaspare Campari's bar in Milan in the 1860s, served then as the Milano-Torino after its two principal ingredients: Campari from Milan and sweet vermouth from Turin. The name Americano came later, attributed to the American tourists and expatriates who ordered it in such volume that the drink became associated with them. It is the direct ancestor of the Negroni, predating it by roughly half a century. It is one of the simplest drinks in the canon and one of the most instructive. Three ingredients built directly in the glass, no shaking, no stirring beyond a single gentle turn to integrate the soda. The restraint is the point: this is a drink designed for length and sessionability, and for the specific pleasure of something bitter, sweet and effervescent taken slowly in warm weather before a meal. The sweet vermouth is the variable that decides the whole thing. At equal volume to the Campari it has nowhere at all to hide.
Milano-Torino
The Milano-Torino is the aperitivo’s book of genesis: Campari of Milan and sweet vermouth of Turin, equal parts over ice, poured at Campari’s own Caffè Camparino from the 1860s and named for the two cities standing in the glass. The lineage reads like scripture. Add soda and the Mi-To becomes an Americano; swap the soda for gin and the Negroni arrives; mistake the gin for prosecco and the Sbagliato is born. The ancestor outlived all of them unchanged: two bottles, one orange slice, and nothing anybody has managed to improve. It drinks as the family’s softest bitter statement, with the vermouth’s plush meeting Campari head-on and no lengthener refereeing between them, and it remains the correct first glass for anyone setting out to map the red dynasty from its root rather than picking it up somewhere in the middle. Two ingredients and no lengthener leaves both fully exposed, so the vermouth has to be as good as the Campari is consistent.
Recipe by Jerry Can Spirits