White Grape & Apricot Garden Spritz
A modern drink with no history behind it, built around a soda that pairs white grape with apricot — a combination closer to a dry white wine than to a fruit mixer. That is what makes it work as a spritz. White grape brings a light, slightly vinous sweetness and almost no acidity; apricot brings stone-fruit weight and a faint bitterness in the finish. Together they land somewhere near a soft, off-dry white, and the elderflower gin poured into them does what a floral note usually does with stone fruit, which is make it smell riper than it is. The result is gentler than an Aperol spritz and much less sweet than the fruit names suggest. Mint and lemon peel are both doing real work: the mint lifts the nose, the lemon oil supplies the sharpness the soda lacks. Skip either and the drink goes noticeably flat in character rather than in carbonation.
Glassware: Wine Glass
Garnish: Lemon Peel and Mint Leaf
Ingredients
150ml
Reads closer to an off-dry white wine than to a fruit soda — vinous from the grape, weighted from the apricot, with a faint bitterness at the end. That last part is what stops the drink being sweet.
50ml
The floral note makes the apricot smell riper than it is. A plain London Dry works at least as well and arguably better, since it brings juniper structure to a drink that is otherwise all soft edges.
1 sprig
Clapped once, added last. Mint and stone fruit is a real pairing, but over-worked mint turns grassy and pulls the drink away from ripe and towards green.
Fill the glass
Cubed and generous. The aromatics here are delicate and the drink loses its nose quickly once it warms.
Instructions
Fill a wine glass with cubed ice.
Pour in the gin.
Top with the white grape and apricot soda.
Express a strip of lemon peel over the surface, rub it round the rim and drop it in.
Clap a sprig of mint and add it last.
Source: the producer's own published serve (Fever-Tree). Last checked 22 August 2026.
Expert Tip
Express the lemon peel and then rub it round the rim before dropping it in. There is very little acidity in this drink and none of it comes from the soda, so the oil is the only sharp thing available and it is worth getting the most out of it. Use a plain gin if you do not have an elderflower one. The soda is already floral and slightly sweet, and a London Dry gives it a juniper backbone it can genuinely use — arguably a better drink than the published version. Clap the mint rather than muddling it, and put it in last. Stone fruit and mint is a good pairing but a bruised, over-worked mint sprig turns grassy and takes the drink somewhere green rather than ripe.
Flavour Profile
Why It Drinks Like Wine
White grape juice and white wine share a great deal of their aromatic character, because most of what a light white wine smells of was in the grape before fermentation rather than produced by it. Take the alcohol and the acid out and a good deal of the impression survives.
What white grape juice does not have is acidity, and that absence is the whole reason this drink needs the lemon peel. A wine with no acid tastes flabby, and the same is true here.
The apricot fills the other gap. It brings body and a slight bitterness from the skin character, which is roughly the role tannin and phenolics play in a real white.
Floral Over Stone Fruit
Elderflower and apricot share compounds in the same family — the honeyed, faintly muscat-like notes that make a ripe stone fruit smell sweet before you taste it. Putting them together does not add a flavour so much as intensify one that is already there.
It is a well-established trick. Apricot and elderflower turn up together in desserts and preserves for the same reason, and the effect is more obvious in a cold drink than it is in a hot kitchen.
Where the Sharpness Comes From
This is a drink with no acidic ingredient in it at all. The soda is soft, the gin is soft, the mint is aromatic rather than sharp.
The lemon peel is therefore not a garnish but the only structural correction available, and it works because peel oil reads as sharp on the nose without adding actual acid to the glass. Expressing it properly matters more here than in almost any other drink of this kind.
Frequently Asked Questions
Do I need an elderflower gin?
No. A plain London Dry works at least as well and adds juniper structure the drink can use. The elderflower makes the apricot read riper, which is pleasant but not essential.
Why does it need lemon peel?
Because nothing else in the glass is sharp. White grape has very little acidity and neither does the gin. The peel oil supplies that impression without adding juice, which would make the drink cloudy and sour.
Can I add prosecco?
Yes, and it suits the drink — the wine character is already there. Drop the soda to 100ml and add 75ml. The acidity in the prosecco also does some of the lemon peel’s job.
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Hugo Spritz
The Hugo Spritz is the Alps answering Venice: created in 2005 by Roland Gruber, a bartender in Naturns in South Tyrol, as a lighter alternative to the bitter spritzes ruling the south. Elderflower, prosecco, mint and soda, and the aperitivo hour gone alpine meadow. Gruber's original poured lemon balm syrup, and by his own account he named it Hugo more or less at random after rejecting Otto. The elderflower version conquered within the decade, carried along by the liqueur boom that started in 2007, and it took the name with it. It crossed into Germany and Austria first, then went everywhere prosecco pours. The build is meadow arithmetic. Twenty-five millilitres of elderflower is the spritz-length calibration, floral and present without tipping into pot-pourri; the mint is slapped rather than muddled; prosecco carries and soda lifts. It is the spritz for guests the Aperol bottle intimidates, and the politest aperitif of the summer.
Gin & Tonic
The Gin & Tonic is medicine that stayed for the party. Quinine, the bitter bark extract that treated malaria across the British Empire, was so foul in solution that officers of the East India Company cut it with sugar, soda and their gin ration, and by the 1850s the treatment had become the drink. Modern tonic still carries a token dose of the original prescription: the bitterness is heritage rather than flavouring. It is the most ordered mixed drink in Britain and among the least considered. Two ingredients and ice leave nothing to hide behind: the gin has to be worth tasting, the tonic has to be fresh and properly carbonated, and one part gin to two of tonic keeps the drink a partnership rather than a dilution. The Spanish rebuilt the serve in the 2000s as gastronomy, and the copa balloon full of ice is the standard here: more ice than seems polite, tonic down the glass wall, and a garnish chosen rather than assumed.
Limoncello Spritz
The Limoncello Spritz is a digestivo promoted to the aperitivo hour. Limoncello was made to be drunk ice-cold in small glasses after dinner, and lengthening it with prosecco and soda moves it to the other end of the meal entirely. The spritz template is fixed: a liqueur, a sparkling wine, a splash of soda, over ice in a large glass. Most versions put something bitter in the liqueur position. This one puts something sweet there instead, which is why the soda is not optional here in the way it very nearly is in an Aperol Spritz. It is the only thing standing between the drink and syrup. It spread through Italian summers in the 2010s and outward from there, and it was argued about by people who felt limoncello belonged after dinner. They lost. What it does well is give a table that finds bitterness a chore something to drink at the same hour as everyone else, and it tastes exactly like the coast it comes from.
Where this one sits
Recipe by Dan Freeman
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