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.
Behind the White Grape & Apricot Garden Spritz
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.
More to explore
Frequently Asked Questions
Do I need an elderflower gin?
Why does it need lemon peel?
Can I add prosecco?
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Where this one sits
Recipe by Dan Freeman