An Aperol Spritz. Photo: Ekaterina Molchanova/Getty Images/iStockphoto We live in a country divided, but you wouldn’t know that today. As rare as it is that something can rally all Americans to agree on a single opinion, the New York Times has done just that with a story called “the Aperol Spritz is Not a Good Drink.” Immediately, the entire internet formed a unified front, offering a counterpoint: Yes, it is. Look, Grub is not out here saying the Aperol Spritz is the best drink or even the best summer drink. Some of us prefer other spritzes. And yes, its current popularity is the product of a marketing push from a giant corporation. But it’s a perfectly fine drink, it’s easy going, and it won’t get you hammered midday like a gin and tonic. Whatever. It’s day-drinking season. The world agrees: What’s the Aperol Spritz of summer 2019 — Ira Madison III (@ira) May 9, 2019 go — and i can't emphasize this enough — fuck yourself https://t.co/bPuaTzZO9f — Rachel Sanders (@rachelysanders) May 9, 2019 aperol spritz hive assemble pic.twitter.com/T0ZxeRbTxA — Madison Malone Kircher (@4evrmalone) May 9, 2019 Is this a Bret Stephens column? Also, there is no such thing as a bad capri sun after soccer practice on a hot day. https://t.co/GMk0CzCR1p — Jackie Alemany (@JaxAlemany) May 9, 2019 Will I now get an Aperol Spritz after work out of spite? Who can say!!! — Emily Tamkin (@emilyctamkin) May 9, 2019 i've been having lots of issues with @nytimes lately but this is literally the last straw https://t.co/8oSGFNEdfd — Aziza Kasumov (@aziza_kasumov) May 9, 2019 Name a cocktail that’s full glory doesn’t rely on the quality of the ingredients and skills of the mixer though? https://t.co/fmxrKgV6JY — Clara Jeffery (@ClaraJeffery) May 9, 2019 All you can do is chuckle indulgently at the NYT's notion that we care about the quality of our aperol spritzes, when everyone knows they are basically a grown-up alcopop (and that is the highest pinnacle any drink can conquer) https://t.co/KA8Van4K9J — Tara Mulholland (@tara_mulholland) May 9, 2019 This is assaulthttps://t.co/DOkpZ9p461 — Sarah Mimms (@mimms) May 9, 2019 Nothing but eyerolls from a country that is so shit at pavement daydrinking. https://t.co/26niEtLLaI — Laura Silver (@laurafleur) May 9, 2019 If the question is "Is Aperol Spritz the best kind of spritz?" the answer is obviously no. I'm all for experimenting with different aperitivo liqueurs. But the Aperol Spritz is the gateway spritz. It's the spritz you can get even when you're at a shitty bar. AND IT TASTES GOOD! — Esther Mobley (@Esther_mobley) May 9, 2019<doc-sep>The New York Times is right. Aperol spritzes aren’t particularly great. But before you “cancel” me, I’d ask: Is that really the point of them? If you’ve been sequestered for grand jury duty or something and missed it, on Thursday an internet hullabaloo erupted when Rebekah Peppler wrote in the NYT that “The Aperol Spritz Is Not a Good Drink,” comparing it to a Capri Sun. Twitter exploded, “dunking” on the Paris-based writer, with everyone sharing their unyielding love for the Aperol Spritz and their hatred for Peppler’s dumb opinion. “Aperol Spritz” trended with over 3,000 mentions during the day. Eventually, Grub Street declared that “Entire Internet Agrees Aperol Spritz Is, in Fact, Good.” Well, I don’t agree. Yeah, it’s good sometimes, but not always. The spritz is a simple drink, which means that every component matters. An apéritif, it’s typically made with a bitter liqueur base topped with sparkling wine and fizzy water over ice. If any of those ingredients are low-quality, your cocktail is going to be as well. The problem begins with Aperol, one of the least complex amari—too sweet, hardly bitter, not boozy at all. Likewise, most places and people that make spritzes use dirt-cheap prosecco—you’ll have a hangover before you’re even drunk. And, you know what? That’s fine. I hesitate to say this as a booze writer and critic, but: Since when does every food and drink on planet earth need to be fucking world class? Aperol Spritzes in Milan in front of the Duomo Cathedral. RossHelen Getty Images On a recent trip to Rome this past December, I wasn’t pounding Aperol Spritzes every day because they were amazing. I was drinking them because it was two o'clock in the afternoon and I was with my wife in the third most romantic city on earth and I had no work to do and nothing to worry about and it was warm enough to sit outside while Vespas zipped by us and Romans chain-smoked and they only cost €4 apiece. In Italy, an Aperol Spritz is an ice-cold Bud at the ballgame. It's a Guinness at a Dublin pub. You’re not sitting there closely analyzing these drinks—“I detect some mocha notes”—you’re using them to supplement your life, to relax in the sun while rooting on your team, to pound pints with the boys and have a laugh. As my wife always says to me when I’m geeking out over some exotic cocktail while completely ignoring her: “Can we talk about something besides your stupid drink?” This content is imported from {embed-name}. You may be able to find the same content in another format, or you may be able to find more information, at their web site. This is especially true in Italy, whose Aperol Spritzes really aren’t that great—often made using trash ice worse than what you’d get from a Ramada Inn hallway ice machine, and with prosecco you wouldn’t dump in orange juice. The drink is quotidian, and that’s intentional, meant for nothing more than adding a little boost of pleasure to your current situation. I once ranked it the second-best overall “day-drinking” drink around. So, I presume, when people are saying that Aperol Spritzes are “good,” they are more saying that spritz culture is good. That the friendship and conversation and mere whiling away of an afternoon over a round of spritzes is good. Just look at the much-mocked #spritzlife hashtag on Instagram—wouldn’t you rather be there right now than where you currently are? It's not like you'd ever drink a spritz by yourself at midnight while sitting in the dark and bingeing that Ted Bundy documentary. As for taste, the Aperol Spritz is a perfectly fine “gateway” spritz and, for most people, a great introduction to the category of amari. If you want a spritz that will truly knock your socks off, order one with the artichoke-based Cynar, the piney Braulio, or even a cool American amaro like St. Agresis. Use quality ice and a good sparkling wine. You can go even further with a spritz. The amazing Dante in New York offers an entire spritz menu, featuring elevated takes on the drink like one made with Hendrick’s gin, elderflower liqueur, cucumber purée, lemon, and maldon salt. Or, my favorite, the intriguing “Il Peperino,” a mix of Martini Bitter, manzanilla sherry, mezcal, a red bell pepper tincture, and prosecco. It’s hard to wrap your head around the flavor profile, fluctuating between bitter and smoky, floral with a lovely little bit of nuttiness, the bubbles tickling your throat before the pepper slightly stings your esophagus. And, if I said all that to my wife this weekend as we lazily lounged at a sidewalk table in Greenwich Village, sipping our spritzes, she’d say to me: "Can we talk about something besides your stupid drink?" Aaron Goldfarb Aaron Goldfarb lives in Brooklyn and is a novelist and the author of 'Hacking Whiskey.' This content is created and maintained by a third party, and imported onto this page to help users provide their email addresses. You may be able to find more information about this and similar content at piano.io<doc-sep>It’s late spring, 6 p.m. Golden hour is nigh. It’s too late for lemonade, too early for whiskey — spritz time on the dot. Italy has been perfecting spritz hour for decades , and now #spritzlife (yes, it’s a hashtag) has fully bubbled up across the Atlantic, due in no small part to a 2017 marketing push from Aperol’s maker, Campari America: a coast-to-coast Aperol spritz campaign. The drink possesses qualities that I can get behind. It’s effervescent, it’s extremely well iced and it is a shade of orange that rivals a “Planet Earth” sunset. It exists within the broader category of aperitifs, or aperitivos: the low-alcohol, often bitter-leaning drinks (as well as the bottles on which they are based) that are meant to prime your palate for the evening to come. But there is a problem: The Aperol spritz isn’t actually good. Served in branded, jumbo wine glasses, the sugary aperitif is paired with low-quality prosecco, soda water and an outsize orange slice, resulting in something that drinks like a Capri Sun after soccer practice on a hot day. Not in a good way.<doc-sep>Another source of consternation for Peppler seems to be the hashtagged (#spritzlife) social media stylings that have proliferated around the Aperol Spritz. After all, would the disdain for rosé be as powerful without the ubiquitous #roseallday? As Peppler notes, the attention surrounding the Aperol Spritz may be in no small part due to an aggressive campaign by Campari America, the makers of Aperol. That campaign was somewhat more generously documented in a piece published by the Times in 2018 — what a difference a year makes! Included in that piece was the statistic that sales of Aperol rose almost 50 percent between 2017 and 2018.<doc-sep>
The New York Times has declared the Aperol spritz a bad drink. And boy, are spritz lovers mad. The annoying thing about “The Aperol Spritz Is Not a Good Drink,” which has succeeded wildly in riling up fans of the aperitif, is that the headline fails to communicate that the article isn’t so much about hating Aperol as it is about loving a more complex spritz made with subtler spirits. It’s offering up the same solid and fairly obvious advice you hear about cooking with wine—crappy wine makes whatever you add it to taste…not great. Sure, low-quality prosecco can ruin an Aperol spritz. But not because the drink itself is flawed. So what? It’s just a drink, right? The spritz isn’t so much a drink as a lovely and gracious idea about drinking, and the Aperol version is the perfect introduction. It’s a gateway cocktail. A spritz is any combination of wine, sparkling water, and bitter spirit, most often an Italian amaro, served over ice. It’s low proof, for the leisurely kind of drinking that happens on long summer evenings or at afternoon barbecues. They’re not just delicious and refreshing, they’re also low enough in alcohol that you can keep drinking for a long time without getting wasted. A spritz is the essence of conviviality. An Aperol spritz is an easygoing drink. The summer sunset color is inviting. It’s not overly bitter. Some amari are incredibly bitter, and even Campari, another popular Italian spritz spirit that is quite sweet comparatively speaking, has a very divisive flavor. There’s a place within the spritz culture for a broadly appealing cocktail—it doesn’t all have to be tongue-numbingly bitter to be worth drinking. If you do want to branch out There’s a whole world of spritzes to enjoy, using interesting amari from all over Italy, and swapping out prosecco for other sparkling or still wines. I like to make a very basic, very fast and loose rosé spritz by filling a glass with ice, pouring in equal amounts of rosé and seltzer, then adding a lemon twist and about four shakes of bitters. A half ounce of amaro of any kind would add complexity (it’s perfectly refreshing without, too). If you want to dive deeper into the world of casual, grown-up drinking, I highly recommend Spritz by Talia Baiocchio and Leslie Pariseau. It’s a whole book that explores the Italian tradition of having a bubbly, bitter, bright drink in the early evening with some salty snacks to pique the appetite before dinner—and make a moment for sparkling conversation.