The typical Venetian drink is officially the “spritz” made with sparkling water, white wine, lemon or orange zest and, optionally Select, Campari, Aperol or Cynar. If you order it you can say: “dame un spriss col sele, bite, àpero or cinà“.
The story: it all began during the Austrian occupation of Venice. The Austrians tried to drink the Venetian wine but they felt it was too strong, so they added water. More precisely, they took water and diluted it with wine. They called this operation “spritzen” which in Austrian means to inject: a little addition of wine in water. Venetians transformed it into “spriss“.
Only at the beginning of the last century they thought of adding Aperol or Select to officially make it a cocktail. Nowadays, instead of wine, prosecco is used. The important thing is that everything is sparkling because drinking a “spritz” without bubbles and maybe at room temperature is like a night sky without stars.
Nowadays, the secret to enjoy a “spritz” would be to drink many of them starting from 10am, with the excuse that there are only two hours to have lunch and that an aperitif would make people want to eat. The second tranche is around 5pm to end at 8pm.
In the last years, in Venetian clubs is used to drink instead of “spritz” the prosecco or a d.o.c. prosecco called “Cartizze“.
The ingredients of the “spritz”: 1/3 sparkling mineral water (better seltzer), 1/3 prosecco and 1/3 Select or Campari or Aperol or Cynar, lemon zest and olive.
