A light bright version of the classic spritz combination of bitters,
sparkling wine and soda, the Aperol Spritz is an absolute crowd pleaser.
The term spritz has been around for a very long time and comes from the German for splash.
The story goes the Italian wines were too strong for the refined Austro-Hungarian
palates and so they would add a splash of soda water to their white wines
while they were busy occupying northern Italy.
In the 19th century in the 20th century the spritz as we know it,
so sparkling wine Italian bitters and a splash of soda came to be.
Campari, Amaro Montenegro, Cynar- all of these make great spritzes as well but Aperol, which is
owned by Campari, has very aggressively marketed the Aperol Spritz and honestly it makes sense.
It's lower in alcohol, lighter in flavor, less bitter and cheaper than most of the alternatives.
This is probably the single most popular drink on the Bomba rooftop in summer time
and it does get asked for in a lot of strange ways by guests who have just discovered it.
I think my favorite was trying to figure out what a 'People Spritz' was,
until they said 'the orange one' and I was like 'ah okay'.
The classic recipe endorsed by Aperol is three parts Prosecco,
two parts Aperol and one part soda. Three, Two, One. At Bomba we do obviously like to give it
a little Spanish twist so we use Cava rather than Prosecco. That's a Spanish sparkling wine
made using the same traditional method as Champagne, so it gives it a bit more body and
kind of a savoury minerality which I really enjoy against the fruitiness of the Aperol,
whereas Prosecco itself can obviously be quite fruit forward.
Cava does still suffer from a bit of an image problem and so it kind of sits in the cheap
and cheerful price bracket, but you can get some really interesting wines in this style
definitely worth having a crack if you haven't yet.
We also serve it with a skewered olive as well as the ubiquitous orange wedge for
a little savory pop and because it honors the aperitivo hour that these drinks were made for.
But of course, if you don't like it then just leave it out.
You may also be tempted to forgo the soda for just more bubbly wine, and like I totally get it,
but it really does make the drink more refreshing. Without that little
splash the drink can actually be quite cloying.
As always we're going to get our garnish ready first, this is obviously something if you do
want to do it for an arrival drink, we do it a lot for like hens parties and things on the rooftop,
you can have this all ready in advance just to pop in each drink as and when you're good to go.
So just a nice generous orange wedge and trim it down so it's nice and neat. Fish
out a little olive and we're just gonna skewer through there and into your orange wedge. Now
as we've explained before we do film at our sister restaurant Nomada, so that's the little name there
and that's actually handy because that marks 150 mils which is the standard wine pour here.
I know that's not the case in the UK because a large glass of wine which is 250 mils is a thing.
So it's 60 mils of Aperol.
90 ml of dry sparkling wine, (pop), and so what that means is that I can cheat
because 90 mls will obviously take that up to the 150 mil line.
Again if you're doing a lot of them, I would recommend measuring maybe one or
two just so that you can kind of start to see- like be able to eyeball it,
but it's not a drink that's going to be ruined if you have you know five mil more of one thing
so feel free to just be a little bit of a cowboy with it. And you need 30 ml of soda,
again not really necessary to measure that at least past the first one.
Fill with ice, try not to get it all over the bar top,
give it a little stir, add in some more ice,
of course as always more ice the better especially in the summertime.
Then we just need a little straw,
you can obviously just give it a stir with this as well if you don't have a bar spoon.
Pop in your garnish,
and it's good to go.
The Aperol Spritz, so now you know.
I mean it really does just taste like sunshine. It's such a nice bright
orange flavor and that kind of zippy bubbles, it's just an uplifting drink.
There's no way you can be drinking this and feel unhappy.
And obviously the thing that's awesome about this like Aperol,
you know is an amaro as much as it's kind of on the sweeter end, it's still just got that
awesome bitterness it's almost like yeah that kind of almost kind of candied orange peel,
that means that it just makes you want to go back for more. You need that bit of soda
in there because it's not at all mouth coating, definitely a summer smasher.