This summer has thrown just about everything at Chicago — relentless spring rain, heat domes and wildfire smoke. So when the weather finally cooperates, the terrace at Cindy’s Rooftop, overlooking Millennium Park and Lake Michigan, is packed by sunset. A few summers ago, tables would have been crowded with bottles of rosé. Today, they’re awash in spritzes of every hue.
“All signs lead to spritzes,” says Ashley Allen, Cindy’s beverage director. Indeed, the Hugo and Aperol spritzes are now her second- and third-best-selling drinks, just after the old-fashioned. Rosé, meanwhile, barely registers anymore, she says.
It’s not just Cindy’s Rooftop. Across Chicago, the Aperol spritz — a drink most Americans had never heard of 20 years ago — has evolved into dozens of variations, transforming what was once a single Italian cocktail into an entire style of drinking.
A brief history of the spritz
The spritz dates back to 19th-century Veneto, now in Italy, but then part of the Austrian-Hungarian empire. Austrian soldiers stationed there found the local wines too strong for their taste and started cutting them with a splash — a spritz — of water. What developed, eventually, was the aperitivo: prosecco, soda water and a touch of an amaro like Aperol or Campari, sipped before dinner to wake up the appetite and kick off the evening.
The classic spritz “is essentially a low-ABV, refreshing prosecco cocktail,” explains Damian Keehn, assistant general manager at Adalina Prime. Prosecco and soda water give it lift and effervescence.
Meanwhile, amaro, a broad category of bittersweet, herbal Italian liqueurs, gives it complexity and bite. That bitterness is what gets the taste buds going, “opening the appetite” for the meal ahead, explains David Malzahn, brand ambassador at Eataly Chicago. Served over ice with a garnish of fruit or herbs, it’s a low-stakes answer to summer heat. It’s also become the default drink for long afternoons, happy hours and lazy weekends.
How to build a spritz
The Aperol spritz follows the classic 3-2-1 rule: three parts prosecco, two parts of Aperol and one part soda water, poured over ice with an orange slice. While shockingly sunset-orange in color, it’s a gently fizzy, juicy sip full of sweet, citrusy flavor and edged with a bitter, herbal spine.
That same formula — bubbles, bitter, soda and garnish — is the template for a host of other spritzes that have followed. The Campari spritz is its slightly more assertive cousin, deeper red, with a sharper bitterness and more pronounced herbal character. More recently, the Hugo spritz has become popular too. Built on the elderflower liqueur St-Germain, it’s a fresh, aromatic spritz garnished with mint and lime to balance the elderflower’s sweetness.
Far beyond that template, however, the category has splintered. Ask three Chicago bartenders what makes a spritz a spritz, and you’ll get three different answers.
Allen treats the classic recipe as a starting point, not a rulebook. A spritz, in her view, is any light, bubbly drink built around a liqueur with a floral, herbal, or bitter profile. It doesn’t have to be bitters-driven, she says. “They can also be more tropical or aromatic too.”
At Cindy’s, the ‘98 Finish, a nod to Michael Jordan’s last title run in ’98, is a red-wine spritz inspired by sangria — built on a base of Zinfandel and gin, accented with Averna (an Italian amaro) and blackberry liqueur. The Lost World swaps amaro with Italicus, a bergamot-flavored liqueur, and layers in Charanda, a rum-like Mexican spirit distilled from sugarcane, guava and lime. Both drinks lean on soda water for lift, and enough dilution to make them slow, patio-friendly sips rather than spirit-forward cocktails.
Keehn takes a similarly expansive view of the spritz. His baseline is prosecco and soda water, but beyond that, a spritz can be any sparkling cocktail, he explains. Unlike many classic Italian spritzes, Keehn’s lean away from bitterness. He prefers botanical accents instead, building drinks around mint and other fresh herbs, but also green juices like celery and apple that emphasize brightness and verve over bitterness.
From viral to ritual
As with the rosé trend before it, social media has been a key driver for the spritz’s rise, turning a drink that most Americans first encountered on vacation into a default order at brunch tables across the country. With its technicolor array of hues and garnishes, it’s an inherently photogenic drink, acknowledges Allen, which “made all the difference, especially with Instagram.”
But spritzes didn’t catch on for their looks alone. They also arrived at a moment when Americans were rethinking how, and how much, they wanted to drink. As people cut back on alcohol consumption, many are looking for lower-proof alternatives that can extend the social hour without too much inebriation. People are gravitating toward “drinks with a little alcohol to take the edge off the day, but nothing overly powerful,” says Malzahn.
It’s also closer to the spirit of the aperitivo, Malzahn suggests — the Italian tradition of a light, pre-dinner drink, when people converge on their local bar or café to meet friends and ease into the evening. It’s not the main event, and it’s not meant to get anyone drunk, he says.
Indeed, flexibility may be the spritz’s greatest strength. Endlessly adaptable, spritzes also make for satisfying nonalcoholic drinks, says Allen, often with more complexity than a standard N/A cocktail. Every spritz at Cindy’s is available in an N/A version, but the Pathfinder — built on a hemp-based bitter — was created specifically as an N/A option.
At Eataly, spritzes have grown more popular every year, especially for guests enjoying the terrace at Vino & …, the wine bar. Sitting outside, sipping a spritz, “it’s as if you were in a piazza in Italy,” says Malzahn. Eataly’s spritz menu reflects the full range of Italy’s regional spritz traditions, limoncello spritzes inspired by the Amalfi Coast, Campari spritzes favored in Rome, or the neon-pink Sarti Rosa spritz made from the Bolognese aperitivo flavored with blood oranges, mango and passion fruit. Then there’s the Cynar spritz, built around the artichoke-based amaro that Malzahn affectionately describes as “an adult Coca-Cola.”
Spritzes have become such a draw that earlier this month, Eataly hosted its first Spritz Festa in Chicago — a grand walk-around tasting with eight spritz stations, live music and regional Italian bites.
The drinks have evolved, but the ritual has not. The modern spritz is no longer defined by Aperol or even Italy. But its appeal — a drink that invites people to linger, sip and socialize — has remained remarkably consistent.
Anna Lee Iijima is a freelance writer.
