The Fascinating Origins of the Aperol Spritz
This year’s “It” drink has a surprising backstory
The first time my friend Khira Jordan realized the Aperol Spritz was a “thing,” she was in Vienna, jetlagged and looking to drink something that wouldn’t make her more tired. When she mentioned that she was thinking of ordering an Aperol Spritz — an Italian cocktail known for its bright orange color and bittersweet taste — her drinking companion, a native Austrian, complained that everyone in Vienna had started imbibing them.
“I immediately thought, if Aperol Spritzes are decidedly ‘over’ in Europe, they’re sure to be the hot new enigmatic thing in the US,” says Jordan, who lives in Portland and works as a global brand director at a Fortune 500 Company. “And sure enough, when I got back to the States, I couldn’t unsee them. They were absolutely everywhere.”
The sunset-colored beverage is the latest European export to evolve into an aspirational shorthand for leisure.
Jordan’s trip to Austria was in late 2017, but if you live in a city like New York or LA and go to bars from time to time, you probably noticed that the Aperol Spritz became completely inescapable this past summer. You may have seen celebrities like Madonna, Halle Berry, and…
