Aperol Spritz

The Aperol Spritz is a classic Prosecco cocktail perfect for a warm day. You can make these up in the glass or increase the recipe to make a batch to share with friends and family. We use a standard recipe with equal parts of every ingredient, but feel free to modify to your tastes. It's up to you!

What you don't want to do though is "eyeball" your measurements and just pour stuff in. A lot of at home cocktail makes will do this with an Aperol Spritz and, while it will taste good, it will be inconsistent. What's better is to adjust measurements to suit your taste and then take note so can recreate it in the future.

Enjoy!

Total Time 5

Servings 1 cocktail

Ingredients

100 mL Prosecco
100 mL Aperol
100 mL Soda Water or to taste
Garnish with orange slice (optional)

Instructions

Add ice to a wine glass.
Add all ingredients.
Garnish, enjoy.

Notes

It may be tempting to use a cheap Prosecco in this cocktail since it can be disguised by the Aperol and Soda Water, avoid this temptation though. There's rarely an excuse for bad wine, especially sparkling wine! Of course you don't need to use the most expensive bottle of Prosecco you can find, but a good mid-range bottle will do the trick.

Our Review of the Aperol Spritz

What I immediately like about cocktail recipes like the Aperol Spritz is that they’re easy to make either just for yourself or as a larger batch to share between friends. It seems silly to put into a review, but everybody knows the Aperol Spritz. Or perhaps not everybody, but quite a few! It’s a cocktail who’s ingredients are usually on hand, so it’s quite easy to make at home and enjoy on a sunny Sunday afternoon.

If you’ve had an Aperol Spritz and found it too bitter from the Campari or too watered down, it’s likely because you’ve had one where the maker was just “winging it” with the measurement of the ingredients. When you use equal parts Prosecco, Campari, and Soda Water, this cocktail is close to perfection and very well balanced. Sure, Negroni drinkers might disagree with me on this, but there are similar wonderful things between the Negroni and the Aperol Spritz. Personally, I think a Negroni has a bit more sweetness to it, thanks to the Sweet Vermouth, while the Aperol Spritz is simple, dry, and refreshing.

Although there’s very little negative I can say about the Aperol Spritz, the only bad experiences I’ve had with an Aperol Spritz has come about when someone used sub-par ingredients. I’m not saying that an expensive top shelf Prosecco needs to be used, but too often I’ve seen people try to get rid of a bad bottle of Prosecco by using it to make an Aperol Spritz or two. The final product that you get is only going to be as good as what you put into it, so don’t complain when you get a bad cocktail when you’ve used bad ingredients.

To add to this, it’s also important that fresh, well carbonated Soda Water is used when making an Aperol Spritz. Although the Prosecco is (obviously) already carbonated, the cocktail needs the carbonation from both sources to be at its best. The bitterness and the light flavours mixing with the bubbles makes this cocktail an excellent refresher on a warm day.

10/10

Review by Sarah

If you’re looking to make more cocktails, here’s some more recipes

The Aperol Spritz is both a classic cocktail and an easy to make cocktail (well, there’s often overlap there…), so we’ll point you in the direction of some of the sections of this website that fit that description:

Top 20 classic cocktail recipes: here’s our favourite classic cocktails. You’ll be sure to recognise a few on this list. Try them out for yourself.

Top 15 three ingredient cocktail recipes: cocktail recipes with fewer than three ingredients are great. They’re easy and they’re simple. Have fun.

All classic cocktail recipes: if you liked our favourite classics, keep up the classic cocktail party with more recipes!

All three ingredient cocktails: or if you want to keep things simple, we have plenty more cocktail recipes with fewer than three ingredients. Take a look!