The world’s best bars are quietly rewriting the spritz format, and none of them are reaching for the orange bottle. From Florence to Abu Dhabi, here are five spritzes that aren’t Aperol worth ordering right now.
For the better part of a decade, the spritz meant one thing: a brick-orange wedge of Aperol, a splash of prosecco, a single olive doing the work of an entire garnish program. It powered a thousand brunches and a million reels. It made a generation believe an aperitivo was something you sipped, not something you composed.
That era is, politely and deliciously, ending.
In the world’s best bars this summer, the spritz has become a category in its own right: lower-ABV, technically considered, savory where it was once sweet, and unbothered by orange. Bartenders from Florence to Athens are using the format the way they once used the Old Fashioned – as a familiar chassis on which to do something genuinely interesting. Here are five worth flying for.
The Negroni Seltz at Giacosa, Florence
Florence invented the Negroni in 1919, so it is only fair that Florence gets to dismantle it. At Giacosa, just off the Via de’ Tornabuoni, the Negroni Seltz lengthens the classic with a long, cold pour of soda – not to dilute it, but to lift it. Hendrick’s gin, Carpano, and Campari hold the bones; a sharpen of Bitter Casoni adds a green, slightly piney edge; the seltz turns it into something you can drink standing up, in heat, for hours.
It is what the Italians have always wanted a spritz to be: lower in proof, higher in character.
The S&P Spritz at Seed Library, New York
Hidden a flight below the Hotel Chelsea, Seed Library has built a list around the idea that bitterness, properly handled, is a fruit. The S&P Spritz is the proof: Grey Goose infused with yellow bell pepper – which, surprisingly, drinks closer to nectarine than to anything green – poured over a lacto-fermented strawberry liqueur built on rose vermouth and Campari, finished with bubbles.
It reads like a garnish accident on paper, then arrives bright, fruity, and quietly bittersweet. The most surprising spritz on this list.
The Aquaculture at Little Red Door, Paris
Little Red Door‘s Agri/Culture menu turns farming methods into drinks: each serve maps to a way of growing food. The Aquaculture is the one for spritz season. Anaé Dulse Gin – distilled with seaweed off the Brittany coast – sits at its center, joined by the briny snap of sea lettuce and the celery-bright lift of lovage. It is oceanic, savory, and pointedly green: the spritz as a coastline.
If the Aperol Spritz is a beach holiday, this is the tide pool.
A Lover’s Holiday at Saikindō, Abu Dhabi
At Saikindō, an izakaya hidden inside the Erth Hotel, the spritz takes a turn toward dessert without quite arriving. A Lover’s Holiday layers 1615 Puro pisco with yuzu honey and sake, then finishes the whole thing with bubbles for a chocolate-and-strawberry serve that’s lighter than it sounds. It is unmistakably indulgent – but indulgent the way a sorbet is indulgent, not a milkshake.
The kind of drink that justifies a second round before the food arrives.
The Orange at Avra, Four Seasons Astir Palace, Athens
If any spritz is allowed to keep the color, it’s this one. Avra, perched on the Athenian Riviera at the Four Seasons Astir Palace, pours The Orange – a quiet, summer-leaning serve built on Boatyard Gin, orange blossom water, pistachio, and sparkling wine. It is everything the Aperol Spritz used to promise: a drink that tastes like the place you are sitting. Citrus, blossom, a whisper of nuts; nothing showy, nothing loud. A Mediterranean afternoon in a coupe.
What This Round-Up Tells Us
The Aperol Spritz isn’t going anywhere – it sells too well, and rightly so. But its monopoly on the format is finished. The bars setting the tone this summer have stopped treating “spritz” as a single drink and started treating it as a technique: a low-proof, effervescent way to take any flavor and make it sippable. Savory. Briny. Floral. Smoky, even. The format is wide open.
The five above are the ones we’d order first.
