A spritz in Venice is white wine or prosecco, a red bitter liqueur and a splash of soda, served over ice and usually drunk standing at a counter in the hour before dinner. The Italian dictionary defines it in almost those words, as an aperitif based on white wine, sparkling water or seltzer, and a bitter or vermouth, and traces the word to the Triveneto, probably from the German spritze, meaning a spray (Treccani, 2017).
The splash is the oldest part of the drink. The bitter came later, and which bitter goes in is what separates a Venetian spritz from the version the rest of the world now orders. Select was registered as a trademark in Venice on 29 May 1920 by a liqueur firm based in the sestiere of Castello, and the recipe still runs to thirty botanicals (Select Aperitivo, 2026). Aperol was created a year earlier, after seven years of experimentation, and spread through the cafes of Padua and the bars of Venice (Aperol, 2026). Venetian bars pour both, so name the bitter when you order.
This page covers where the word comes from, what is actually in the glass, why a bitter drink works as an appetiser, and how to read a Venice price list before you choose a table.
Why is it called a spritz?
The word is dialect from the Triveneto, the north eastern corner of Italy that includes Veneto, and the standard Italian dictionary derives it, with a stated element of doubt, from the German spritze, a spray (Treccani, 2017). The entry defines the drink itself as an aperitif made with white wine, sparkling water or seltzer, and a bitter or vermouth.
The familiar account attaches that German word to the Austrian administration of Venetia in the nineteenth century, when German speaking soldiers and officials are said to have asked for the strong local wine to be cut with water. The dictionary does not endorse the story. It records the derivation as probable and leaves it there, which is a useful reminder that drink origin tales are usually told long after the fact.
What the dictionary does date is the modern usage. Its earliest quoted example, from 1972, describes a spritz as dry white wine with a strip of lemon peel and a splash of seltzer water (Treccani, 2017). There is no bitter in that sentence and no ice. Within living memory, in other words, a spritz in the Veneto was still wine and water, and the red or orange glass now photographed on every canal bank is a later stage of the same habit rather than an ancient recipe.
Select or Aperol: which bitter belongs in a Venetian spritz?
Two bitters dominate, and both are local to the region. A Bolognese liqueur firm that had set up in the sestiere of Castello registered the Select trademark on 29 May 1920, and the brand still describes a recipe of thirty botanicals (Select Aperitivo, 2026). Select is the darker, more resinous of the two, and it is the one most Venetian bars treat as the house version.
Aperol was created in 1919, the product of seven years of experimentation, and became popular with young adults in the cafes of Padua and the bars of Venice (Aperol, 2026). It is lighter and sweeter, and it is the bitter behind the drink most visitors already know.
The difference between them is a matter of ingredients rather than branding. Italian bitters are produced by infusing or macerating barks, rhizomes, roots, berries, flowers and peels in a water and alcohol base, with bittering plants blended against aromatic ones for flavour and colour (Rosa et al., 2023). Change the proportions and you change the glass.
In practice this means the order matters more than the gesture. Ask for uno spritz al Select for the Venetian version, or con Aperol for the sweeter one. A bare request for a spritz will usually get you whatever the bar pours by default.
How the spritz became a global drink
The spritz is old in the Veneto and recent almost everywhere else. Aperol reached the United States in 2006, when its owner brought the orange liqueur to that market and the cocktail began to spread (Atanasova and Ivanov, 2025, p. 2283).
A statistical study of the years 2000 to 2023 tested whether tourism drove that growth. Using annual data on arrivals to Italy, Aperol sales and articles mentioning the drink, it found that tourist arrivals Granger cause Aperol sales, meaning past arrivals help predict later sales, and that arrivals also predict the volume of writing about it (Atanasova and Ivanov, 2025, p. 2290). Media attention and sales showed only weak evidence of running the other way.
Marketing money moved with it. The same study notes that the owning group increased marketing spending from 286.3 million euros in 2015 to 494.1 million euros in 2023, and calculates from Bank of Italy survey data that more than five per cent of the world population has visited Italy at least once (Atanasova and Ivanov, 2025, p. 2292).
For a visitor the practical point is simple. The drink you recognise from home is a recent export shaped by tourism and advertising, and the older red bitter is still on the shelf in Venice next to it.
What the wine in a spritz actually is
Most Venice bars build a spritz on prosecco. Under the Prosecco DOC rules the wine is based on the Glera grape, with up to fifteen per cent of a short list of permitted varieties including Verdiso, Bianchetta Trevigiana, Perera, Glera Lunga, Chardonnay, Pinot Bianco, Pinot Grigio and Pinot Nero. The denomination covers nine provinces across Veneto and Friuli Venezia Giulia, Venice among them. Minimum total alcoholic strength is 11.0 per cent by volume for spumante and 10.5 per cent for frizzante, with a minimum total acidity of 4.5 grams per litre (Consorzio Tutela Prosecco DOC, 2026).
The grape itself was called Prosecco until 2011, when the protected denomination took that name and the variety was officially renamed Glera. Its first records go back to the eighteenth century in the Colli Berici near Vicenza, and to an 1870 description of the Conegliano hills. Plantings in the production area now exceed 40,000 hectares, output runs at roughly one billion bottles a year, and in Veneto the variety accounts for more than a third of all land under vines (Belfiore et al., 2024).
Glera is described as semi aromatic, with middle sugar and acidity (Belfiore et al., 2024). That moderate profile is why it carries a bitter and a splash of soda without collapsing, and why a still white wine works in the glass too.
Why a bitter drink comes before dinner
Bitterness is detected by taste 2 receptors, a family of receptors on the taste bud cells of the tongue and mouth, and it evolved largely as a warning system against toxic plant compounds (Rosa et al., 2023). Italy turned that warning into a course. Italian amari are aromatic preparations above fifteen degrees of alcohol with a distinctly bitter taste, taken either as an aperitif to stimulate the appetite or after a meal to help digestion (Rosa et al., 2023).
How strongly you taste the bitterness is not the same for everyone. In a study of 231 participants, women rated the bitterness of quinine more intensely than men. In a subgroup of 40 people tasting a herbal bitter liqueur, women again gave higher ratings for both the aroma and the bitter taste, and for them the pleasantness of the smell correlated with the pleasantness of the taste (r = 0.564), which suggests that the aromatic herbs make the bitterness easier to accept (Rosa et al., 2023).
That finding describes a spritz well. The wine dilutes the bitter, the soda lifts the aroma, and the orange slice adds more of it. What is served is a bitter liqueur made approachable, which is exactly the job an aperitif is meant to do.
When Venetians drink it, and how to read the price list
The aperitivo is better understood as a social institution than as a drink. Research on the ritual describes it as a transitional moment between day and evening and between work and leisure, with roots traced back to the Roman gustatio and a modern form that emerged in the late eighteenth century with vermouth in Turin (Gatti et al., 2025). In Venice that hour is spent standing at a bacaro counter with a plate of cicchetti, and moving between bars is part of it.
The same research found the ritual to be resistant to change. Focus groups with Italian drinkers treated the traditional alcoholic drinks as inseparable from the occasion, while younger participants were open to no and low alcohol versions provided they were offered as additions rather than replacements (Gatti et al., 2025).
Prices are where visitors get caught, and the law gives you a tool. Bars and cafes in the Veneto must display the price of consumption with an indication of the service offered, at the counter or at the table, clearly legible and visible to the public from outside during opening hours (Regione del Veneto, 2007, art. 30). The counter price and the table price are two different numbers on the same list. Read both before you sit down, and drink at the bar if the gap is wide.
