Episode 72: Aperol Spritz

  • 3 parts prosecco

  • 2 parts Aperol

  • 1 part soda water

  • Orange slice garnish

Fill a large wine glass with ice and pour in chilled prosecco. Slowly add the Aperol and then top up with soda. Gently stir and garnish with an orange slice.

Aperol is a citrusy bittersweet Italian Apertif. The name is actually a play on a French slang word for aperitif, “Apéro”.

While Aperol first came on the market in italy in 1919, the spritz has been around for much longer. In the 1800s, part of the Veneto region of northern Italy was controlled by the Austro-Hungarian Empire. The story is that visitors and soldiers from the empire found Italian wines too strong and started adding a splash (a "spritz," in German) of water to lighten them up.

Over the years the recipe slowly evolved, and soda water was eventually substituted for flat water, and from there people started adding other flavors and liqueurs to their wines to dress them up even more.

Aperol was added to the spritz in the 1950s, and while the recipe was an instant hit in Italy, it didn’t really become popular in the US until the 1970s when many Italian liqueur brands were spending a lot of marketing dollars in the U.S.

It was modestly popular in the 1970s, but when Aperol was acquired by Gruppo Campari in the early 2000s, they went in hard with advertising to Americans once again, making the Aperol Spritz the go-to drink at social media-friendly events like The Governor's Ball. Since then the drink is absolutely ubiquitous across the globe.

Episode 68: Americano

  • 1 1/2 ounces Campari

  • 1 1/2 ounces sweet vermouth

  • Soda water, chilled, to top

  • Garnish: orange twist

Fill a highball glass with ice, then add the Campari and sweet vermouth. Top with the soda water and stir gently to combine.
Garnish with an orange twist.

The Americano was created by Gaspare Campari, the actual creator of Campari. He opened his own bar in Milan in the 1860s and started selling cocktails made with his namesake aperitif. One of the most popular was called a Milano-Torino. It was literally just equal parts Campari, which was made in Milan, and Italian sweet vermouth, which was made in Torino. The cocktail became especially popular with American tourists, and eventually he added some soda water to give it some effervescence, and he named it an Americano.

Some say that this was especially popular during prohibition when Americans on vacation outside of the US were drinking everything in sight while they had the chance.

The Americano also happened to be the first cocktail ever mentioned in any of the James Bond novels, so after “Casino Royale’s” release in 1953, the Americano blew up here too.

Another fun fact about the Americano, it was actually the precursor to the Negroni. Legend has it that in Florence in the early 1900s an Italian Count named Camillo Negroni asked a bartender to tweak his Americano by swapping out the soda water with gin, and he liked it so much that he named the cocktail after himself.

Episode 55: Hanky Panky

  • 1½ ounces dry gin

  • 1½ ounces vermouth

  • ¼ oz Fernet-Branca

  • Orange twist, for garnish

Fill a mixing glass with ice, and pour in all of your ingredients.
Stir until well chilled and strain into Martini or coupe glass.
Garnish with an orange twist.

The Hanky Panky was invented sometime in the early 1900s by Ada “Coley” Coleman at the world famous American Bar in the Savoy Hotel in London. It was really rare to see women behind the bar back then, but that didn’t stop Coley, who was the head bartender there for over 20 years. She loved creating new recipes, but the Hanky Panky is her most famous creation ever, and it’s still on the menu at the American Bar to this day.

According to Coley, she created the drink for a famous London stage actor Sir Charles Hawtrey. When she retired in 1925, Coley told a newspaper,
“The late Charles Hawtrey… was one of the best judges of cocktails that I knew. Some years ago, when he was overworking, he used to come into the bar and say, ‘Coley, I am tired. Give me something with a bit of punch in it.’ It was for him that I spent hours experimenting until I had invented a new cocktail. The next time he came in, I told him I had a new drink for him. He sipped it, and, draining the glass, he said, ‘By Jove! That is the real hanky-panky!’ And Hanky-Panky it has been called ever since.”

The Hanky Panky is made with gin, sweet vermouth, and a bit of Fernet, which is a bittersweet herbal Italian Amaro. Fernet is very strong and a bit overwhelming on its own, but used sparingly in this cocktail it adds a wonderful complexity.

Episode 53: Amaretto Sour

  • 2 oz. Amaretto

  • 1 oz. Fresh lemon juice

  • ½ of a fresh large egg white (or ½ oz of Pasteurized egg whites if you prefer)

  • Garnish: Good quality cocktail Cherries and a few dashes of Angostura bitters

Combine all of the ingredients in a shaker and “dry” shake without ice for 5 seconds. Add ice and shake again for 15 seconds. Strain into a chilled rocks glass filled with ice and garnish.

No-one knows for sure who first came up with the recipe for the Amaretto Sour, but we do know that it was created somewhere in the USA, sometime in the 1970s, when Italian liquors were starting to become fashionable in America.

Italians had been trying to introduce their spirits to an American audience for years, but it seemed that the bitterness of many Italian spirits was too much for most Americans in the 70s, who preferred their alcohol on the sweet side. Campari and the Negroni cocktail, for example, had a really hard time squeezing into the American market, but thankfully for Italy, Americans found the sweet nutty flavor of Amaretto to be very easy to drink.

 Amaretto (Italian for "a little bitter) is a sweet, slightly bitter, almond flavored liqueur traditionally made by soaking apricot kernels in brandy. Today it can also be made with peach stones, sweet almonds, or bitter almonds.

While we don’t know who or where or when the amaretto sour was invented, we do know that in the 70s the recipe would have been as simple as mixing amaretto with ready mixed bar sour mix. Such a simple recipe could have come from anywhere and it’s highly likely that multiple bars started selling them independently of one another and the popularity spread until they were ubiquitous in the 1980s. They remained popular in the 90s but eventually fell out of favor. Today though, they’re actually starting to make a bit of a comeback, but most of the new-fangled recipes that bars are serving today mix the amaretto with whiskey to increase the alcohol content and balance the sweetness. The recipe above contains only amaretto, but instead of sour mix, it calls for fresh lemon juice and egg white. Since amaretto is sweet enough on its own, no sour mix is necessary.