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FOOD AND DRINK

From spritz to shakerato: Six things to drink in Italy this summer

Summer in Italy means lots of things - trips to the beach, empty cities, strikes, and metro works - but it also ushers in the spritz and negroni season. Here are some of the best drinks to cool down with in Italy this summer.

People enjoy an aperitivo drink by the Grand Canal in Venice.
People enjoy an aperitivo drink by the Grand Canal in Venice. Photo by MIGUEL MEDINA / AFP

Spritz

Venice wins all the prizes for being the home of the spritz: the jewel in Italy’s summertime daisy crown and one of the country’s most popular exports.

To first-time customers, the sweet-and-bitter combo can taste unpleasantly like a poisoned alcopop. Stick with it, however, and you’ll soon learn to appreciate this sunset-coloured aperitif, which has come to feel synonymous with summer in Italy.

The most common version is the bright orange Aperol Spritz, but if this starts to feel too sweet once your tastebuds adjust then you can graduate to the dark red Campari Spritz, which has a deeper and more complex flavour profile.

What are the best summer drinks to order in Italy?

Photo by Federica Ariemma/Unsplash.

Negroni

If you’re too cool for the unabashedly flamboyant spritz but want something not too far off flavour-wise, consider the Negroni.

It’s equal parts gin, vermouth and Campari – though if you want a more approachable version, you can order a ‘Negroni sbagliato’ – literally a ‘wrong’ Negroni – which replaces the gin with sweet sparkling Prosecco white wine.

Served with a twist of orange peel and in a low glass, the Negroni closely resembles an Old Fashioned, and is equally as stylish. A traditional Negroni may be stirred, not shaken, but it’s still the kind of cocktail that Bond would surely be happy to be seen sipping.

Crodino

Don’t fancy any alcohol but still crave that bitter, amaro-based aftertaste?

A crodino might be just what you’re after. With its bright orange hue, it both looks and tastes very similar to an Aperol Spritz – so much so that you might initially ask yourself whether you’ve in fact been served the real thing.

Similar in flavour are soft drinks produced by the San Pellegrino brand; bars that don’t have any crodino on hand will often offer you ‘un San Pellegrino’ as a substitute. These drinks are usually available in multiple flavours like blood orange, grapefruit, or prickly pears.

A barman prepares a Campari Spritz cocktail in the historic Campari bar at the entrance of Milan’s Galleria Vittorio Emanuel II shopping mall. Photo by MIGUEL MEDINA / AFP

Chinotto

Much like the crodino, the chinotto is another distinctive bitter Italian aperitivo drink.

With its medium-dark brown colouring, however, the chinotto bears more of a resemblance to Coca Cola than to the spritz, leading to its occasionally being designated as the ‘Italian Coca Cola’.

In reality far less caramelly and much more tart than coke, the chinotto has its detractors, and the fact that we’re having to describe its flavour here means it clearly hasn’t set the world alight since it was first invented in the 1930s (it was subsequently popularised by San Pellegrino, which became its main Italian producer).

If you’re looking for another grown-up tasting alternative to an alcoholic aperitivo, however, the chinotto might just be the place to look.

Bellini

What’s not to love about the bellini?

Its delicate orange and rose-pink tones are reminiscent of a sunset in the same way as a spritz, but with none of the spritz’s complex and contradictory flavours.

A combination of pureed peach and sugary Prosecco wine, the bellini’s thick, creamy texture can almost make it feel smoothie or even dessert-like. It’s a sweet and simple delight, with just a slight kick in the tail to remind you it’s not a soft drink.

Shakerato

Not a fan of drinks of the fruity/citrusy/marinated herby variety?

If caffeine’s more your thing, Italy has an answer for you in the caffe shakerato: an iced coffee drink made with espresso, ice cubes, and sugar or sugar syrup.

That might not sound inspired at first, but hear us out: the three ingredients are vigorously mixed together in a cocktail shaker before the liquid is poured (ice cube-free) into a martini glass, leaving a dark elixir with a delicate caramel coloured foam on top.

You couldn’t look much more elegant drinking an iced coffee than sipping one of these.

Member comments

  1. Aperol actually comes from Padua. For an authentic Venetian spritz, order a “Select Spritz”. Select is a bright red aperitivo with a gingery flavour.

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FOOD AND DRINK

French and Italian wines set to lose out to British vineyards, claims study

English wines could benefit at the expense of French and Italian vines as climate change shifts the landscape in traditional wine growing, according to a new study published on Tuesday.

French and Italian wines set to lose out to British vineyards, claims study

Increased heatwaves and erratic rainfall could wipe out vineyards from Greece to California by 2100, researchers found – while creating optimal conditions for wine growing in the UK and other unlikely regions.

“Climate change is changing the geography of wine,” said Cornelis van Leeuwen, the lead author of the paper published in the journal Nature Reviews Earth and Environment.

“There will be winners and losers,” he told AFP.

Researchers compared existing but scattered data on the effects of rising heat and drought, as well as changes in pests and diseases, on global wine regions.

They found a “substantial” risk that 49 to 70 percent of these producing regions would become economically unviable, depending on the extent of global warming.

“You can still make wine almost anywhere (even in tropical climates)… but here we looked at quality wine at economically viable yields,” said van Leeuwen, a professor of viticulture at Bordeaux Sciences Agro.

Conversely, 11 to 25 percent of regions where vines are already planted could see production improve.

And completely new vineyards could emerge at higher latitudes and altitudes, researchers said – including southern regions of Great Britain where viticulture is in its infancy.

The extent to which global temperatures rise will make the difference.

If warming remains within two degrees Celsius of pre-industrial averages – a limit set by the 2015 Paris climate accord – most wine regions will survive, but need to adapt.

But under “far more severe warming scenarios, most Mediterranean regions might become climatically unsuitable for wine production”, the study found.

About 90 percent of winelands in coastal and lowland parts of Spain, Italy and Greece “could be at risk of disappearing by the end of the century.”

Southern California, where conditions are already warm and dry, could suffer the same fate with suitable areas for wine production declining by up to 50 percent.

But warmer conditions in America’s northern wine regions, from Washington State to the Great Lakes region, and even New England, could see the potential for premium wine production to flourish.

While “France is not the most exposed country”, van Leeuwen said, it like many other wine-growing regions will have to adapt by using more resilient grape varieties like Grenache for reds or Chenin for whites.

But he cautioned against turning to irrigation.

“Irrigated vines are more vulnerable to drought if there is a lack of water,” he said, adding it would be “madness” to direct such a scarce resource toward such hardy crops.

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