Stay in Italy long enough and it’s fascinating how the palate adjusts. Certain hunger cues arrive like clockwork: around 6 PM, the craving of something bitter. A puckering sip. Lo spritz. A spritz anchors an aperitivo, that traditional opener (from the Latin aperire, “to open”) Italians have seemingly put on the map—though its history stretches farther back, and north.
Starting in the early 19th century, when parts of Italy were still under Austrian rule, visiting soldiers found the wines of Veneto too strong, asking for a “splash” of water—first still, and later, sparkling—to make them more drinkable. That splash eventually evolved into the modern spritz.
