Italian aperitif drinks
The coolest Italian tradition : Italian aperitif drinks, have an Italian alcohol-free aperitif cocktail with friends or customers before main meals.
This custom has attracted me since my first visit in Italy.
This habit of going to a bar (in Italy there are many bars, mostly clean, beautiful and providing great service) and having a cocktail aperitif was something new for me.
It's well known that Italians like to socialize in bars. It's a common occurrence to meet a friend, greet each other and have a drink together.
It is the same for business reasons. Inviting someone for coffee or a drink may be a good way to elicit some confidences or just seal a good deal.
Always in a bar ... drinking something.
Typical Italian aperitif drinks are non-alcoholic and colorful. The most common one is bitters. It comes in small bottles (125ml) that the waiter opens and put into a glass together with ice (during warm season) and a slice of lemon or orange.
You can choose between white or red bitters.
Other than bitters, you may choose a Crodino or an Aperol (they have low alcohol content). Both are orange colored and are good choices if you don't want an alcoholic drink.
Otherwise there's the famous Campari soda. In Italy, it usually comes in a triangular bottle and is served chilled. It can also be made mixing Campari with soda. Attention, it's bitter and fresh, but alcoholic and you may not notice it until you try to get up from your chair!
That's probably the reason why bars serve crisps, olives and other canapès together with aperitifs.
These are the typical Italian aperitif drinks. Of course one can order other Italian beverages, such as fruit juice. (Italian juices are really good.) There's the famous ACE, which means orange, carrot and lemon juice; or other flavors like peach that are worth a try. Cold tea, (usually with lemon or peach flavor) can be very refreshing.
When you happen to be in Italy, pay attention to people at the bars around noon and you'll see they will probably have one of these drinks in their hands.
Leaving the non-alcoholic drinks aside, nowadays it's very common to drink a spumante (sparkling white wine - usually Brut in this case) as an aperitif. Even if it passes through a different process in its making, it is the Italian version of French champagne. At the end of October 2009, Italian spumante surpassed the sales of French champagne in the US market.
