Summertime: Everything About Wine Spritzers, Sangria And Tinto De Verano
It is too hot for a full glass of red. Cut it with soda, fruit, or lemonade instead — the way most of southern Europe has for two centuries.
It's thirty-two degrees, you're sweating through your shirt, and the last thing your body wants is a full glass of 14% red. This is not an argument for switching to lager. It's an argument for doing what most of southern Europe has been quietly doing for two centuries: cutting the wine.
Every drink in this article runs on the same trick. Take wine, add something cold and fizzy or fruity, and you get more volume, less alcohol, and something that actually wants to be drunk in the sun. It's not a compromise. It's the original point of half these drinks.
Spritz
Here's the bit people get wrong: no, it wasn't invented by Nazis. That claim doesn't survive basic arithmetic — the Spritz is documented in the Veneto from the early-to-mid 1800s, when the region was under Austrian Habsburg rule, roughly a century before the Nazi party existed. Austrian soldiers and officials stationed in Italy found the local wine too strong and too acidic for their taste and started asking for it "spritzt" — German for splashed — with soda water. The name stuck to the whole category.
The bright orange version most people mean today is younger and comes from a specific place: Aperol, the bittersweet orange liqueur behind it, was invented in Padua in 1919. The now-standard build — three parts Prosecco, two parts Aperol, one splash of soda, poured over ice with an orange slice — took off far more recently than the drink's Habsburg roots suggest.
Two builds worth knowing:
- Aperol Spritz — 3 parts Prosecco, 2 parts Aperol, 1 splash soda water, ice, orange slice.
- Hugo Spritz — Prosecco, a dash of elderflower liqueur, a big handful of mint and lime, topped with soda. Lighter and less bitter than Aperol, and arguably more refreshing.
Sangria
Wine-and-fruit punches go back centuries around the Mediterranean, and the word itself has a longer paper trail than you'd guess: "sangaree," an English rendering of the Spanish, turns up in print as early as the 1730s in the Caribbean, describing wine or rum mixed with water, sugar, and spice. Sangria as the modern, standardised, fruit-loaded party drink owes its global fame to a much more recent event: Spain's pavilion at the 1964 New York World's Fair served it to Americans by the gallon, and it never really stopped being popular in the US afterwards.
Basic recipe: a bottle of cheap, fruity red, a splash of brandy, orange and lemon slices, a spoonful of sugar, ice, topped up with a splash of soda or lemonade just before serving. Let the fruit sit in the wine for a couple of hours first — that's most of the flavour.
Tinto de Verano
Order "sangria" in an actual bar in Spain and there's a decent chance what lands on the table is a bottled, pre-mixed, faintly sad version made for tourists. What locals actually drink is simpler, cheaper, and arguably better: tinto de verano, literally "summer red," which is just red wine and lemon soda over ice. No fruit, no macerating, no brandy — one bottle, one mixer, done in ten seconds.
The recipe I picked up from a bar owner in Barcelona, which beats every version I've made since:
- 2 parts Rioja Crianza
- 1 part Sprite
- 1 part Fanta Lemon
- Plenty of ice
Crianza specifically, not Joven, because Rioja's Crianza rule requires at least a year in oak and a year total ageing before release — cheap enough to mix without wincing, but mellowed just enough that it doesn't taste sharp or raw once it's cut with soda. The two lemon sodas together do something a single one doesn't: Sprite brings the fizz and a clean edge, Fanta Lemon brings actual sugar and body, and together they land juicy and fresh rather than either flat or cloying. Add orange and apple slices if you've got them — peach is even better — and if you've got neither, just drown it in ice and don't overthink it.
Also worth trying
A basic wine spritzer — any white wine, ice, topped with soda water — does the same job with even less effort. And if you want the most unapologetically blunt version of this whole idea, there's kalimotxo: equal parts cheap red wine and cola over ice, a Basque Country staple since the 1970s, invented (so the story goes) to rescue a batch of wine that had gone slightly off. It sounds like an insult to wine. It is, in fact, exactly what a hot afternoon calls for.
None of this is wine being disrespected. It's wine doing the one thing it's always done best in the countries that invented it: getting people through a hot afternoon without anyone falling asleep by four.