My friend Charlee serves up Aperol spritzes eight at a time — a phalanx of glasses, all filled to the brim with candy-peach liquid and chunky ice cubes. We always drink them on her roof in Nolita, and the first sip makes us feel like we’re at the center of the world.
Similar scenes are playing out around the world this summer — the day drinkers at Montauk’s Surf Lodge, the smiling strangers on the Amalfi Coast on my Instagram Explore page. On warm days, Aperol spritzes feel inevitable.
A concoction of the eponymous liqueur, prosecco, and soda water that results in a beverage that’s light and bubbly, with a singe of bitterness from an indiscernible citrus, the Aperol spritz has become the ubiquitous drink of the past few summers, thanks to how easy it is to drink and how photogenic it is.
In the pale orange shadow of the uber-dominant spritz, however, half a dozen beverages are vying to take its place.
Among them is hard seltzer, alcohol-imbued bubbly water that contains about 5 percent alcohol and appeared on the market in 2013 (SpikedSeltzer, now owned by Anheuser-Busch, claims to be first). They come in friendly-looking cans that mimic La Croix and its niftier cousins, purposely aiming for that same millennial demographic.
Even Corona, the summertime beer of choice for many (always with a lime), dipped into that race this year, releasing a hard seltzer to compete with the likes of Smirnoff, White Claw, Bon & Viv, Truly, Henry’s, Nauti, Cutwater, and High Noon, among many others. All these hard seltzer brands are part of a beverage industry category known as “flavored malt beverages,” whose sales rose 10.7 percent to nearly $2.6 billion in 2018.
But if the next hot summer drink isn’t hard seltzer, waiting in the wings are canned wines like Nomadica that you crack open like soda pop. In 2018, canned wine sales skyrocketed 69 percent to make more than $69 million, according to Wine Spectator, which notes that canned wine took in just $2 million seven years ago.
Then there are the mutant variations of things we know or thought we knew, like natural wine and boozy kombucha, fancy Vermouth spritzes and “distilled non-alcoholic spirits.”
For each, the goal is to become as popular as the Aperol spritz or rosé, the drink that broke new ground for summertime drinking — to be inevitable and indispensable and utterly, completely interlaced with the idea of a perfect summer day.
But the next big summertime quaff won’t necessarily be the best-tasting.
“We are not drinking Manhattans to cool off in the summertime,” said Charlotte Voisey, a mixologist and the director of brand advocacy for the William Grant & Sons spirits portfolio. “We gravitate toward long, refreshing types or frozen drinks that can continue to refresh, and therefore continue to be the right choice on a warm summer day.”
The popularity contest, however, has just as much to do with shrewd marketing, convenience, and appearance. Sure, the winner should be nice to drink in the summer heat, but in our modern times, it’s also essential that the beverage looks great on Instagram, and that it reminds you, and others, of a place much more glamorous than where you are right now.
The drink of the moment? It’s been years in the making.
A focus on packaging
If there’s a brand created to capitalize on summer drink hype, it might be Nomadica, whose visual image is as important as the wine in its cans. The cans look like pieces of handcrafted art — like the kind of stuff you might find in one of those cities that claim to be the “Austin” of another, smaller state. The brand’s “Pink River Rosé” features an electric-magenta river snaking through a verdant forest, while other cans are emblazoned with abstracted animals, including a rainbow-striped stag and an iridescent hummingbird.
Even the name, “Nomadica,” sounds like a journey, evoking mountains and camping.
“Something that we’re really obsessed with is the idea of synesthesia,” said co-founder Kristin Olszewski, a former sommelier. Synesthesia is a condition in which several senses simultaneously respond to something you see (for example, the way the color red might make you hungry).
For Olszewski and her business partner, former restaurateur Emma Toshack, the visual aspect of wine was something they established when the brand launched in 2017. That objective was partly informed by Toshack’s experience working at Snapchat, an app that helped ingrain social media in our personal lives.
Olszewski had also noticed how Instagram and social media have democratized the insular, perhaps intimidating world of wine drinking.
Pop culture had, in the past, spoofed and satirized the pretentious wine drinker. Think of Paul Giamatti’s Miles Raymond in Sideways, who talks endlessly about the subtle nuances he can smell, the “legs,” and the minerality and clarity a wine possesses. These sorts of depictions exaggerate the very real discussions at vineyard wine tastings and at tables with sommeliers.
Olszewski acknowledges that the wine world can be intimidating to the point of cheesiness. Still, she admits to missing some of that insularity.
“Wine [before Instagram] was kind of fun because it was just a cowboy, no man’s land,” she said. “You could take [wine drinkers] on a journey, and people were really a lot more open-minded. Whereas now people will often pull up a photo on their phones and be like, ‘Do you have this?’”
Unlike books or people, it’s perfectly okay to judge a drink, especially ones you drink in summer, solely by its appearance. How a drink looks has a direct effect on whether people want to put it in their mouths. Rosé’s chilly blush and the Aperol spritz’s shy orange tint make you want a sip. They wouldn’t be as popular if they didn’t have their signature colors.
Nomadica’s artful cans are designed with this in mind. They avoid the stigma that canned wines are cheap or inelegant. They’re made for photos, especially photos of the hike you just took, the beach you’re relaxing on, or the picnic you’re about to dive into. Hard seltzers function the same way, their cans emblazoned with anchor or wave logos that evoke the water, and fonts that make you think of boardwalk bars.
Marketers have figured out how to game that innate human desire to share beautiful things, and they’ve transformed it into a PR plan. They’ve tapped into how we gauge glamour and aspiration and crafted how they sell their drinks to fit that mold.
Something everyone wants to drink
The original pre-Aperol drink of summer was pale rosé — the drier and crisper, the better. Rosé’s initial push began around 2005, hitting full stride nearly a decade ago.
“One of the main characteristics of the Côtes de Provence appellation is light and pale (and dry) styles of the rosés produced in this region,” says Paul Chevalier who heads US marketing and sales for Whispering Angel, a leading rosé label. “Consumers are now rejecting the darker shades of pink wines in favor of lighter, which are generally dry. Everyone now benchmarks themselves against Provence.”
Whispering Angel is to rosé what Kleenex is to facial tissues or Q-tips are to cotton swabs. There is no rosé more famous or ubiquitous; the brand is a favorite of Real Housewives and Malia Obama. In 2014, the Hamptons’ very wealthy denizens famously drank it and other rosés into a shortage.
And Whispering Angel was the tide that raised all boats, or, in this case, all bottles. As its popularity grew, labels such as Chateau Miraval (backed by Brad Pitt and Angelina Jolie) and the Southampton-based Wolffer Estate also began popping up in social media posts and photos. Restaurants loved the trend, too. In 2010, the New York Times assessed the burgeoning trend.
“Part of the great appeal of rosé is that it’s not considered a serious wine,” Eric Asimov wrote. “Everyone can let down their guard and feel free of any demands to demonstrate sophistication by issuing trenchant analyses of what’s in the glass. We can relax and enjoy, like swapping office wear for shorts and huaraches.”
The rosé craze, perhaps because of fatigue and that Hamptons shortage, has finally settled. Chevalier and Olszewski say the cooling off isn’t so much about the death of rosé, but rather, the end of its “drink of summer” status; now, it’s ordered year-round and is a fixture on menus.
Thanks to a marketing push by Campari, the “drink of summer” title has gone to the Aperol spritz — a concoction that also happens to glisten like crushed dewy marigolds.
One can actually track the Aperol spritz’s earthwide activity and popularity — in Italy, Eastern Europe, the Eastern United States, Russia, Illinois — through the #AperolSpritz Instagram hashtag, more than 1.1 million posts strong.
When I asked experts to dissect its magic, the common refrain was that its meteoric rise is akin to rosé’s. It is “approachable” or “easy,” like something you’d say about running into an acquaintance you’re glad to see at a party full of people you don’t know.
“The Aperol spritz has bridged a gap between cocktail drinkers and non-cocktail drinkers, who usually opt for a glass of wine or a beer,” said Stacey Swenson, head bartender at New York City’s Dante. “Because the Aperol spritz is so much lower in alcohol than the average cocktail, guests are more likely to order more than one but still feel refreshed.”
A similar “easiness” fueled rosé’s popularity. It also explains why drinks like spiked seltzer and low- or no-alcohol spritzes seem next in line to become summertime’s hot drinks.
If it’s 90-plus degrees out, the last thing you want or need is something heavy, smoky, or full-bodied like red wine — or, as Voisey noted, a Manhattan. Drinking in the summer often happens outside, particularly when people who do not live in paradises like the Southern California coast or Hawaii want to appreciate the very temporary pleasant weather.
The idea of sweating glasses of brown liquor on a Sunday afternoon while wrapped in a blanket of heat and humidity seems suffocating. Voisey’s logic is that cocktails like the Aperol spritz are something you can start drinking in the day that won’t make you feel heavy or bogged down.
Essentially, three spritzes is easier than gulping down three Negronis, and will be more likely to leave you standing.
The unavoidable effect of Instagram
Drink marketers have figured out that when we think of a glamorous summer destination, we’re also imagining the drink we should be having. And when we’re having a glass of something in our backyard, we want to believe we could be somewhere else.
When people think of rosé, they think of life in the French Riviera, St. Tropez, St. Barts, and the Hamptons, says Whispering Angel’s Chevalier. At least, that’s what he wants them to think of. Hosting well-photographed events in those places helps the company make that connection.
Campari, the maker of Aperol, took a page out of Whispering Angel’s book. Its Aperol marketing push, according to the New York Times, began in New York City at summertime events like the Governors Ball music festival and then extended into the Hamptons.
“The Hamptons typically attracts those who love to do and wear and drink and eat whatever is new and trending. It becomes a circle that feeds itself,” said Voisey.
Word travels in large part via Instagram users, as our friends or people we follow share their dreamiest, most idyllic photos.
Seeing people post snapshots of their summer drinks adds to the fantasy and appeal. They vouch for the locale and for the drink. It’s a private fantasy that if you sip an Aperol spritz or a glass of rosé, you might feel as if you’re on the French Riviera, even if it’s fleeting — even if, deep down, we know that the idealized versions of these glamorous places don’t truly exist.
Therein lies the biggest indicator for the next drink of summer — a hard seltzer, a vermouth spritz, a canned wine, whatever it is. It needs to capture the fantasy, and the innate desire we have to share it with the world.
And marketers can only do so much engineering. Maybe the Aperol spritz moment will last as long as the rosé epoch, or maybe we’ll all be drinking hard seltzer come next summer. Or maybe something currently unforeseen will arrive out of nowhere and take off — like lightning in a bottle. Or a cocktail glass. Or a can.