Puttin’ on the Spritz!
The once tacky wine spritzer is bubbling up at local bars and New Yorkers are drinking them up — including men, thank you very much
MATTHEW Hamilton knows how to shoot — and spritz. The former Marine is the chef-owner of Lulu & Po, a new restaurant in Fort Greene, where patrons are downing wine spritzers by the fistful, in flavors such as rhubarb and peach-mint. “We were surprised that people drank as many as they did,” admits Hamilton, who decided to bring spritzers to his Brooklyn spot, which opened in June, after some at-home summer sipping sessions.
“They’re awesome!” exclaims the burly, tattooed spritzionado, who says there’s nothing girlie about the bubbly quencher. “They’re Americana,” he reckons. And now, even hip. The once-mocked drink — rooted in ’80s housewife folklore and bemoaned as a beverage for elderly teetotalers and middle-aged cheapskates — is having its NYC moment.
Everyone from bro-ish bankers to downtown party kids to Vilebrequin-loving prepsters are getting spritzed-off spritzers — which, in its simplest form, is wine topped with soda water — and loving every watered-down minute of it.
Spruced-up spritzers topped with exotic sodas and garnishes are now top sellers across the city — from Hell’s Kitchen wine bar Ardesia to East Village tavern Edi & the Wolf. Bourgeois Pig in the East Village just announced its wine-spritzers-on-tap program.
“I’m totally pro-spritzer,” declares Eduard Frauneder, chef-owner of Edi & the Wolf.
“They’re very versatile . . . very clean, very food-friendly. They’re refreshing. They’re less alcoholic, and you drink less, which is always a good thing; people in New York drink enough,” he adds with a laugh.
Frauneder offers three wine spritzers on his Austrian menu, including what he calls “the Mercedes of the spritzers”: a concoction made with white wine, elderflower syrup, soda water, mint, lemon and two dehydrated roses.
He’s seen a 20 percent increase in spritzer sales
this summer and predicts the next evolution of the trend will be spritzing with sparkling lemonade.
“It is very European,” he explains.
Without a doubt, the wine spritzer has come a long way from its most recent perch in pop culture — a gag in a late ’90s episode of “The Simpsons,” in which goodie-goodie character Ned Flanders gets sloshed off the white-wine variety: “I’ll have a Shirley . . . No, a virgin . . . No, a children’s . . . Oh, what the heck? You only live once. Give me a white-wine spritzer!”
Nowadays, they’re eliciting more praise than mockery.
Just ask Hollis Daniel, a 26-year-old fashion designer who used to consider wine spritzers a “trashy drink.”
She hadn’t even tasted one until two years ago, when, at a sweltering Arizona wedding, her chic aunt led her bar-side for a refreshment.
Lo and behold, two white wines with a heavy splash of diet Sierra Mist and a squeeze of lime were ordered.
“I was really skeptical,” says the TriBeCa resident.
But after one sip, she was convinced.
“It was the most delicious thing,” she recalls. “Ever since, I’ve been a convert. ”
Part of the drink’s resurgence is owed to the unavoidable kitsch factor.
“You think of old ladies drinking them. My mom drank them when I was a kid,” says Ravi DeRossi, owner of the Bourgeois Pig.
“But that’s why I like them. Because they’re sort of nostalgic and my mom would give me sips when I was 12.”
Spritzers are also a lot less showy than your typical bubbly.
“It goes back to that notion that anything that is perceived as unpretentious is cool,” says Tanya Wenman Steel, editor-in-chief of Epicurious.
Of course, the modern wine sprritzer has gotten some urban po lish.
At DeRossi’s Bourgeois Pig, you’ll find spritzers on tap made with a rotating roster of Brooklyn-made sodas. On draft this week are sauvignon blanc annd simple syrup mixed with either orange peel, hibiscus annd ginger soda or grapefruit, jalapeño and honey soda. Already the drinks, introuced at the restaurant just two weeks ago and sold by thhe glass or pitcher, are a runaway hit.
“Guys and girls on dates will each order [a different flavor] aand share them,” observes DeRossi, who says he feels “pretty secure in my masculinity” with a wine spritzer in hand. Not everyone does. “I have to say, I’m of the crowd that thinks that no real man drinks a wine spritzer,” says Astoria resident Gerrald Ellis, a 29-year-old attorney.
“I bet they’re delicious, but I don’t think I’d be caught dead in public drinking one.”
Even fashion designer Daniel admits that not all social situations are spritzer-proof.
“I wouldn’t order it on a first date. I’d feel a little prissy,” she says.
Scott Fitzgerald, head mixologist at the Vinatta Project and Mulberry Project, says he will try to “nudge” customers away from ordering the “antiquated drink.”
“Refusing service is a difficult thing, but any bartender worth his wage should be able to reposition the drink,” he says. One way to do this? Rename it and add a bunch of trendy ingredients.
“We don’t call it a wine spritzer,” admits Mandy Oser, co-owner of Ardesia Wine Bar. “We’re kind of elevating it a bit.”
Sales of her Lillet Fizz — made with Lillet blanc, Prosecco, grapefruit bitters and a touch of lemon — are up by 30 percent this year, she says.
And even esteemed wine experts say cheers to that.
“Wine for so long was so serious,” says David Lombardo, the beverage director for Landmarc and Ditch Plains restaurants, who, yes, drinks wine spritzers beachside to the shock of his summer guests.
“People would be embarrassed because they thought you can’t add anything to wine. It was supposed to be the most sacred, purist thing in the world. And it is. It’s wonderful and fantastic. But I think people are more willing to experiment and to take a chance.”
Which means taking a chance at being ridiculed, at least until your friends’ wariness fizzes out — and they put the fizz in.
“One of my servers made fun of me because we were serving spritzers on ice, and he’s like, ‘That’s such a Long Island thing,’ ” recalls Hamilton.
“I was like, ‘I am from Long Island. You have a problem with that?’ ”