Naren Young on Apéretifs

THE APERITIVO HOUR

WORDS NAREN YOUNG

One of the hot trends this summer and beyond is the appreciation of the apéritif. We asked Australia’s leading ex-pat bartender and co-owner of New York’s Dante for his take on the role of the apéritif and its relevance to the dining experience.

I’ve always admired the way Europeans drink alcohol. It always seems to be done with a certain degree of nonchalance – a joie de vivre if you will – and there’s an elegance, sophistication and leisurely aspect to it that I’ve yet to see anywhere else. I’m especially enamoured by the way they welcome each evening with an apéritif, which comes in a myriad of forms and signals the beginning of the evening as opposed to the end of the day like most ubiquitous ‘happy hours’ stand for in most other regions, especially in the USA.

While the aperitivo hour, a rather ambiguous time of day that could be loosely defined as any period between, say, noon and dusk, is nothing new to Europeans (they’ve been perfecting this lifestyle for hundreds of years now), it is a rather new phenomenon to the rest of us. And what a phenomenon it’s fast becoming. I shudder to use the word ‘trend’, but this is a global movement that is the biggest I’ve seen in many years in the bar industry.

I know this first hand because Dante, is at the forefront of this development and when curating our concept, we took much of our inspiration from a lifetime of visiting the likes of Italy, Spain, France, Germany and Portugal and taking cues from what and how they drink on a daily basis. We took over a very old café in downtown Manhattan that opened in 1915 with the sole vision of turning it into one of the world’s great modern aperitivo bars.

As we started to collate the initial menu, we needed to clearly define what an aperitivo is, because it is a somewhat new and ambiguous category to many people. The word itself comes from the Latin ‘apertus’, meaning ‘to open’ and when we think of the function of what such a beverage is supposed to achieve, it becomes much easier to understand. A good apéritif/aperitivo should activate the saliva glands, which in turn sends a message to the brain telling it that you are indeed hungry. This is why, of course, these drinks are typically taken before a meal to stimulate the appetite.

That’s why such drinks should never be too alcoholic, too sweet or cloying or too heavy. So many bartenders these days continue to create and offer drinks that are so potent in flavour and alcohol that it’s not uncommon to

see drinks stirred with, say, bonded Applejack, green Chartreuse and barrel strength bourbon, perhaps a few drops of bitters and strained into a glass rinsed with Laphroaig Scotch. I’m sure some of the cocktail geeks among us would lap this up, however, this would be a much better ‘after dinner drink’.

But the mark of a great cocktail should beg the question: ‘would I have another’? I know I’m not in the minority in that I too struggle to get through these overly alcoholic and unnecessarily complex modern libations. That’s why I love seeing so many bartenders who have now embraced the alternate route: low abv cocktails. Those that are based on table wines, shrub, beer, vermouth, sherry, port, aromatised wines like Lillet, house-made sodas, Amari and quality artisanal liqueurs.

There’s no reason why every bar can’t and shouldn’t have a small selection of apéritifs. You don’t need to have a full-blown concept around it to enlighten your guests into this new way of drinking. Start small is the advice I usually give to those who are perhaps a little confused or cautious in how to implement a low abv part of your bar program. Offer a few basic and classic examples that people might recognise: Negroni (or various iterations such as the Americano, Sbagliato, Boulevardier or Old Pal), Aperol Spritz, a thoughtful gin & tonic, a classic Champagne cocktail or some form of spritz. And then let it grow from there.

All of these fall under the vast umbrella of what an apéritif can be. They should be dry or bitter, but always light, refreshing, elegant and sessionable. When we opened Dante, we wrote down every type of apéritif we could think of to see where they might fit within the menu. We soon discovered that the list of drinks was numbering over 100, which is, of course, a ridiculous amount of drinks to list on any menu. Now we have about fifty drinks in total, which is still a lot but it allows us to cover the full gamut of aperitivi.

Martinis in their many guises are a big focus for us this year, while we also have a dedicated section devoted to negronis (12 in total), a menu of ten spritzes in the summer, as well as our own signature versions of the Pimms cup, gin & tonic and plenty of sherry, vermouth and of course Champagne. The beauty of these drinks is that they make wonderful partners to a wide range of foods. In Italy, you won’t go to any café or bar during apéritivo hour where they won’t give you some sort of free snack, sometimes several.

This is why a lot of our drinks are high in acidity and we also use a lot of salt, various kinds of vinegar and shrubs, all of which help to make them more appealing apéritifs. With the rise of culinary cocktails over the last couple of decades, we’ve seen more savoury ingredients find their way into our cocktail shakers, making food pairing so much easier and more exciting. Apéritifs have always been intrinsically linked with food, so it only makes sense that we see these kitchen ingredients be used more thoughtfully.

I’ll leave the final thoughts to one of America’s greatest bartenders who is also an avid proponent of aperitifs, Joaquín Simó, the extremely talented and jovial owner of New York’s Pouring Ribbons.

“Fermented beverages tend to be cheaper than distilled ones so wines, both fortified/ aromatised and not, and beers can be a great way to save some cash, a not-to-be-forgotten consideration for many homes and businesses. But more than anything else, this category of drinks is important because of the vast array of startlingly good vermouths, quinquinas, ciders, beers, sherries, montillas, etc. which exist nearly completely out of the purview of the average consumer. This is a tremendous untapped resource for fascinating new ways to bring brightness, effervescence, acidity, and some truly unique flavours into your repertoire and into your guests’ awareness”.