Aperol has been popular for decades as a light pre-dinner cocktail in western Europe. However, only in the last five years has Aperol Spritz’s popularity skyrocketed globally - so much so that it has become a staple liqueur for bartenders around the world, and year over year growth continues at a double digit clip.
What drives this growth? First and foremost, the drink’s attention-grabbing hue. Social feeds in which with summer, sunshine, social gatherings and popular culture are accented with orange. Placement at trendy music festivals and cultural events, replete with Aperol-branded merchandise. Aperol Spritz’s rise has been an inherently visually-driven one.
When Michael Preis described Palm Bay Import’s rapidly growing Rose business, I was not surprised. Rose embodies many of the same traits as the Aperol Spritz - central among them being its summery pink hue and associations with good weather, picnics, beaches, brunch, and unpretentious but classy get togethers.
Social media inherently relies on strong visual markers and signaling, and rose as a segment has been able to capitalize on that. Many white and red varietals, however, have not. An association with the ‘finer things in life’ and the standardization and constraints posed by conventional bottling have hampered wine’s ability to broadly take advantage of social media. New packaging via cans and tetra-packs may help lighten some of these associations, but to fully capitalize on social media, wine sellers will need to find new form factors and visual markers to center consumer focus around.
Reading your post reminded me of the crazy internet response to the NY Times article last May, "The Aperol Spritz Is Not A Good Drink." Rebekah Peppler gave a blistering review of the suddenly ubiquitous drink:
ReplyDelete"Served in branded, jumbo wine glasses, the sugary aperitif is paired with low-quality prosecco, soda water and an outsize orange slice, resulting in something that drinks like a Capri Sun after soccer practice on a hot day. Not in a good way."
Interestingly, Peppler's argument wasn't against spritzes, rather she simply advocated making your own with high quality ingredients and apertifs beyond Aperol. However, the internet firestorm in response to her article didn't reflect this side of the article. Many new outlets, such as delish wrote in an Op-Ed subtitled sorry @NYT "[this article] proved there is no one person or outlet who should be the voice of reason when it comes to what's "cool" in food right now, especially not an old-school, uber-legacy media brand."
I find it interesting that an article whose intention was to provide a contrarian perspective on Aperol Spritz (a drink whose newfound popularity was directly tied to a marketing campaign done by Campari) elicited a response that NYT was trying to be an elitist tastemaker. People grabbed on to the elitism of her article, suggesting she was belittling less sophisticated people who enjoyed the drink. When she said the drink would be better with higher quality prosecco, readers argued of course it would, but that didn't make a cheap and accessible cocktail for the masses.
These questions reminded me of our discussion of the role of the critic in the instagram age. Why are we okay with a brand like Campari reviving a cocktail so that it becomes part of every summer instagram, but not a food writer for a prominent periodical calling this cocktail bad?
https://www.delish.com/food/a27456712/nyt-aperol-spritz-opinion/
https://www.nytimes.com/2019/05/09/dining/drinks/aperol-spritz.html
Thanks Ida and Mary!
ReplyDeleteI would describe myself as an Aperol and Rose connoisseur - they're pleasant to drink in the summer and remind me of summer year-round. I agree with Mary's point that some people interpreted the NYT article as elitist, a put-down on those of us who are just fine with prosecco instead of champagne.
I would take it a step further - Aperol became successful because it's an approachable drink. It's not that expensive (at least if you make it at home) and it's huge size means that you can enjoy it for a while. It's Instagrammable and fun to drink. It literally just *looks* like summer.
I think wine can learn from this and try to convey this approachability - especially with the story that Rose has already started to tell