What is Aperol?

Aperol is an Italian aperitivo: a flavored, colored, spirit-based product bottled at 11% ABV. The producer associates the recipe with bitter orange, rhubarb, gentian, and cinchona. It is an aperitivo in the same broad family as Campari, not a triple sec and not Campari at lower strength.

Campari remains drier, more bitter, and more than twice the alcohol. Substituting Aperol into a Negroni produces a sweeter, softer, less structurally bitter drink. That result is a different cocktail, sometimes served as a light Negroni, not the original.

Sweet orange, rhubarb, and a gentle bitter finish. The bitterness is real but modest; sugar and orange lead. At 11% ABV the liquid drinks closer to a fortified wine than to Campari.

It is too light in both proof and bitterness to stand in for Campari in equal-parts stirred drinks. In a spritz, that lightness is the design.

Brothers Luigi and Silvio Barbieri launched Aperol in Padua in 1919 through their family’s distillery. Gruppo Campari acquired the brand in 2003 and spent the following decade making the Aperol Spritz an international template.

The Venetian spritz is older than Aperol: wine or sparkling wine lengthened with soda and a bitter. The now-standard 3-2-1 build — three parts prosecco, two parts Aperol, one part soda — is a later commercial standardization, not a nineteenth-century recipe.

Build an Aperol Spritz in a wine glass over ice: three parts prosecco, two parts Aperol, one part soda water, garnished with an orange slice. Add the sparkling wine last; do not shake. Keep the bottle refrigerated after opening. At 11% ABV it is closer to a fortified wine than to a spirit in its vulnerability to oxidation and aroma loss.

Do not substitute Aperol one-for-one for Campari in a Negroni or Boulevardier if the goal is those drinks’ bitterness and proof. The reverse substitution, Campari in a spritz, yields a drier, more aggressive highball, which some drinkers prefer and which should be named as such.