Susan: I’m thrilled to have you on the show because you were the first person in my “How To Drink” series to discuss vermouth. Why don’t you introduce yourself to everyone and tell us who you are and what you do? Susan: So I was wondering with your vermouth, because it is made out of wine, do you ever make sangria from it?

The whole point of the aperitivo is to work up an appetite for a bangin’ meal with a drink that’s big on bitter notes - and the Spritz is ALL about bitterness, since it’s typically made with liqueurs or vermouths that get their bitter complexity from botanicals. It’s amazing how in many export markets and many in the UK, they understand perfectly the aperitif category. They love Barcelona and our energy as a brand. And it’s doing really well, even with the COVID restrictions. I mean, I haven’t met anyone that doesn’t like Al Fresco, so it’s great. Alex: No, the Rojo, the one that you have there, it’s in Catalan. As I told you, if we’re Catalonia, we sell the screen-printed bottles in Catalan and for the rest of Spain, we sell it in Spanish. If you want to preserve your language, you need to speak it, use insults also and the tapas and everything. That’s why we have the Spanish bottle and the Catalan bottle. If they would drink another gin and tonic or some other drinks you would say, “Oh, this guy. or this mummy is getting drunk.” But since they are drinking vermouth, then it is socially accepted. It’s a nice way to meet friends and share some food before lunch. So that’s the moment – it’s called La Hora del Vermut. Fill a wine glass with ice and add the El Bandarra Al Fresco and Cava. Top up with soda, lightly stir and garnish with a slice of grapefruit. Sipello

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Alex: I’m El Bandarra, but it was my brother’s idea. We are a great team, Albert and I spent most, all, of our whole life together. We are twins and he’s a genius, he’s a super creative person. He came up with this idea, so I always say that he’s the software and I’m the hardware. It was very successful. In our opinion, the wine world needs to be fun. I mean, let’s have fun. It should be easy and fun. We already did some crazy stuff before Bandarra in the wine category. So, with Bandarra, we started in the Aperitif category, so it was pretty easy, because before El Bandarra, we did some successful launches, and that’s why they said, okay. I mean, after a wine with 67 insults in the bottle, they said, “Okay, let’s go. Let’s make El Bandarra.” My grandparents used to sell bulk wine in barrels, in little bodegas and bars. I’m talking about the Sixties all over Catalonia and in Spain, and that’s our origin. I’m pretty obsessed with exporting the success of the Aperitivo to the US, to the UK, and other markets. The drink typically has three ingredients - a bitter, a sparkling wine and soda water - but with a little imagination, you can make the Spritz all your own. To help you tap into your Spritz intuition, here are our pro tips - featuring expert input from Luca, of course.

Now the answer to your question about how we drink it. Our grandparents used to use a siphon or soda. It was typical. Now, it’s great to drink it over ice with a slice of orange and an olive, because I have an addiction to olives!

Alex: It’s the same. That’s the nicest thing of the wild hipsters, they get it. They’ve fallen in love with the traditions and they are doing them the same way. It’s called “La Hora del Vermut,” the vermouth hour. It’s during weekend, Saturday and Sunday from 12:00 to 3:00 PM. Wanna get really wild? Spike your Spritz with a fun, flavoured liqueur or cordial. The team at British aperitivo brand Sipello like to use an elderflower liqueur in their Spritz (see their recipe below), but you can add anything with complementary flavours: coffee, fruit-based and floral liqueurs are all fair game. GO FOR THE GARNISH Alex: We have an obsession for this. Now we are working on a campaign for Al Fresco, our new aperitive. In our new campaign, we will talk about our grannies, our abuela’s. Records the default button state of the corresponding category & the status of CCPA. It works only in coordination with the primary cookie. Fill a wine glass with ice and add the Amaro Santoni and Prosecco. Lightly stir, then garnish with two green olives. Savoia

Our expert panel put each apéritif to the test, making them according to their “signature serve”, as outlined by the producer. They were seeking a drink that was dry, bittersweet and lighter in alcohol; but, ultimately, an aperitivo they’d like to drink all summer long. Adding an olive – with the saltiness of the olive, amazing how it tastes and when you eat the olive with this vermouth taste, it’s like making love. It’s good. It’s great.We add some alcohol at the vermouth house for 15% of alcohol volume. And at that moment, we add the sweetness. The traditional method is adding a little bit of caramel and the old vermouths in Spain do it. It’s the traditional way to do it. Much like finally finding the right sunglasses for your face shape, nailing the art of aperitivo hour is crucial to enjoying a successful summer. You add some caramel which gives the color and the sweetness. We use a white wine, not red wine. We have 500-liter barrels at the winery with all vermouth. We use the Solera system. We refresh old vermouth with new vermouth and it has a lot of density. This vermouth, we call it the Elixir of Bandarra. We add some Elixir to each bottle of Bandarra. What it gives is a touch of the old vermouth. That’s how we make it. Obviously, in Italy, we make the Spritz with Prosecco,” explains Luca. “If you go to France, they will tell you it should be with Champagne or Crémant, and everywhere else it’s different.” There’s plenty of opportunity to play around with your vino of choice, from Cava, to English sparkling, to new non-alc options and more. DITCH OR SWITCH THE SODA Fill a wine glass with ice and add the Savoia Americano and Prosecco. Lightly stir, then garnish with three green grapes. El Bandarra Al Fresco

At some point, we realized it was a mistake. We said, “Okay, we have bottled it already. Let’s start selling it. People loved it. The white is great. Then one year after, we thought, “Why don’t we make a rosé?” Alex: We launch Al Fresco in July 2020. So, we were in the middle of a pandemic. We thought, okay. But I have to say that even from all from our learnings, mainly in the UK market, we tried to push the serve as how we drink it in Barcelona or in Madrid or all over Spain. Bartending boss Giuseppe Gallo created Savoia to sit in the sweet spot between red bitters and sweet vermouth - and the man hit the mark. This stuff is made from a base of Marsala and Trebbiano wines, giving it a slightly nutty and crisp character, plus botanicals including bitter orange, gentian, rhubarb and aloe. SPRITZ IT Alex: We started with, Rojo. In Spain, out of every 10 bottles of vermouth, nine are Rojo. It was the main vermouth that we had at the winery. We started with this one for the first three years, we were only focused on Bandarra Rojo.

Susan: My grandmother was the one to teach me to drink one spirit only because then I wouldn’t get a hangover. She also was the first person to introduce me to the caipirinha. So, I had a grandmother who liked her drink and yes, and she saw, I liked my drink. And so, she would teach me these things. It follows the success of their first three vermouths under the name of El Bandarra – Spanish for “the rogue”: Vermut Red, Vermut White and Vermut Rosé. Alex: Okay. My name is Alex Virgili and I’m from Barcelona. I was born in a family-owned winery in Barcelona province. I have a twin brother, I’m three minutes older than he. We are the young crowd of a winery. In the Spritz, sparkling wine is like JC Chasez in NSYNC: a crucial player, if not the flashiest member of the band. “A Spritz without the wine, I don't think it's a Spritz,” Luca says. (We feel the same way about JC.)