The Aperol Spritz Spreadsheet

Last summer, Maeg, Rich, Joe and I liked Aperol spritzes enough that the obvious next step was a shared spreadsheet.

Not a group text. Not a loose agreement about which place made the best one. A spreadsheet.

We used it to rank the Aperol spritzes we tried around town. This gave four adults a way to take a very simple summer drink and place it inside an administrative framework. A spritz could no longer simply be good. It existed in relation to other spritzes.

This is what happens when a group likes something just enough to become organized about it.

The spreadsheet made it feel as though there might eventually be an answer. Somewhere out there was the correct Aperol spritz, and with enough research, we could presumably identify it.

Eventually, buying them from other people was no longer sufficient.

One night in, we decided to make our own and do a blind taste test.

The assignment was uncomplicated. Each person would make an Aperol spritz. The others would taste it without knowing who made it. We would determine whose was best without friendship, reputation or previous spreadsheet performance interfering with the process.

Everyone else's was pretty normal.

Mine was not.

I wanted to elevate it.

This was the problem.

An Aperol spritz already has a fairly complete job description. It is cold. It is bitter. It is a little sweet. It has bubbles. It has orange. It is not sitting there waiting for a fourth department to be added.

I did not see it that way.

I saw three basic ingredients and interpreted simplicity as unfinished work.

So I opened the cabinet.

I added spices I found in there. I am not going to reconstruct the exact combination because the useful historical fact is that there was more than one, and none of them had been invited by the original recipe.

Then I added a cinnamon stick.

The cinnamon stick is important because it means this was no longer an accidental over-seasoning. It had become a concept.

A cinnamon stick has presentation confidence. It sits in the glass like there was a meeting about it.

By the time I was finished, I had not made a better Aperol spritz. I had made an Aperol spritz that had been asked to participate in fall.

Then the blind tasting began.

The purpose of a blind taste test is anonymity.

Mine was awful.

Not subtly worse. Not interesting but divisive. Not the kind of drink where someone takes a second sip because there may be something there.

It was obvious which one I had made.

The experiment had been designed to remove identity from the drinks, and I had effectively signed mine with a cinnamon stick.

There was no mystery to solve. The spritz had identified itself.

The useful conclusion would be that I learned not to overcomplicate simple things.

That is partly true.

But the spreadsheet was never really useful because it could identify one objectively correct Aperol spritz. It was useful because, for a summer, four of us had agreed to care about the same extremely low-stakes thing with completely unnecessary seriousness.

We had a reason to notice the drinks. We had a reason to compare them. Eventually we had a reason to stay in and make four of them ourselves.

The spreadsheet turned a normal summer habit into a running project, which is the kind of thing that becomes funnier and more specific the longer a friendship lasts.

And somehow the worst drink of the entire exercise is the one I remember most clearly.

There is probably a lesson in that too.

Fortunately, there is also a much more practical lesson.

The best technique I eventually found for elevating an Aperol spritz was to stop putting things in it.

Three parts Prosecco. Two parts Aperol. One part soda water. Plenty of ice. Fresh orange.

That was the entire assignment.

The spreadsheet did not need disruption. The spritz did not need innovation.

The cinnamon stick, in particular, did not need an opportunity.