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A travel drink prescription, bitter and bright. New exclusive video series filmed on my fire escape. The Italian red we paired with a chopped cheese sandwich.

The Other Spritz You Simply Must Try

Italy’s capacity to delight me with local variations on absolutely everything has not slowed down since this little adventure, from 2022, that I recount in today’s edition of my column, “The Way I Travel.” (Below!)

I’ve been a fan of Italian aperitivo liqueuers since I first read about the Negroni in a recipe book and found a midwestern bar that stocked Campari. I had to tell the bartender how to make the drink (this was over ten years ago). That herbaceous-bitter blend of aperitivo, gin and red vermouth poked me right between the eyeballs. I was in love.

Right around then, I started working as a bartender myself, moved to New York City and started slinging Aperol spritzes at a cozy Italian restaurant. Brunch service left me with a Pavlovian thirst for aperitivo, prosecco and soda poured over ice in a stemmed glass. “This is what people drink who don’t work on weekends drink.”

If you order a spritz without stating any choices, it will come with Aperol, a grapefruit-inflected aperitivo in shades of neon tangerine. Originally from Padua, Aperol is extremely popular across northern Italy and around the world. But there are other options.

If you’re like my mom and don’t enjoy even mildly bitter Aperol, you should try a Hugo Spritz, made with elderflower. If you are into herbal intensity, like me, you have probably ordered a spritz with Campari, (hopefully) keeping in mind that Campari is higher in alcohol. But there is a bittersweet spot on the spritz spectrum you may not know about yet.

Served with a juicy green olive, an orange slice, or both, Venetian aperitivo Select makes the perfect spritz. Closer in alcohol to Aperol than Campari, Select glows red like a garish valentine. Bitterer than Aperol, less sweet than Campari, Select has its own distinctly pleasurable flavor. I’ve tried many “alternative” spritzes with tasty aperitivo liqueurs from around the world, but it is the Select Spritz that is actually improves on the widely available classics.

Every time I see Aperitivo Select outside of Venice I make sure to order one as positive reinforcement for that establishment’s spirits buyer. I want this elixir more widely available!

For now, you might have to travel to Venice to try it. Is that a problem? I dare you to get a plane ticket to Venice just to order a spritz. When they say “what kind?”—they do ask you this, in Venice—respond, “Select.” Enjoy the warm “Ah!” of approval you’ll get for being in-the-know on this sip of local pride. Accept your cicchetti, cheek-etty, the Venetian version of tapas. Crunch down on your creamy saffron risotto toast snack, then take a sip and smile. Send me a selfie if you’re satisfied with this advice.

Hey, this is fun, right? Did you know you can support Modo di Bere for as little as $5 a month?

Speaking of Patreon

…the perk for the YouTube Fan supporter level has now arrived! Every month I’ll climb out the window and film a Fire Escape Chat directly for you. This could be your exclusive, ahem, window, into where I’ve just got back from, where I’m going next, what I’m drinking, what local slang I’ve been picking up, and generally what’s happening behind the scenes with Modo di Bere. Here’s a preview to see if that’s something you wouldn’t mind receiving to the tune of $5 a month. Call it the garnish on the good feeling of supporting our thirst-quenching research into local drinks and local languages.

Again, here is the link for access to the exclusive vlog: patreon.com/mododibere.

Italian Slang and American Cheese

This week’s podcast episode was also bonus content for Patreon subscribers at the Podcast Lover level and above. If you’re already a supporter—thank you!!—log into Patreon to hear the whole thing. Deep into the Italian version of my interview with novelist, food writer and video maker Giulia Álvarez-Katz, we stopped for a chopped cheese break, chatting quite casually in English about various topics such as how Bhutanese chefs approximate yak cheese in the diaspora.

Giulia has since become the podcast editor for Modo di Bere, and she is the reason the pod is now available on video at youtube.com/@mododiberepodcast.

Giulia’s full interview in English

Giulia’s full interview in Italian

Oh and we paired the chopped cheese with Aglianico. It brought out an olive note!

This Week’s Essay

Don’t worry, this week’s essay is free to read! My first concept of Modo di Bere was a blog, and an early version of this piece is actually the first thing that I published under the name, on—oh gosh, adorable—a now-defunct blogspot site, two years ago.

Once I launched two podcasts (in English and Italian) and started filming the (forthcoming) travel show Modo di Bere TV, I let go of the writing part: until the launch of this magazine eleven weeks ago.

While I took the blogspot down, I didn’t want this essay to wither, so I read it for a podcast episode at the end of Season 2. It’s only fitting that the first piece of writing I meant for the Modo di Bere project should have its place now that this magazine is finally here!

I thank you so much for reading it.

If you’d like to listen to me read it instead, it’s Season 2 Episode 12 of the English pod. (Note: there is some quite strong language, in case you’re listening in the car with little kids.)

Venice Spritz Magic

by Rose Thomas Bannister

The covid-stricken world had just begun to open up when I got called for a wine gig in Italy. After surviving sirens and morgue trucks, American mask fights, shuttered rock clubs and the hell of remote school, springtime in Italy sounded so nice that I spent weeks before the trip mildly assuming I’d die in a car crash. I didn’t die, so on the last day of my trip, my reward was seeing Venice.

I rolled my red suitcase back and forth, gazing at the blue dot on my phone as if it would help me find my hotel. 

“What should I do in Venice?” I’d asked winemaker Paola Ferraro of Bele Castel, over a glass of Asolo Prosecco so replete with terroir there’s a story in the shadow the liquid would cast on a wine barrel turned on its side for a table. 

I’m not kidding: that’s what they call a glass of wine in Veneto. L’ombra, shadow. Venetian wine sellers of yore kept their wines cool in the shade by scooching their prosecco stands around the San Marco bell tower as if it were a sundial. 

“In Venice?” Paola’d answered: “Get lost. Walk. Take in all the sounds. Forget yourself.”

She said I’d love the local language there. I asked her what the words or accent sounded like. “You’ll know it when you hear it” was all she would say.

I wanted to take Paola’s advice, but I hadn’t planned on getting lost before checking into my hotel. Venice is not a blue dot sort of place. I’d have to rely on how my father taught me to travel: forget the internet, hit whatever watering hole had evolved from the bell tower scene, and make friends–as soon as I dropped off the suitcase. 

I’d passed three or four times through the same corridor when a panhandler pointed a finger over his shoulder and intoned, “Là.” 

He was right. The gate was there. I rolled my stuff into the Ca’ Nigra Lagoon Resort Hotel. At the front desk, I told Narciso of the mischievous goatee that I knew “l’ombra” and desired more words like it. He let slip which sestiere he and his friends frequent after work. Cannaregio is the northernmost of the districts described by the special Italian word for “neighborhood” that lets you know that there are six of them. 

I wouldn’t come close to exploring all six zones in just one day, but I’d go out with a local saying from Narciso that I could use to break the ice.         

L’acqua marcise i pali. Narciso wrote it down. He told me it means “Water rots the boat poles,” and that it’s used to admonish anyone who requests a drink of water instead of something stronger. 

Selling wine in New York City introduced me to people from all over Italy. Their linguistic diversity is as vast and varied as the native grapes that drew me to Italian wine. I collected the vine names like baseball cards—Lambrusco di Sorbara, Malvasia di Lipari, Pallagrello Bianco. The deeper I got into the grapes, the more sayings in dialect came my way. I started noticing idioms that express the same idea with local variations in language, agricultural products, and animals. 

Mere days before Venice, high on surviving my first time driving in Italy, I’d felt my definite belief that it’s way too hard to become a wine writer dissolve into the modest idea that I should start a blog or something. I could bring in the language stuff…. 

Then I realized it was called Modo di Bere, way of drinking, a pun on the Italian word for a saying, modo di dire. I sat up behind the steering wheel and thought, 

That’s a good idea. 

It was time to start having a little fun. 

In other words, Water’s bad for you: drink wine. Narciso’s local example of what water destroys—poles for tying up gondolas!—was the third such phrase I’d collected during my visit to Veneto and Friuli-Venezia Giulia. The first, in Italian Italian, L’acqua fa ruggine, means “Water makes rust.” The second, in a Friulian dialect, sounded like L’agghe vai buine per croz: “Water is for frogs.” 

Narciso gave me a tour of the boat dock, explaining that it’s luxurious to have one and that it’s called a “cabana.” We toured the hotel, Narciso dishing 17th century gossip about ambassadors and courtesans. My red rolling suitcase matched the walls of my room. I photographed the colorful glass chandelier, marveled a little at the private veranda, and went back out in search of the covid test I’d need to re-enter the States.

The pharmacy was closed for lunch.

 All right, I’d eat, too. I approached a tiny bar protruding from a window. A waitress came out the door and simply said, 

“No.” 

I didn’t understand what I’d done wrong, only ducked like a dog into a bigger restaurant that seemed open, if entirely empty. Its sign advertised gluten free pizza.

A Sri Lankan waiter of about seventeen led me to the garden, which was still encased in plastic, like it did not believe the spring was here to stay. I was joined in the garden by a group of apparent mechanics. They sat with their boiler suits peeled down at the waist, like half-opened bananas.

The mechanics faced each other at a long table across the aisle to my right. My table faced the next garden over, which was boldly open to the air. There sat an older man in profile, sunning himself like a cat. He moved only to twitch his cheeks, crack his craggy fingers, sip his white wine, or let out a few measures of stentorian coughing. 

The oldest mechanic either knew the guy or found the cough as striking as I did. He’d imitate the sound to his buddies after each round of catarrh: “Cough cough cough cough cough.” 

“You’ll know it when you hear it,” Paola had said of the Venetian dialect. The mechanics’ conversation started to sound like “blah blah blah” mona, “blah blah blah” mona. 

Aha! 

I’d been in Veneto long enough to pick up the regional word for “pussy.”

If you learn Italian in a restaurant, you start with one part rude words, one part food words, and one part dishes. 

“Cazzo.” 

“Bistecca.” 

“Coltello.” 

Dick. Steak. Knife. 

Either the mechanics’ conversation concerned explicit subjects, or they were using “mona” the way many Italians, in casual contexts, use “cazzo.” Days into learning restaurant Italian, I’d remarked to my colleagues that the sound of them talking to each other was like blah blah blah "cazzo," blah blah blah "cazzo." 

“It’s the same for you guys and fuck,” my colleague had replied. 

I’d spend the next several years picking up local slang from every Italian I met, and the cocks would far outnumber the vulvas. Either the mechanics’ frequent monas were a regional specialty, or my instructors had been holding out on me when it came to the emphatic feminine. 

The local language had found me. It was time to make friends. 

I had liquid courage in the form of an Aperol spritz. I’m kidding: Aperol is not so alcoholic, perfect for day drinking, but I’d struggled with my sudden desire to order one for lunch. The Italians I’d met ordered spritzes in the late afternoon only. They take this gustatory time of day stuff so seriously. Typical Americans ignore them, consuming both cappuccinos and spritzes for brunch.
 As an obedient student of Italian customs, I try to “when-in-Rome,” but I wasn’t in Rome, and I wanted a spritz. When I was a bartender, I made so many damned spritzes, and I advised all the customers who complained of ennui to go on vacation alone.

It was my turn to travel. I ordered that spritz.

In a matter of hours, I’d learn Venice is a magical place where you drink nothing but spritzes, day and night, made not only from Aperol but from the local red spirit, Select. A spritz with Select is more bitter than Aperol, less sweet than Campari, and they throw in an olive as often as an orange. 

Despite my ignorance, Venetian spritz magic had already done its work on me. Full of prosecco and vivid herbaceous liqueur, I strode over to gli operai and sat down at their table’s open seat. 

“Hello,” I said in Italian. “I am interested in local language.

“For instance,” I told them, “I have learned L’acqua marcise i pa’i’.”

Introductions turned into jokes about ancient rivalries I could not begin to fathom, the man from a nearby city accused, I think, of eating cats. I decided I must have misheard. 

Riccardo, the oldest, the cough imitator, he of the white mustache and the sweater with thick horizontal stripes, became even more animated when I mentioned the boat poles, pali. Narciso had already informed me that the local accent drops the central “l” sound, but Riccardo held up his hand in a sort of OK sign, the Italian gesture for “listen up, I am teaching you something.” 

He plunked this hand shape through the air, emphasizing each syllable like a note on a stave:

“L’acqua.”

“Marsise.” 

“I pai.”

 Turns out the second word was not quite mar-chee-say, Italian for “rot.” Riccardo insisted I repeat a sss, with perhaps a hint of sh : mar see shay. 

A freshly minted blogger, I was filming Riccardo with my phone. An off-camera mechanic pointed a finger into the frame and prompted Riccardo to teach me the second half of the saying. 

I’d learned so many versions of the water’s-bad-for-you saying without ever encountering a second half!

“And the wine?” the man asked, in Italian.

“The wine,” Riccardo answered, “Makes songs.”

I knew I’d captured the ur recording of my folkloric project even as I’d just begun. Stuffed with local language and sad pizza, I receded to my own tavolino. The mechanics paid up and left me alone. I stared at the old cat in the next garden over through the see-through plastic walls. He twitched his cheek. 

L’acqua marsise i pai, I thought. 

Il vin fa cantar, was the answer.

Italy—Venice—had given me permission not only to enjoy myself, but to sing.

I sat there in the garden with my empty spritz and wept. 

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