Special: this is the only city in Italy where people never drink a spritz

Drinking several spritzes a day in a relaxed way may not be the only reason for your next trip to Italy, but it is certainly an important part of it. There is no country on earth where the spritz is more beloved than in the boot. There are no rules when it comes to drinking a spritz: where, which day, what time and how many per day—it is all okay. There is just one city in Italy where people never drink a spritz, however: Brescia.

Padua is supposedly the birthplace of the spritz, although the drink is embraced so wholeheartedly in Venice that the spritz is also often called Venetian. Or at least, that is the global story. The place where that story has never really caught on is the city of Brescia, in northern Italy.

Pirlo

For years, the people of Brescia have been drinking something very similar to—and possibly the precursor of—the spritz: the pirlo. ‘Pirlo’ means ‘to fall’ or ‘to tumble’ (in dialect), and it is said to have been named that because the Campari performs a sort of somersault in the wine when it is poured. A pirlo is made with Campari and white, still wine—so no prosecco and no sparkling water. It also contains a piece of lemon peel rather than an orange.

Vermouth

In Brescia, there are several stories that “support” the idea that the pirlo was the precursor to the spritz. These explanations are rather difficult to prove or disprove, since it is not entirely clear exactly when the spritz originated. The first story is that innkeepers in Brescia made a popular drink among travelers for their customers, using white wine and vermouth. Vermouth was used to create a fresh, spicy and bitter drink, because Campari did not yet exist.

The second story is that the pirlo was invented around 1800, when people were poor and wine was expensive. They bought wine diluted with water and added a splash of bitter spirits to increase the alcohol content. Finally, the last story is that the pirlo made its debut in a small bar in Brescia after the Second World War. The liqueurs Aperol and Campari became very popular after the war, and the step of letting one of the two tumble into a glass of wine must have been a small one.

Best when sparkling

Although all the detailed information and scientific sources for these stories are lacking, people in Brescia stubbornly maintain that they invented the pirlo, which was eventually poorly copied (with prosecco and sparkling water) in Padua and later in Venice. Personally, I think people simply prefer the sparkling version because it tastes better. But don’t tell that to the pirlo drinkers. We don’t want this quarrel to get even further out of hand, of course.

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Source: Italiamo