Adventures in Alcohol | The Spritz at Mitte: out with the still wine and soda, and hello prosecco

Louche is a word often attached to the atmosphere cocktails are drunk in, if not the drinks themselves. With The Spritz from Mitte we’re looking at a very louche combination – mixing references to old roués, Romantic poets and Berlin bunker bars.

The original spritzer, a mix of hock, a sweet white German wine, and sour soda water, has been with us for some time, but its existence still came as a surprise to the eccentric old goat of a British politician and diarist, Alan Clark.

One night he takes a female companion to the theatre and in the bar afterwards Clark orders “a quite decent bottle of gewürztraminer”, only to be horrified when the lady “sliced through whatever inanity I was saying and asked the wine waiter to pour some soda water, which she made him pour onto the delicious white wine”. While the waiter “didn’t bat an eyelid”, Clark commented: “Very Byronic.”

In fact, Lord Byron thought of the spritzer as a hangover cure rather than cause, writing in his poem Don Juan:

 Get very drunk; and when