Last week we celebrated the arrival of one of the most hotly anticipated new products. Sarti Rosa is a newly arrived aperitivo featuring juicy flavors of blood orange, mango, and passion fruit. We’ve been receiving customer requests for Sarti Rosa Aperitivo for years from customers who encountered it in Europe, plus an ever-growing interest in the category.
While aperitivos may seem omnipresent today, the category touchstone Aperol has only been available in the US since 2006. The key ingredient in this summer’s viral Hugo Spritz - St. Germain - debuted the following year in 2007, introducing the modern bar essential Elderflower liqueur. However, one of the most important catalysts for the rise of the Spritz doesn’t come from spirits at all. In 2009, the Italian government overhauled the definitions of the Prosecco DOC. They increased the status of historic regions, expanded the production area, and even renamed the grape, transforming what had been a niche Italian curiosity into a global favorite.
In 2008, before the lines were redrawn, Prosecco was limited to roughly 100 million bottles produced in what are now the DOCG areas of Asolo and Conegliano Valdobbiadene. (Calvert Woodley is pleased to offer direct import wines from both of these premier Prosecco regions) By 2025, production has soared to 667 million bottles, with the United States consuming nearly a quarter of that. Both prosecco and aperitivos draw on a long history stretching from Roman-Era winemaking and Renaissance alchemy, their rise mirrors each other. Technological innovations in the early 20th century shaped them into the forms we know today, and their mutual compatibility set the stage for their popularity boom in the 21st century.
