Cocktail · Light & sessionable
Campari Soda
Campari and cold soda: Milan's six o'clock ritual, bitter, bright, and barely boozy.
How to order it: Build over ice, orange slice. In Italy it also comes premixed in a tiny cone-shaped bottle.
Flavor profile
The recipe
- 2 oz Campari
- 3 oz cold soda water
- Build over ice in a highball
- Orange slice
The story
Italians have been topping Campari with soda for well over a century, but in 1932 the company did something new: it sold the drink ready-made, in a single-serve bottle. The futurist artist Fortunato Depero designed that little cone-shaped bottle, and it has barely changed since, a small design icon that still sits in bar fridges across Italy. Mixed at home it is the simplest aperitivo there is: Campari, cold soda, plenty of ice, and a slice of orange. The result is bitter, bright, and low enough in alcohol to have before dinner without a second thought. It endures because it asks only one thing of you: slow down at six o'clock.
Adjacent pours