Can I use Champagne instead of prosecco?

You can, but you're lighting money on fire. The bubbles get buried under the elderflower anyway, so the nuance you paid for in good Champagne disappears. A dry, cheap-but-honest prosecco or a decent cava does the job better. Save the Champagne for something that lets it speak.

Mine always comes out too sweet. What am I doing wrong?

Too much St-Germain, almost certainly. That stuff is liquid sugar with a floral accent, and the temptation is to keep adding it because it tastes nice on its own. Pull it back to an ounce and a half, push the club soda, and use a dry prosecco rather than an extra-dry one, which is confusingly sweeter. The cucumber helps too. Salt and savory green pulling against the sugar is the entire balancing act.

Is this drink actually low in alcohol?

Lower than most, yes. You've got prosecco at around 11 percent and a splash of liqueur, stretched with soda and ice. It's a session drink, the kind you can nurse through a long lunch. That's a feature. Not every cocktail needs to put you on the floor, and the ones built for daylight are an underrated art.

The Elderflower Spritz: A Patio Drink That Knows What It's For

There's a drink that shows up on every brunch menu from Brooklyn to Lake Como, and most of the time it tastes like somebody emptied an air freshener into a wine glass. That's a shame, because the Elderflower Spritz, done right, is one of the great afternoon drinks. Floral, dry, low enough in proof that you can have two before lunch and still operate heavy machinery. The trick is restraint, and almost nobody shows it.

3 ozProsecco

1.5 ozSt-Germain

1 ozClub Soda

Garnish: Cucumber slice

You build this in the glass. No shaker, no strainer, no theater. Fill a wine glass with good clean cubes, the bigger the better, because surface area is the enemy of carbonation and you want these bubbles to live. Pour the prosecco first, three ounces, so it has somewhere to go besides up your arm. Then the St-Germain, an ounce and a half, which is plenty. People drown this drink in elderflower liqueur because it's sweet and easy and goes down like candy, and that's exactly how you end up with perfume. An ounce of club soda lengthens it and dries it out. Stir once, gently, just to marry it. The cucumber slice is the move that separates a thinking person's spritz from the default. It pulls the whole thing green and savory and cuts the sugar. Use a fresh slice, not the sad bendy one that's been sitting in a bar caddy since Tuesday. Cold glass, cold bottle, cold everything. Warm bubbles are a tragedy.

The Elderflower Spritz is a Highball, and the Highball is the most honest family in the book. The logic is simple and it never lies to you: a spirit or a flavorful core, lengthened and lifted by something carbonated. Body comes from the bubbles, character comes from the core, and the two stay in their own lanes. Here the prosecco is doing double duty as both the carbonation and part of the base, with the club soda topping up the fizz, while the St-Germain is the core that gives the drink its name and its soul. That separation is the whole point. You can taste each part. It's the same architecture holding up an Americano, a Bay Breeze, or a Bourbon Rickey, drinks that look nothing alike but are built on the identical idea that dilution and lift are features, not compromises. Once you see the Highball skeleton under the spritz, you understand why proportion matters more than ingredients. Get the ratio of bubble to core wrong and the structure collapses into syrup.

St-Germain landed in 2007 and the cocktail world lost its mind. Bartenders called it bartender's ketchup because it made everything taste better and hid a multitude of sins, which is also why it got abused into oblivion. The bottle itself is a piece of marketing, all art-deco curves and a story about Frenchmen on bicycles gathering elderflower blossoms in the Alps. Some of that is even true. The elderflower is a real and ancient flavor, used in cordials across Europe long before anyone bottled it at a markup. The spritz format is older still, Italian to the bone, born from Austrian soldiers in the Veneto who watered down the local wine and accidentally invented the most civilized way to drink. The Aperol Spritz gets all the Instagram attention, that screaming orange that tastes like grapefruit and regret, but the elderflower version is the quieter, smarter cousin. It asks less of you and gives back more. Drink it on a hot day with the light going gold, and you'll understand why the Italians treat the early evening as a sacrament rather than a countdown to dinner.

Open the Elderflower Spritz recipe card on Speed Pour

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FAQ

Can I use Champagne instead of prosecco?: You can, but you're lighting money on fire. The bubbles get buried under the elderflower anyway, so the nuance you paid for in good Champagne disappears. A dry, cheap-but-honest prosecco or a decent cava does the job better. Save the Champagne for something that lets it speak.
Mine always comes out too sweet. What am I doing wrong?: Too much St-Germain, almost certainly. That stuff is liquid sugar with a floral accent, and the temptation is to keep adding it because it tastes nice on its own. Pull it back to an ounce and a half, push the club soda, and use a dry prosecco rather than an extra-dry one, which is confusingly sweeter. The cucumber helps too. Salt and savory green pulling against the sugar is the entire balancing act.
Is this drink actually low in alcohol?: Lower than most, yes. You've got prosecco at around 11 percent and a splash of liqueur, stretched with soda and ice. It's a session drink, the kind you can nurse through a long lunch. That's a feature. Not every cocktail needs to put you on the floor, and the ones built for daylight are an underrated art.