presents
An orange wave
of spontaneity
TTo begin the story, take your glass. Look at it and go back a few million toasts. That actually makes one hundred years of cheers.
You are now in 1919, and you’ve just survived a war. It’s June and you are at Padua’s international trade fair, in Prato della Valle, the main square of the city. Rivers of people flood into the pavilions looking for new things. All around you there are voices, colours, perfumes and a strong scent of restless excitement.
Everyone feels the urge to start over again. Everyone except the Barbieri brothers: they are exactly where they want to be. Luigi and his brother Silvio are there to officially introduce their personal herb distillate.
The two make quite an impression, and on the first attempt. It’s the first trade fair of this kind, but it’s an immediate success for them. Their small but grand creation was destined to become one of the most loved aperitifs by Italians and foreigners alike.
Now look at that young man sitting at table number four. For two days now, he’s been popping up at the same time to try to talk to that young woman.
Take a good look at him and then erase him from your mind. What you have in your glass has nothing to do with them.
It is able to create connections by its own existence.
This is the creation of the Barbieri brothers, an aperitif that has the entire world inside it.
“That’s right. But part of its history lies right here, in Venice. From here, a place in which you can meet all cultures, it actually started to spread the world over. Here you can find the original one, can’t you?”
Sure. Do you want to know where? When you step out of here, walk along the canals of the city, drown in its sounds, meet new acquaintances, run and let yourself be inspired by the experience.
Take a selfie in St. Mark’s Square. Then delete it and take a flight to New York. When you get there, find the tallest skyscraper and go to its rooftop. At some point, you’ll certainly think, “The sky’s the limit.” At that moment, leave the city, take another flight and go to London, look for the London Eye and look it straight in its eye. But only for an instant. Then set off again and stop in Sydney, Australia. Then leave again, maybe Paris, to look for the Eiffel Tower, maybe Padua, to reach Prato della Valle, where everything began.
It doesn’t matter where you’ll go, or who you're with. Time won’t even count. All that matters is the indulgence you feel in the very instant you spend in that one place, where people meet to share a moment of joy. And right in that moment you’ll picture an orange wave that will spontaneously unite everyone.
And when you’re there, you’ll only have to ask for it. And it will come to you, the original.
Aperol Spritz
Aperol
Spritz
At that moment, you’ll take another trip back through the glasses and you’ll find yourself side by side with Silvio Barbieri. There he is, just back from his long stay in Paris, where he christened his creation by taking inspiration from the name of the herb liqueurs he so often saw being sipped among the tables of the Champs-Élysées.
“Aperò,” said the French as they drank their aperitifs during the Belle Époque, at the end of the Great War.
“So, this is why you started to serve drinks to tourists like me?”
My story
can be found
in that glass.
Like Aperol, I do what I do, spontaneously. Some are born to be who they are—we were, actually. With one difference: to get to know the world, the cultures, create connections. I had to travel, move and learn. What you are drinking already had this in its DNA back in 1919, when it was presented at the international trade fair of Padua over one hundred years ago.