Occasion
Aperitif cocktails
An aperitif has one job: get you ready to eat, not full or fuzzy before the meal has even started. That means dry, often bitter flavours over sweet ones, modest alcohol content, and a serve light enough to finish in the twenty minutes before dinner actually arrives at the table.
What aperitif drinks have in common
Measured across the 31 recipes on this page, compared with the rest of the site.
- Strength
- Stronger than average — a median of 14% in the glass against 10% across the rest of the site.
- Citrus
- Only 29% use fresh citrus, against 64% elsewhere, so most of this list keeps without a shopping trip.
- Alcohol-free and low-alcohol
- 26% of this list is alcohol-free or low in alcohol, so there is something to serve everyone without making a separate drink.
If there is food involved
An aperitif is meant to sharpen appetite rather than satisfy it, which is why the traditional ones are bitter and dry. Sugar does the opposite: a sweet drink before food dulls the appetite it was supposed to open.
Before the meal, and the drinks that meet it →
