"Everything is a spritz, nothing is a spritz": Notes on creativity, cocktails and bad copies

There comes a point in the life cycle of every trend when the item at its center has been so thoroughly spun, tweaked and pushed forward that it no longer bears a resemblance to its original form. I think this is likely a global inclination, but one that also often feels undeniably American. Italian semiotician and author Umberto Eco said as much in his seminal Il costume di casa, or "Faith in Fakes," in which he attempted to unfurl "America's obsession with simulacra and counterfeit reality."

Wax museums, the Vegas Eiffel Tower, Disney World's EPCOT Center, holograms — these were all examples he gave of how imitations and copies have been turned into mainstage attractions. This isn't necessarily a bad thing; however, I've been thinking a lot about our inclination to relentlessly iterate, especially in the world of food and drink, and what impulse we're (myself included) actually feeding when we do so. 

Last week, for instance, I had been off work for a few days and upon my return, opened my inbox to find 15 emails from various PR companies and beverage directors about their respective versions of a spritz. Now, I like an effervescent, session-able cocktail as much as the next girl, but 15 seemed a little excessive. Out of curiosity, I typed the term "spritz" into the search bar to see how many emails containing the term were sitting in my archives, which I clean out every six months or so. 

There were 122, going back to "Spritzmas" in December. 

The trend, of course, has been going on much longer than that. Aperol Spritzes have come in and out of fashion in the States before, but this current stretch of popularity really extends back to 2018 or so, when The New York Times noted that "it's officially the drink of the summer, thanks to an aggressive marketing campaign by Campari." Since then, the Aperol Spritz has been declared dead, was promptly resurrected and then eventually thrust into the hands of Aubrey Plaza and copious "White Lotus" extras. 

For a while, I would scroll through Instagram and every few photos would be punctuated with a picture of a striking orange-red cocktail served with a juicy citrus slice. But much in the way that social media has turbo-charged the distribution of trends, something about it also seems to accelerate the desire to make just a little tweak. And then another. And another. 

We have all seen this firsthand with charcuterie boards. I'm not a dogmatist when it comes to the thorny concept of "authenticity" in relation to food, but just for reference, the etymology of the word is a combination of the French chair and cuite, or cooked flesh. The term traditionally referred to prepared meat products like sausages, ballotines and pâtés, which were preserved and then served. 

In the States, along with the rise of New American cuisine, charcuterie boards became a little more bespoke. There was the addition of cheese from a local dairy farm and honey from local bees. Perhaps a few house-made pickles and maybe some grainy mustard aged in a beer barrel from the microbrewery down the block. At a certain point online, the distinction between a cheese plate and a charcuterie board began to dissolve. 

Then someone added waffles to the mix and the machinations that underpin Pinterest went into overdrive pumping out version after version of "charcuterie boards" containing shoestring fries, Halloween candy, hot cocoa, whipped butter and crab legs. Again, I'm not a huge stickler for tradition, but I do think that when an appetizer sampler from Chili's — complete with sticky wings, Southwest eggrolls and sliders — could ostensibly qualify as charcuterie under the ever-broadening guidelines, it may be time to reassess the situation. 

Such is the case now with spritzes. After checking my inbox last week and seeing a 9-ingredient cocktail containing both homemade honeydew syrup and Sprite categorized as a "simple spritz," and another containing bourbon and no bitters, I reached out to my friend Nic, a bartender-turned-beverage program consultant in Detroit. "Hey, what does a 'spritz' actually mean?" I asked. 

"Everything is a spritz," he texted. "Nothing is a spritz. Long live the spritz." 

Then, he clarified that it's traditionally a three-ingredient cocktail containing prosecco, digestive bitters and soda water. When I asked why he thought there were all of these boundary-pushing versions of spritzes popping up, he replied with one word: "TikTok." 

Eco points out several times throughout "Faith in Fakes," which was published 43 years before the advent of TikTok,  that our desire to publicly iterate isn't a novel inclination. Rather, it taps into our cultural prioritization of excess:

In America you don't say, 'Give me another coffee'; you ask for 'More coffee'; you don't say that cigarette A is longer than cigarette B, but that there's 'more' of it, more than you're used to having, more than you might want, leaving a surplus to throw away—that's prosperity.

Social media both demands and indulges excess. You can search any term — charcuterie, handbag, spritz,  houseplant — and be presented with seemingly limitless versions. But even in a world where the boundaries between content makers and content consumers are increasingly blurred, there is still a desire for novelty, though that doesn't necessarily result in any real creativity. 

Why make an interesting, unique cocktail (that doesn't remotely resemble a spritz) and slap the word "spritz" on it? Why make a gorgeous breakfast platter and try to shoehorn it into the charcuterie section of Instagram? All for what? To indulge the whims of an algorithm? 

And when assessing my discomfort with the landscape of incessant copies, I think that at the root of it is likely some discomfort with my own creative practice,  both in and outside the kitchen. 

It takes some bravery to create something, however small, that could be perceived as off-trend. It takes even more bravery to make something that people may not notice at all. But as our digital landscape seems to become more and more flat thanks to the advent of reply bots and AI-generated posts, I do think that it's worth it to at least try. 

I'm not sure that I always accomplish that, but I know that we all have to start somewhere. Maybe I'll start with the contents of my next cocktail.