ROSÉ’S IRREPRESSIBLE rise to summer chic status is nothing short of remarkable. World consumption of the “pink stuff” has increased by 40 per cent, and over the last 25 years production has tripled. The trend shows no signs of abating: celebrities are lining up to have their names associated with branding, and the Italian wine consortium that oversees the production of Chiaretto di Bardolino, a rosé from the Veneto, has recently challenged the Unicode Consortium, the Silicon Valley authority that authorises emojis, to include one specifically for rosé.

All of this is a mystery to many, a case of fashion trumping taste. One wine writer has recently suggested that rosé’s fashionable popularity rests on its being a pleasingly uncomplicated tipple: bland, in other words. A much worthier candidate for the quintessential summer quaff is the spritz, the cocktail aperitif from northern Italy, particularly popular in Venice but also throughout the Veneto. Spritz is not only more interesting and more fun, but also much cheaper to confect than the cheapest rosé is to buy. According to an admittedly biased Italian advertising agency, around 300,000 spritzes are consumed every day in the Veneto region alone: that’s more than 200 a minute.