We were on Capri, which is of course a cliché in itself. The blue hour had just passed, and in Anacapri tourists were already sitting on terraces and under lemon trees with more or less successful noses and foreheads with more or less successful cosmetic surgery. But we did it the way we had learned from our Italian hosts: just don't eat before 21 pm. And before that? So there was always time for an aperitif. We preferred to sit outside in the bar, opposite a tourist steakhouse with a lot of straightened noses and swollen lips. There we sat now, a Negroni, a Prosecco. It didn't tingle in my belly button, but directly into my blood.
Johanna Dürrholz
Editor in the "Germany and the World" section.
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We christened these one or two hours before Capri-appropriate late dinner our aperitif hour. And in this hour, one of the most beautiful feelings of all comes over you: the aperitif feeling. Apero, such as Aperol spritz or even just aperitif. This feeling only creeps up on us at the very first glass of aperitif. And if the aperitif is a sparkling wine, it's especially nice: everything tingles. Everything will be warm. Everything is suddenly terribly funny. It's so beautiful that you think you could burst. You get cocky, euphoric and at the same time – and this is important for the general beauty of this moment – a little sad. Because you know exactly: The more I drink now, this feeling that I have in this one moment will not happen again that evening. This moment only happens once today. You can't drink your way back to the moment when the heat and the sugar and alcohol flow through your veins for the first time. There is a certain melancholy in the fact that this moment is fleeting, and at the same time it could never exist without this impermanence.
A good sparkling wine is the best drink
This champagne euphoria can kindly storm me anywhere, I don't necessarily have to be on Capri for that, and I don't need a blue hour for that. She can even come to the disdainful office, on Friday evening, when the week is done and you want to come down. With the sparkling wine you can somehow get up for a short time, but that also means a disconnection from everyday life, in which you usually don't have to laugh about every crap intoxicated by sparkling wine.
That's why there's really only one drink that I can call the drink of my life, and that's a good sparkling wine. So a dry sparkling wine, a reasonable (i.e. not too lax) Prosecco, a nice Crémant or champagne (doesn't need an adjective, self-explanatory).
Nothing better than the warm aperitif feeling
Sparkling wine is a drink that at first sounds like a stiff company party with bad jokes, but in reality is a mood enhancer that can be used anywhere. Sparkling wine can be drunk in almost any situation (unless you have to write a text afterwards, I really can't recommend it for that). Sparkling wine tastes good for breakfast or brunch, especially if it's dry and not too sugary. Sparkling wine tastes great with cakes and biscuits and all sorts of things in the afternoon. In the evening, sparkling wine is the best aperitif you could wish for. And at night, sparkling wine on ice keeps you awake for a particularly long time without having to shoot yourself too hard with it. There is nothing more holidayly than sipping a champagne in Paris or a prosecco on Capri. And there is nothing better than the warm aperitif feeling that comes with it.
Sparkling wine puts you in a pleasant frenzy: you may get a little cocky, maybe just a little louder. Sparkling wine usually makes you tipsy, but rarely drunk. Sparkling wine cheers you on, sparkling wine literally gives you wings, because Red Bull is nonsense. Two glasses of sparkling wine feel about the same as I imagine a slight overdose of the lucky potion "Felix Felicis" in Harry Potter: it puts you in excessive euphoria. A friend once told me about a job at a catering service. If the catering team had toiled all day, for example at a wedding, and was supposed to serve the midnight snacks at the end, then the boss always poured a round of champagne to everyone beforehand. Because it invigorates after a long day – and lifts your spirits.
Capri was over at some point, just as every dream in blue eventually passes. But we kept the aperitif hour, not every day, but when it's the weekend and it's warm and there's a Saturday evening wind blowing through the streets, we may find ourselves in a bar and look at the people of Cologne, mostly with crooked noses, but in a good mood. Sometimes it happens that I order a sparkling wine, or a crémant, and that the aperitif feeling overwhelms me with its sugary, foamy power. Almost like on Capri.