El Bandarra Al Fresco - Barcelona Aperitivo, Drink with Tonic or as a Spritz, Bittersweet, Alternative to Pink Gin, Notes of Grapefruit and Mediterranean Botanicals - 1 Litre Bottle, 14% ABV

Product Information

It was very successful. In our opinion, the wine world needs to be fun. I mean, let’s have fun. It should be easy and fun. We already did some crazy stuff before Bandarra in the wine category. So, with Bandarra, we started in the Aperitif category, so it was pretty easy, because before El Bandarra, we did some successful launches, and that’s why they said, okay. I mean, after a wine with 67 insults in the bottle, they said, “Okay, let’s go. Let’s make El Bandarra.” We add some alcohol at the vermouth house for 15% of alcohol volume. And at that moment, we add the sweetness. The traditional method is adding a little bit of caramel and the old vermouths in Spain do it. It’s the traditional way to do it. Alex: Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. They never get drunk. They always stay in this perfect level. We have a word in Spanish – it’s called piripi. When you feel you are a piripi – it’s this moment when you’re not drunk, but you’re you have this feeling. The grannies are the best.

What we did was, we took this recipe and we bottled it and we created El Bandarra. And that’s how it was born in September 2014. Founded by twins Alex and Albert Virgili, the duo merge their experience with the wine industry to create a lineage of innovative wine-based aperitivo that speak to the free-flowing culture of Barcelona. Balancing the bittersweet with Mediterranean botanicals, El Bandarra ensure there is a drink to suit every tastebud — all whilst keeping the energy high and the good times great. We created a few, very successful white wines before Bandarra. One which was called El Xitxarel·lo, which means a young, stupid guy in Catalan. While we are Catalan, we are very proud to be Catalan, our idiom is full of insults and swear words. It’s a very rich language in terms of insults. At the point when we launched, two years before launching El Bandarra, we launched this white wine, which has 67 insults on the screen-printed label. My grandparents used to sell bulk wine in barrels, in little bodegas and bars. I’m talking about the Sixties all over Catalonia and in Spain, and that’s our origin. I’m pretty obsessed with exporting the success of the Aperitivo to the US, to the UK, and other markets. Alex: El Bandarra is that kind of friend, she or he, who when you go out, he’s the one who remains in the club until the end of the night. He or she is that this kind of person that is a good person, but he’s a troublemaker. So that is El Bandarra, what El Bandarra means? So, we hope that it brings takes out the Bandarra that you have inside of you.

Wanna get really wild? Spike your Spritz with a fun, flavoured liqueur or cordial. The team at British aperitivo brand Sipello like to use an elderflower liqueur in their Spritz (see their recipe below), but you can add anything with complementary flavours: coffee, fruit-based and floral liqueurs are all fair game. GO FOR THE GARNISH For a properly English Spritz, snag a bottle of Sipello and get mixing. This brand, based in the Surrey Hills, makes its liquid with rhubarb sourced from UK farms, gooseberry, cinchona, elderflower and more, in a process inspired by the art of perfume making. SPRITZ IT Suddenly a group of wild hipsters, they started drinking vermouth in some bars in Barcelona. And this is when we said, “Well, this is great.” We asked our father, “Dad, do we make vermouth at the winery?” We didn’t even know. He said, “Are you an idiot? Of course, we’ve been doing vermouth for several years?” Alex: I’m El Bandarra, but it was my brother’s idea. We are a great team, Albert and I spent most, all, of our whole life together. We are twins and he’s a genius, he’s a super creative person. He came up with this idea, so I always say that he’s the software and I’m the hardware. Susan: What was the flavor profile? Did you have an idea, or did you want to make it taste like something specific that you had before?

And it was a bit hard. We listed the Rojo in, I would say 40 different accounts in the UK, but the Brit consumer didn’t understand. Then we tried, as I told you, with the rosé with tonic and it didn’t work. And we said, okay, let’s launch Al Fresco. Susan: My grandmother was the one to teach me to drink one spirit only because then I wouldn’t get a hangover. She also was the first person to introduce me to the caipirinha. So, I had a grandmother who liked her drink and yes, and she saw, I liked my drink. And so, she would teach me these things. In the Spritz, sparkling wine is like JC Chasez in NSYNC: a crucial player, if not the flashiest member of the band. “A Spritz without the wine, I don't think it's a Spritz,” Luca says. (We feel the same way about JC.) Now the answer to your question about how we drink it. Our grandparents used to use a siphon or soda. It was typical. Now, it’s great to drink it over ice with a slice of orange and an olive, because I have an addiction to olives! Adding an olive – with the saltiness of the olive, amazing how it tastes and when you eat the olive with this vermouth taste, it’s like making love. It’s good. It’s great.Alex: It’s the same. That’s the nicest thing of the wild hipsters, they get it. They’ve fallen in love with the traditions and they are doing them the same way. It’s called “La Hora del Vermut,” the vermouth hour. It’s during weekend, Saturday and Sunday from 12:00 to 3:00 PM. El Bandarra Vermouth is made from high-quality Macabeo and Xarel·lo grapes, native to the region. Once these grapes are transformed into wine, they are aged in wooden barrels and later macerated with a careful blend of botanicals, including wormwood, orange, and elderflower, among others. This intricate process provides the drink with its distinct flavour and aromatic profile. Alex: No, the Rojo, the one that you have there, it’s in Catalan. As I told you, if we’re Catalonia, we sell the screen-printed bottles in Catalan and for the rest of Spain, we sell it in Spanish. If you want to preserve your language, you need to speak it, use insults also and the tapas and everything. That’s why we have the Spanish bottle and the Catalan bottle.