The elderflower drink is enjoying explosive growth, with Campari, Sarti Rosa and limoncello varieties also taking off
It’s the summer of spritz as British sales figures show the Hugo elderflower cocktail snapping at the heels of the market-leader Aperol to be this year’s favourite drink.
The number of Hugos ordered in bars nearly tripled in the three months to the end of June while demand for the vibrant red Campari spritz surged 52%.
A limoncello version has also taken off, with sales up 31%, according to the payments company Square.
The Hugo “has absolutely blown up,” said Steve Young, business unit director for Bacardi in the UK (the group’s St-Germain liqueur is the drink’s signature ingredient). He agreed that the Hugo spritz could be the drink of summer.
Young said sales of St-Germain are growing faster in the UK than in any other country, with the elderflower liqueur “outselling some of our major spritz competitors across a lot of our customers. It has doubled in size over the last 12 months.”
Created in Italy, and very popular in France, the Hugo is sweeter than an Aperol spritz and is made with elderflower liqueur, prosecco, soda water and mint.
The spritz sales data, gleaned from bar, cafe and restaurant till receipts, showed a 196% uplift for the Hugo in Great Britain in the three months to the end of June compared with a year ago. For the same period, Aperol spritz sales climbed 13%.
The phenomenon is driven in part by the rise of the “daycap” – a replacement for the traditional nightcap with a longer, lighter-tasting drink in the late afternoon. This coincides with a shift in drinking patterns as late-afternoon – as opposed to late-night – drinking has become popular with millennials and gen Z.
But it is gen Z that has put a rocket under the spritz business. For this age group (18-29) it is the number one cocktail, despite ranking sixth overall, according to Bacardi’s annual cocktail trends report.
The popularity of the spritz means the choice on bar menus is increasing. This has been good news for Campari, which owns a drinks cabinet full of brands suitable for making colourful, Instagram-friendly spritzes.
In the UK, sales of the group’s aperitif brands – which include Aperol, Campari, Sarti Rosa and the non-alcoholic Crodino – were up more than 10% in the first six months of this year. With its notes of “blood orange, mango and passion fruit”, the hot pink Sarti spritz is tipped as the next big thing, with Google searches up 341% on 2025.
“The spritz has taken the UK by storm,” said Young. “Two years ago it did not make the top 10 in our annual survey and now it is the number one choice for gen-Zers.”
But it is not just on a night out that Britons are enjoying a spritz, as supermarket and high street sales data suggests they have been added to the drinks cabinets of those socialising at home.
“Spritzes are having their moment this summer,” said Tom Oakton, analyst at the data company NielsenIQ, adding that sales of this type of cocktail were growing much faster than the alcohol market as a whole in the UK.
“Aperol remains the most popular, but St-Germain saw triple-digit growth from the rising popularity of the Hugo spritz,” said Oakton. While Aperol sales were up 32.4% by value in the 12 weeks to 1 August – boosted by the launch of Aperol-in-a-tin – St-Germain grew 135.5%.
Francesca Parker-Partridge, spirits buyer at Ocado Retail, confirmed that spritzes are “dominating this summer’s drink scene. Total liqueur sales are up 19% year on year, driven by a massive 122% spike for St-Germain.”
The Hugo may be elbowing its way on to drinks menus, but it still has a way to go to steal Aperol’s crown, with St-Germain becoming the David to the bright orange Goliath. Industry data suggests that about eight Aperols are sold for every St-Germain mixed Hugo.
“It’s great to see new brands joining the space and growing the category, but scale tells the real story, with 8.8m cases sold globally last year alone,” said Francesco Cruciani, the managing director of Campari Group UK.
“The Campari group remains the undisputed trailblazer leading the spritz movement into its next era,” he added, in comments underlining that – for the time being at least – Aperol is still king of the spritzes.
