Time for an Aperitif? The Drinks Menu
The Food Programme
BBC
4.4 • 976 Ratings
🗓️ 21 August 2016
⏱️ 28 minutes
🧾️ Download transcript
Summary
In French, 'l'aperitif', in Italian, 'l'aperitivo'. We don't of course have a translation in English, but the aperitif, the drinks and snacks which proceed a meal have long captured our imaginations. The sounds and smells of Mediterranean holidays, the tastes of a summer day... and those glamorous and just a bit tacky TV adverts from the 70s. ('Dubonnet vous?')
Food writer Diana Henry fell for those adverts, and then experienced l'aperitif as a teenager on a French exchange. Now, with the rise and rise of low alcohol, sprtizy cocktails in our pubs and bars, Diana wants you to embrace the aperitif, in its many forms and flavours. She explores the history of the aperitivo in Italy, from its Roman origins to its significance for the Futurist movement. In France, she reflects on the cultural and social significance of aperitif, and hears how once deemed old fashioned, brands like Suze, and Dubonnet are making a comeback. And in Britain, she discovers chefs making their own infusions with ingredients from a Suffolk garden and the Somerset countryside.
In the first of The Food Programme's summer drinks series 'The Drinks Menu', Diana wants you to take a moment, a cold glass, some ice and a bottle and appreciate an aperitif.
Presented by Diana Henry Produced by Clare Salisbury.
Transcript
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| 0:00.0 | Hello you've downloaded a podcast of BBC Radio 4's The Food Program. |
| 0:05.0 | Welcome to our world, from cooking to culture, politics to pleasure. |
| 0:10.0 | We hope you enjoy it. |
| 0:12.0 | It's the sound of ice hitting the glass. |
| 0:14.0 | It's the sound of the soda siphon topping off the perseco. |
| 0:18.0 | It is an incredible time of day when the sun's just getting drowsy and everyone's kind of crowded into these cafes. |
| 0:23.6 | It's hard not to fall in love with Aperativo at six or seven p.m. at night. |
| 0:28.4 | I love the signs of a peritif time, ice dropping into a glass, the pop of a cork, the pouring of alcohol. |
| 0:41.0 | Together with the actual words, |
| 0:43.7 | Duve are some of my favorite signs in the world. |
| 0:48.0 | I first had an aperitif in France when I went there on an exchange age 15. |
| 0:54.0 | Lille, Seuss, Pastise and Homemade Valmazon, |
| 0:59.0 | these were drunk every day by family and friends before dinner. |
| 1:02.0 | You may never even have heard of Lille or |
| 1:05.3 | sues, but that's why I wanted to make this program. An Aperative is about |
| 1:15.0 | Aperitive is a specific moment in time. |
| 1:18.0 | Aperative is about gathering and socializing with your friends and family. |
| 1:22.0 | It is a prelude to the meal. |
| 1:24.0 | This cultural moment between work and play |
| 1:27.3 | where the drink the aperativo finds its home. |
| 1:30.8 | The tradition of a drink served before a meal is not unique to France and Italy, but there the aperatif or aperativo have captured our imagination like nowhere else. In 2016, we're finally drinking the glamorous |
| 1:46.8 | continental bottles I saw advertised when I was a child in the 1970s, with pleasure and an awareness of how they connect to the |
... |
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