The data is in, and it confirms what I've been watching from barstools all season: the spritz is not going anywhere. According to new data from Nation's Restaurant News, lower-ABV cocktails and earlier happy hours were the top drinking trends of the summer.

None of this surprises me. The spritz is a drink built for patience. Aperol, a little prosecco, a splash of soda, ice that fills the glass like a small glacier. You drink it slowly because it asks you to. And in a summer where people seem to want their pleasures a bit gentler, a light cocktail you can sit with for an hour beats three stiff martinis you won't remember.

The earlier happy hour piece is the part I find most interesting. Americans have spent decades treating 6 p.m. as a kind of starting gun, but operators are reporting real traction with programs that begin at 3 or 4 in the afternoon. It pairs naturally with the lighter drinks. A spritz at 4 p.m. is a perfectly reasonable thing. A double bourbon at 4 p.m. is a different kind of afternoon entirely.

Then there's the economics, which nobody in the restaurant business can ignore right now, and here I speak from my own time in kitchens and behind bars rather than any dataset. My hunch is that lower-ABV drinks are kinder to pour costs on the base spirit, and a guest who isn't knocked flat by the first round may stay for a second. I can't prove any of that with numbers, but it rhymes with what operators keep telling me.

I wrote recently about how restaurants are reinventing the drink menu for younger drinkers, and this feels like the same story in a different shirt. My read, and it's only my read, is that younger guests are drinking lighter and starting earlier, but they still want the ritual of the bar. They want the bitter orange on the nose, the wine glass that catches the late light, the hour that stretches. The spritz gives you all of that theater without a heavy alcohol load.

And let me say something as a man from outside Naples: we were drinking this way before it was a trend. The bitter-and-bubbles habit is as Italian as complaining about the government or your local football club, usually both at the same table. What Americans have done is adopt it with real enthusiasm, and I mean that sincerely. The American bar has always been good at taking an idea and running joyful laps around it, and watching an entire country discover that bitter aperitivo is delicious has been one of the small pleasures of my last decade here.

For operators reading the data and wondering what to do: don't overthink it. Put two or three spritzes on the menu, not twelve. Use decent prosecco, real bitter liqueurs, fresh ice. Start your happy hour earlier and see who shows up. Good drinks, like good food, need care, not money.

Now if you'll excuse me, it's late afternoon somewhere, and I have research to conduct.