Cocktail · Light & sessionable
Bellini
White peach purée and Prosecco — Venice's blushing aperitivo.
How to order it: Invented at Harry's Bar, 1948. White peaches or it's just peach fizz.
Flavor profile
The recipe
- 2 oz white peach purée
- 4 oz chilled Prosecco
- Purée first, then Prosecco
- Flute; stir once, gently
- No garnish — Venice doesn't
The story
Giuseppe Cipriani, founder of Harry's Bar in Venice, spent years perfecting a drink of fresh white peach purée and Prosecco, and in 1948 gave it a name borrowed from the Renaissance painter Giovanni Bellini — the story goes that its sunset-pink glow recalled a robe in one of the master's canvases, the naming timed to a major Bellini exhibition in Venice that year. The bar's clientele — Hemingway, Orson Welles, assorted exiled royalty — carried its reputation outward, and Cipriani's empire carried the drink itself. Purists insist on white peaches in season, nothing yellow, nothing from a bottle. The Bellini endures because it is Venice made potable: pale, golden, and faintly unreal.
Adjacent pours