Bellini

Wayfinder

The Bellini was born at Harry’s Bar in Venice, perfected through the 1940s by founder Giuseppe Cipriani and named in 1948 for the painter: the drink’s soft pink, Cipriani said, was the colour of a robe in a Giovanni Bellini altarpiece. White peach purée and prosecco, in a bar that also invented carpaccio and served everyone from Hemingway to Chaplin: Venice in a small, cold glass. The engineering is a single decision honoured absolutely: white peaches, not yellow, crushed and sieved to velvet, one part purée to two of prosecco, folded rather than stirred. The fruit’s floral delicacy is the drink, and every substitution, yellow fruit, bottled nectar, peach liqueur, produces something pleasant and wrong. It is the standard by which fruit-and-fizz drinks are judged and the reason most fail: the Bellini is not a recipe so much as an ingredient shown respect. In white peach season it is unbeatable; out of season, good frozen purée keeps it honest, exactly as Harry’s does.

BuiltAperitifCelebratoryBrunchClassicLow-ABV

Glassware: Champagne Flute

Garnish: None: the colour is the garnish

Ingredients

Serves

White Peach Purée

50ml

The drink itself: ripe white peaches sieved to velvet, floral and pale. Yellow peaches make a pleasant impostor, and the fruit must be ripe enough to give under a thumb.

Prosecco

100ml

The lift: Venetian by geography and by rights, brut and properly cold. Champagne makes it heavier, not better.

Instructions

Pour the cold peach purée into a chilled flute.

Add the prosecco slowly, in stages, folding gently with a bar spoon as it settles.

Serve immediately, while the drink is still the right shade of dawn.

Source: the IBA (Official IBA specification; method ours). Last checked 12 August 2026.

Expert Tip

Fold, never stir. Purée and prosecco separate if they are bullied, and the Bellini should pour and drink as one liquid rather than as fruit with wine sitting on top. Add the prosecco in stages, folding gently with a bar spoon between each addition. Everything must be cold before it meets anything else. Chilled flute, cold purée, cold prosecco. A room-temperature purée kills the mousse on contact and the drink arrives flat and slightly foamy, which is the most common way this goes wrong at home. One part purée to two of prosecco is the ratio, and it is worth measuring. Too much fruit and the drink turns into a smoothie with bubbles; too little and the peach disappears under the wine, which rather defeats the exercise.

Flavour Profile

White PeachFloralSparklingSoft

The Origin

Giuseppe Cipriani opened Harry’s Bar on a Venetian alley in 1931 and spent the next decades feeding and watering the century’s famous names. The peach drink he perfected got its name in 1948, during a Giovanni Bellini exhibition in the city: the pink of a painted robe, matched in a glass. It remains on the bar’s menu, made the same way, at prices that are part of the experience.

The White Peach

The specified fruit is the whole argument: white peaches are paler, more floral and gentler in acid than yellow, and the drink’s colour and character both depend on them. In season, sieve fresh fruit; out of season, good frozen white purée is the professional answer and Harry’s own practice.

Prosecco, Not Champagne

The Bellini is Venetian and its wine is too: prosecco’s soft fruit and gentle mousse flatter the peach where champagne’s autolytic weight competes with it. This is one of the few sparkling drinks where the cheaper wine is the correct one.

How to Serve It

Cold everything, folded gently, drunk promptly, ideally before noon has fully committed: the Bellini is breakfast aristocracy. For a party, batch the purée and pour to order; the drink itself refuses to be made ahead.

Making the Purée

Fresh white peaches, skinned, stoned and sieved. The sieving is the part people skip and it matters: a blender alone leaves fibre that catches the bubbles and turns the drink foamy, where a sieve gives the velvet texture the drink is named for.

Ripeness is not negotiable. A peach firm enough to slice neatly is not ripe enough to use; it should give under a thumb and smell of peach from arm's length. Underripe fruit is the second most common failure after the wrong colour of peach.

Out of season, good frozen white peach purée is the professional answer and Harry's own practice. It is not a compromise, and it is considerably better than a hard supermarket peach in February. A little lemon juice stirred through stops the purée browning if it has to stand for an hour, and it is invisible in the finished glass.

Why the Ratio Holds

One part purée to two of prosecco is a much higher proportion of fruit than most sparkling drinks carry, and it works because white peach purée is thin, delicate and low in acid rather than thick and sweet.

That is also why substitutions fail so completely. Bottled peach nectar is cooked, flat and considerably sweeter, so at this ratio it overwhelms the wine entirely. Peach liqueur is sugar and alcohol, which is a different drink with a different balance.

The Bellini is not really a recipe. It is one ingredient shown respect and given a supporting role that flatters it, which is why it is the standard by which fruit-and-fizz drinks are judged, and the reason most of them fail.

Frequently Asked Questions

Why white peaches?

Colour and character both. White peaches are floral, delicate and lower in acid than yellow, and pale pink at the skin, which is the painted colour the drink was named for. Yellow peaches make a coarser, sweeter and visibly wrong-coloured drink.

Prosecco or champagne?

Prosecco, on merit as well as geography. Its soft fruit and gentle mousse flatter the peach, where champagne's autolytic weight competes with it and wins. This is one of the very few sparkling drinks where trading up to the more expensive wine actively ruins it.

Can I use peach nectar or liqueur?

Neither survives the substitution. Bottled nectar is cooked and flat and considerably sweeter, so at this ratio it overwhelms the prosecco entirely, and peach liqueur is simply sugar and alcohol. Fresh or good frozen white peach purée is the drink itself.

Rossini

The Rossini is the Bellini’s summer sibling, named with the same Venetian logic for another Italian master: strawberries where the peaches were, prosecco as before, and the composer of The Barber of Seville on the label. It grew up in the Veneto’s bars as the strawberry season’s answer to the house drink, and it has conquered aperitivo hour on its own colour alone. Strawberries are a more forgiving fruit than white peaches, which makes the Rossini the accessible end of the purée-and-prosecco family: ripe berries blended and sieved, seasoned with a thought of lemon, folded under cold prosecco. The berry’s acidity meets the wine more readily than peach ever does, and the drink runs brighter and more casual than its elder. It is the correct answer to a June afternoon, a jug of it the correct answer to a garden of guests, and the strawberries themselves the only quality question the drink ever asks.

Mimosa

The Mimosa is equal parts sparkling wine and fresh orange juice, and the equal-parts pour is both its signature and its civilising feature. Half wine, half sunshine, low enough in strength to have three of across a morning, which is exactly what a brunch table wants. It is credited to the Ritz Paris in 1925 and named for the yellow bloom of the mimosa tree. London had got there four years earlier: Buck’s Club was pouring champagne and orange from 1921 under the name Buck’s Fizz, at two parts wine to one of juice. The two cities have disputed the territory politely ever since. The Fizz is older, and the Mimosa travelled further. There is exactly one rule and it is not about the wine. The orange juice must be fresh, and the drink is unusually unforgiving about it, because the wine’s dryness amplifies everything a carton gets wrong rather than covering for it.

Aperol Spritz

The Aperol Spritz became the most ordered cocktail in the world during the 2010s, which was partly a marketing achievement and partly deserved. Built properly it is bright, bitter and genuinely refreshing. Built carelessly it is flat orange squash, and it is built carelessly a great deal. The format is older than the bottle. The spritz tradition comes from the Veneto, where Austrian soldiers under Habsburg rule diluted the strong local wine with water and called it spritzen, from the German for to splash. Bitter liqueurs joined later. Aperol arrived in 1919 and turned out to suit prosecco better than anything else did. The three to two to one ratio of prosecco, Aperol and soda was codified and marketed by Campari Group from the early 2000s, and it is not an arbitrary commercial decision. It is the proportion at which the prosecco still leads, the Aperol seasons without dominating, and the soda keeps the whole thing light.