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.
Glassware: Champagne Flute
Garnish: None and Fresh Strawberry slice on the rim
Ingredients
50ml
Ripe strawberries blended and sieved, with a few drops of lemon to hold the colour: the fruit is the only quality question the drink asks.
100ml
The family wine: soft, cold and Venetian, folding into berry even more readily than into peach.
Instructions
Pour the cold strawberry purée into a chilled flute.
Add the prosecco slowly, folding gently as it settles.
Serve at once, garnished with a strawberry slice if the occasion dresses up.
Expert Tip
Sieve the purée properly. Seeds in the flute are the only way this drink really fails, and a blender alone will not get them out: push the pulp through a fine sieve with the back of a spoon and accept that it takes two minutes. A few drops of lemon in the purée hold the colour and sharpen the fruit. Strawberries oxidise and go dull within the hour, and the lemon buys enough time to make a jug's worth without watching it turn brown. Everything cold, and fold rather than stir. The purée is denser than the wine and will settle if left alone, but stirring costs carbonation. Two or three gentle folds with a bar spoon as the prosecco goes in is the whole technique.
Flavour Profile
The Origin
The Veneto named its fruit-and-prosecco drinks for Italian artists, and the strawberry reading took Gioachino Rossini, composer, gourmand and a man who would have approved enthusiastically. It emerged in the Bellini’s wake as the strawberry season’s house pour and spread with the aperitivo hour across Europe.
The Strawberries
Ripe, fragrant fruit is the entire recipe: blend, sieve firmly to lose the seeds, and brighten with a few drops of lemon. British summer strawberries in season make a Rossini the Veneto would respect; frozen fruit makes an honest winter version.
Against the Bellini
The Rossini is the easier drink in every direction: the fruit is cheaper, the purée more forgiving, and the flavour more familiar to more people.
Strawberries carry their own acidity and a sturdier flavour than white peach, so they survive a rough blend, a slightly underripe punnet and a cheap prosecco in a way peaches simply do not. That tolerance is the whole difference between a drink you make for guests and a drink you make when the fruit happens to be perfect.
The Bellini remains the connoisseur's glass and the harder thing to get right. The Rossini is the one the garden party actually empties, and there is no shame in that being the more useful quality on a Saturday in June.
How to Serve It
Cold, folded, immediate, and in quantity: the Rossini batches by the jug better than any drink in the sparkling family, purée made ahead and wine added at the table. June is its month; a punnet its natural unit.
The Purée
Ripe fruit, blended, sieved, and brightened with a few drops of lemon. That is the entire recipe, and the fruit is the only real decision in it.
British strawberries in season are as good as this drink gets: fragrant, properly red through to the middle, and sweet enough to need nothing added. Out of season, frozen strawberries make an honest version and are usually better than fresh imports picked hard, since they were at least frozen ripe.
What does not work is adding sugar to underripe fruit. Sweetness is not the missing quality in a pale February strawberry; aroma is, and no amount of syrup replaces it. If the fruit does not smell of anything, make something else.
Batching It
This batches better than anything else in the sparkling family, which is a good deal of its appeal.
Make the purée ahead and keep it cold; it holds for a day in the fridge with the lemon in it. Then pour purée into each glass and top at the table, rather than mixing a jug of the finished drink, because a jug loses its carbonation within about twenty minutes and arrives flat at the third glass.
One punnet makes roughly six drinks, which keeps the arithmetic easy for a garden. Keep the prosecco in ice rather than out on a table, since a warm bottle will foam over the purée instead of folding into it.
Frequently Asked Questions
What is a Rossini?
The Bellini's strawberry sibling: strawberry purée folded under cold prosecco, named for Gioachino Rossini in the same Venetian habit of naming fruit-and-wine drinks after Italian masters. It is brighter, easier and more seasonal than its peach elder.
Fresh or frozen strawberries?
Fresh and fragrant in season, frozen without embarrassment in winter, since frozen fruit was at least picked ripe where a hard February import was not. The purée forgives far more than white peach ever does. Sieve the seeds out either way.
Can I make it in a jug?
It is the best batching drink in the sparkling family. Make the purée ahead, chill everything, then pour purée into each glass and top at the table rather than mixing a jug, which goes flat within twenty minutes. One punnet serves about six.
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Bellini
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.
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.
Kir Royale
The Kir Royale carries the name of a war hero. Canon Félix Kir was a priest, a Resistance figure who helped thousands escape occupied France, and mayor of Dijon from 1945 until his death in 1968, and he served his city’s white wine with its blackcurrant liqueur at every official reception until the drink simply became him. The Royale is the upgrade that followed: crème de cassis under champagne rather than Burgundy’s still aligoté. It is the simplest great aperitif in the French canon, a measure of cassis in the flute with champagne poured slowly over it and the liqueur’s dark fruit blooming upward through the bubbles. The cassis does everything here, supplying the colour, the sweetness and the blackcurrant depth, while the champagne’s dryness keeps the whole thing standing at attention. The proportions are the only craft involved, and the original Kir on still white wine remains the daytime reading of the same idea.
Where this one sits
Recipe by Jerry Can Spirits
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