{"id":1691360,"date":"2026-09-09T10:15:23","date_gmt":"2026-09-09T14:15:23","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/observer.com\/?p=1691360"},"modified":"2026-09-08T15:36:21","modified_gmt":"2026-09-08T19:36:21","slug":"bellini-cocktail-origin-history-harrys-bar-venice","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/observer.com\/2026\/09\/bellini-cocktail-origin-history-harrys-bar-venice\/","title":{"rendered":"The Bellini Was Built on White Peaches, Prosecco and Venetian Summer"},"content":{"rendered":"
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The Bellini has become one of the most iconic cocktails out there. Courtesy Belmond Hotel Cipriani<\/span><\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

Before the Bellini became premixed slush poured from a carton at a nondescript hotel brunch, <\/span>Harry\u2019s Bar<\/span><\/a> assigned one employee almost entirely to peaches each Venetian summer. From June through September, he cut and pitted small white peaches, squeezed them by hand, then pushed the juice and pulp through a <\/span>fine conical sieve<\/span><\/a>. Mixed with very cold Prosecco, the pale rose pur\u00e9e filled a small tumbler beneath a cap of foam. The recipe had two ingredients and a four-month season, but its birthday proved less tidy.<\/span><\/p>\n

Harry\u2019s Bar began with an improbable loan. <\/span>According to the family account<\/span><\/a>, Giuseppe Cipriani was tending bar at Venice\u2019s Hotel Europa in the late 1920s when a young American guest named Harry Pickering became stranded without money. Cipriani lent him enough to get home. Pickering returned with the debt and additional capital for a bar, which opened under his first name in 1931. The 15-by-30-foot former rope store sat on a dead end near Piazza San Marco, where its privacy attracted an international crowd. Ernest Hemingway became a regular and used it as a setting in <\/span>Across the River and Into the Trees<\/span><\/i>, although the surviving record supports his punishingly dry Montgomery martini more firmly than any affection for Bellinis. Italy declared the room a <\/span>national landmark in 2001<\/span><\/a>.<\/span><\/p>\n

\u201cThe Bellini is quintessential to Venice and Hotel Cipriani. A simple masterpiece by Giuseppe Cipriani, who founded the hotel in 1958,\u201d Walter Bolzonella, former head barman at Belmond Hotel Cipriani, previously told<\/a> Observer. \u201cOver the past 40 years, I have not only served but created new cocktails for Hollywood royalty and presidents, but one thing has never changed. Mr. Cipriani made me promise to never change the method of preparing the Bellini cocktail\u2014always and only fresh, ripe white peaches!”<\/p>\n

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