Bellini

White peach purée and Prosecco — Cipriani's 1948 Harry's Bar Venice creation for a Bellini exhibition, the pale golden-pink recalling the painter's luminous amber.

The Bellini was created by Giuseppe Cipriani, the founder of Harry's Bar in Venice, in 1948, to mark a retrospective exhibition of the 15th-century Venetian Renaissance painter Giovanni Bellini at the Doge's Palace. Cipriani had opened Harry's Bar in 1931 with financial backing from a young American named Harry Pickering, naming the establishment in his honor and establishing it at Calle Vallaresso near the Piazza San Marco. By the late 1940s it had become one of the most celebrated gathering places in the world, frequented by Ernest Hemingway, Orson Welles, Truman Capote, and the international literary and artistic circles that moved through post-war Venice. The color of the drink Cipriani invented — a pale, golden-pink sheen produced by combining white peach purée with Prosecco — reminded him of the warm amber tones characteristic of Giovanni Bellini's paintings of saints and madonnas: luminous, delicate, lit from within. The recipe requires white peaches of the Tabacchiera or flat peach variety grown in the Veneto, which differ from yellow peaches in their color, perfume, and sweetness. Cipriani was specific about the white peach requirement, insisting that yellow varieties produced a different and inferior result. The Bellini has been an IBA Contemporary Classic since the organization recognized it, and the combination of fresh peach purée and Prosecco remains one of the most recognized Italian aperitivo contributions to the global cocktail canon.