Bellini Punch

White peach purée and Prosecco in a communal bowl — the Bellini Cipriani created at Harry's Bar Venice in 1948 and scaled for group service, white peaches required.

The Bellini Punch scales one of Italy's most beloved modern cocktails into a large-format serve suited to the communal occasions where punch has always excelled. The original Bellini was created by Giuseppe Cipriani at Harry's Bar in Venice in 1948, named after the 15th-century Venetian painter Giovanni Bellini whose luminous, golden-toned canvases had just been the subject of a retrospective at the Doge's Palace. Cipriani combined fresh white peach purée with Prosecco to create the drink's characteristic pale golden-pink color and delicate sweetness, and insisted throughout his career that only white peaches — not yellow varieties — produced the correct flavor and hue. Harry's Bar had operated at Calle Vallaresso near the Piazza San Marco since 1931, and by the 1940s it was a destination for writers, filmmakers, and artists from across the world. The Bellini became the bar's most requested drink and helped cement the association between Venice, Prosecco, and Italian aperitivo culture in the global imagination. The punch format translates the same formula into a pitcher or bowl for larger gatherings: the peach purée's sweetness, Prosecco's effervescence, and the gentle stone fruit flavor scale naturally, requiring only the maintenance of the fresh fruit to chilled sparkling wine ratio that defines the original. White peach nectar is commonly used in the punch version as a practical substitute when fresh white peaches are unavailable, and the result is a lighter, more accessible large-format drink that retains the Bellini's essential character.