I blame my parents. How could they not fall and fall hard? Venice makes it all so easy, but then, it has had 1,600 years to rehearse. I think I can even go as far as to say the city has been in the hospitality industry from the beginning of its believed founding back in 421AD. One glimpse of it and you will most likely also be seduced, as my parents were on their first trip more than 60 years ago and every return trip since then.
Granted, getting to Venice can be a bit involved. In addition to planes, trains and automobiles, there is the added burden of arranging some mode of water transport. Though once you’re here, it’s smooth sailing.
From that first step on terra firma, you have entered the museum that is Venice, and the only thing you need to do is walk its calli, sit in its campi or lounge by its canali to get the full effect. Most often, that experience is accompanied by a beverage.
At least, that’s how our outings went, with much of my formative years spent sipping Bellinis, Sgroppinos, and Spritzes – Venice’s most famous cocktail trifecta. Perhaps, it was fated that I would become not only a devotee of La Serenissima, but also discover a penchant for drinks journalism.
Although you catch a sentence or two of Venice’s drinking history in many a tome devoted to the city, there doesn’t seem to be one purely dedicated to the subject. Thus, I felt the need to step in and right that wrong, especially after a local told me that Venice needed this book.
For a city that many misguidedly believe is stuck in the past, Venice is one of the most culturally exciting in Europe, if not the world (but I am biased). For example, the Biennale Arte has just opened, and the Venice Film Festival, Homo Faber, Venice Glass Week, Venice Carnival and Venice Cocktail Week are hot on its heels.
Renaissance merchants arrived from abroad, introducing the rest of the world to items we can find in our local bars and restaurants now – think wines, coffee, spices, the list goes on. And similarly, every one of the city’s guests has added something to Venice’s drinking history and culture – from wine to coffee to spirits to beers to cocktails.
Every drink tells a story from Austrians diluting local wine and unknowingly creating the Spritz, Americans inspiring legendary bars, a few fritto too many leading to the dessert cocktail Venice is famed for. These stories were just the start of my journey through the canal city’s drinking establishments, which led to A Guide to Drinking in Venice. Hopefully, when you plan your first or next trip, you’ll try a few of these places and then discover your own along the way. There is a slight chance, like my parents before you, you’ll fall hard.
Here are a few of the cocktails Venice made famous and a short guide on where to enjoy them – and how to make them at home
Putting on the Spritz
No cocktail in recent memory has conquered the world so quickly or completely as the Spritz. Appearing on drinks menus from neighbourhood bars to luxury hotels, the Spritz shows no sign of going anywhere anytime soon.
It’s just too easy to drink, it goes with everything, and it’s hard to find a cocktail lover who doesn’t like it in some variation, be it Aperol, Select, Campari, Cynar or Hugo, just to name a few.
Like most cocktail history, the true story of its invention is a little fact, a dash of fiction and glugs of urban myth. The tale begins in the late 18th and early 19th century, when Venice was under Austro-Hungarian rule following the fall of the Venetian Republic to Napoleon. The occupying troops took to drinking the local wine, but found it considerably stronger than what they had back home. Nothing that a little splash of water might fix. The German word “spritzen,” meaning “to splash”, eventually gave this drink its name, as simple as that.
Exactly how and when bitter spirit got added into specifications is anyone’s guess, but by the early 20th century, the classic Italian bitters we recognise today, Select, Aperol or Campari, had found their way into the glass as well. Prosecco replaced the still wine in most spritzes in the late 1900s, and the rest, as they say, is history.
Today, the classic recipe is simple to make: a bitter spirit, prosecco, and soda water. If we want to be purists, Select, the original Venetian bitter, is the most authentic choice, traditionally served with a green olive rather than the ubiquitous orange slice. However, any way you make it, the Spritz is and will always be Venetian through and through.
The beginnings of the Bellini
As an American, I take pride in the fact that a compatriot of mine had a hand in the creation of one of the most beautiful cocktails in the world.
It all began with Harry Pickering, the yank who was usually seen propping up the bar at the Hotel Europa-Britannia, until one day, he wasn’t. Happening upon him on the street, barman Giuseppe Cipriani enquired as to his absence. Harry’s family had finally cut him off without a penny. Cipriani lent him the money he asked for without hesitation, an act of generosity that would change both their lives.
Two years later, Pickering returned, not only repaying the debt but backing the bar Cipriani had always dreamt of having. Harry’s Bar opened in 1931 in Venice and has served continuously since that time.
The Bellini came along many years later when Giuseppe was inspired to create a Venetian cocktail of his own. A lover of 15th-century Venetian Renaissance painter Giovanni Bellini’s colour palette of soft pink hues, he conjured up a cocktail created with local white peaches and a pour of Prosecco.
Most bars in Venice make the Bellini, but having it at Harry’s Bar feels meant to be. The tiny restaurant has barely changed since Cipriani first designed it. Low tables fit tightly together with almost no room between them creating an intimacy that is part of their magic. One sip and it’s easy to understand why, nearly a century on, the place is always packed.
Ingredients:
60ml/2oz white peach purée;
120ml/4oz Prosecco DOCG Brut
Preparation:
If you are making your own peach purée, you will need two peaches. Remove the stones, chop the flesh and rub the flesh through a fine strainer.
Method:
1. Chill a flute glass.
2. Pour the white peach purée into the glass.
3. Top up with prosecco and stir gently with a bar spoon.
4. The decoration of the drink will be the 2–3 cm of foam that will form on top.
Drop in for a Sgroppino
The Sgroppino may be lesser known than the other Venetian cocktails, but no less appealing and will most likely be seen in a bar near you sooner than you think.
It’s just as easy to make as the others, a mix of vodka, prosecco and lemon sorbet. It’s just its name that might trip off the tongue. Sgropin in Venetian dialect means “to untie a small knot.” Though the drink’s origins are not entirely clear, its name does hint at it being a palate cleanser, maybe between your Spaghetti alla Vongole and your Fegato alla Veneziana.
How and why this quirky combination of ingredients made it into the glass we don’t truly know but sorbet has been in Venice since the 1600s, prosecco lives right outside Venice, and vodka, well, here’s where it goes astray. However it came to be, the Sgroppino can be found in almost every restaurant and is an absolute delight,
Ingredients:
30ml/1oz vodka
60ml/2oz prosecco
1 scoop of lemon sorbet
Method:
1. Chill a coupe glass.
2. Combine the vodka and prosecco in the glass and stir gently.
3. Add a small scoop of lemon sorbet. Stir gently or let it melt into the cocktail.
It’s just as easy to find one of these cocktails in Venice as it is to make them. It would be a travesty for any bar in the city not to be able to make them well, but as with any drink, it’s about who’s behind the bar. Thankfully, Venice has some of the world’s best bars!
Of course, a Bellini at Harry’s Bar is a must, but the one at the Cipriani Hotel, originally founded by Giuseppe Cipriani himself, is equally wonderful. Marino Lucchetti’s Bellini at the Londra Palace Hotel is also otherworldly and one of the best in Venice.
Since almost anywhere in Venice can make a great Spritz, it really comes down to where you have it. The St. Regis Venice has a dedicated spritz menu. If you want to venture beyond your usual red bitter spirit, don’t miss one of theirs, as it comes with the added bonus of enjoying it on the Grand Canal. The Aman Bar is extraordinarily beautiful. After your Spritz, ask for the Indomable cocktail, their take on the Martini, served on a mirror so it reflects the frescoed ceiling above.
For the Sgroppino, most restaurants will serve it as a dessert cocktail. My favourite is at a tiny, under-the-radar local spot called Osteria Al Bacareto. There, it arrives alongside homemade zaetti, a traditional Venetian biscuit, which makes the whole experience all the sweeter.
‘A Guide to Drinking in Venice’ by Susan L Schwartz, published by Quadrille HB £26.
