Bellini
Prosecco and white peach purée, folded together in a flute — pale, fizzy and delicately fruity.
- Difficulty
- easy
- Prep time
- 4 min
- Strength
- 9% ABV
- Glassware
- Champagne flute
- Base
- sparkling wine
- Serves
- 1
Related drinks
Ingredients
- White peach purée30ml
Ripe fresh peach, blended and strained, or a good-quality bottled purée
- Prosecco90ml
Well chilled
Method
- Spoon the peach purée into the bottom of a chilled champagne flute.
- Top slowly with cold prosecco.
- Stir once, gently, with a bar spoon to combine without losing too much fizz.
- Serve immediately.
Equipment
Don't have everything? Here's what works instead.
Jigger
Household swap: A tablespoon measure (1 tbsp ≈ 15ml) works for measuring the purée.
Bar spoon
Household swap: A long-handled teaspoon works fine for the single gentle stir this drink needs.
Missing an ingredient?
Each swap below says what it changes and how to correct for it, so you can decide whether you are making this drink or a neighbouring one.
Instead of Peach Purée
Best substitute: Passion Fruit Liqueur
This is the modifier in this drink.
Quantity: Use about 15ml, since passion fruit liqueur is more concentrated
Flavour impact: Produces a sharper, more tropical drink than the soft, floral original.
What changes
Expect more acidity and more intensity. Still a good drink, and a slightly different one.
- Acidity ↑
- More acidity makes the drink taste fresher and drier, and can push a balanced sour over into sharp.
- Intensity ↑
- A more intensely flavoured ingredient will start to dominate the components around it.
- Character
- you lose sweet, stone fruit, lush and fragrant, and you gain tropical, tart-sweet, musky and fruity. Numbers can't see this: two ingredients can be identically sour and still smell nothing alike.
To correct for it
- Use slightly less of it, or add a touch more sweetener to hold the balance.
- Scale it back by a third and let the other ingredients hold their share.
Moderate confidenceCommon substitution in bars without access to good peach purée, though it changes the character.Shifts the drinkBecomes a variation
Want to change something these swaps do not cover — too sweet, too thin, a herb you dislike? How to adjust any mocktail works by what each component does rather than by ingredient name.
Make it better
- Use white peaches if you can find them — they're less acidic and closer to the original than yellow peaches.
- Chill everything — glass, prosecco and purée — before mixing; a warm pour loses carbonation fast.
- Pour the prosecco slowly down the side of the glass to keep as much fizz as possible.
- Adjust sweetness gradually and taste as you go — it's easy to add more syrup, impossible to take it out.
Rescue this drink
- Tastes too sweet
- Use less purée next time, or add a squeeze of lemon juice to the purée before mixing.
- Purée sinks and won't mix
- Stir a little more firmly, or thin the purée slightly with a teaspoon of prosecco before adding the rest.
- Goes flat quickly
- Make sure the prosecco is well chilled and pour it slowly rather than dropping it in fast, which knocks out bubbles.
- Too weak or waterygeneral guidance
- Add a splash more of the base spirit rather than extra mixer. For stirred or built drinks, over-dilution from ice is the usual cause — try a shorter stir or fewer, larger ice cubes.
- Too sourgeneral guidance
- Add a little more sweetener (simple syrup or the cocktail's usual sweetening ingredient), a small amount at a time.
- Served too warmgeneral guidance
- Chill the glass, ice and every ingredient ahead of time — a warm pour is the fastest way to lose a cold drink's balance. For one serving, there's no real fix beyond rebuilding it properly chilled; for a batch, keep everything refrigerated until the moment of serving and add ice last.
Make ahead & storage
Batch the base, finish at serving
Batch the base days ahead and add prosecco when you pour.
- Prosecco:
- Carbonated — it goes flat in a bottle, and there is no way to put the fizz back.
What it tastes like
The taste, and what drives it
sweet, gentle, light, sparkling — a long and lengthened drink served long, over ice.
Sweet
Dry → Sweet
Openly sweet, and balanced by something else rather than hidden.
What drives it: White peach purée — carries the most sugar into the glass.
Gentle
Soft → Sharp
A trace of acidity, there to lift rather than to be noticed.
What drives it: Prosecco — supplies the acidity.
Light
Light → Rich
Light-bodied. It refreshes rather than satisfies, which is usually the intention.
What drives it: White peach purée — adds most of the weight.
Very sparkling
Still → Sparkling
Carbonated, which lifts the aromatics and makes the drink taste drier than its sugar content alone would suggest.
What drives it: Prosecco — carries the carbonation.
Moderate
Delicate → Bold
Moderate: assertive enough to hold its own, mild enough for a second.
What drives it: Prosecco — is the most concentrated thing in the glass.
What you smell first
- Orchard fruitLeads
From Prosecco
- Stone fruit
From White peach purée
Every aroma here comes from the liquid itself; nothing is layered on top.
How it was worked out
Each reading comes from the recipe's own recorded taste scores combined with what each ingredient contributes, weighted by how much of it is in the glass. Almost everything in this drink has detailed ingredient data behind it.
How balance actually works →If it isn't right
What goes wrong with this drink, and why
Only the faults this particular recipe is actually prone to — each with the likely cause, the adjustment, and what the adjustment costs you.
The fizz is the last thing in, and the first thing lost
Worth knowingCarbonation escapes to warmth, agitation and anything it can cling to — pulp, sugar crystals, a dry glass wall.
How to handle it: Chill the mixer hard, pour it against the inside of the glass, add it last, and stir once at most.
It's too sweet
- Likely cause
- White peach purée is carrying the sugar here, and it is the easiest thing in the drink to over-pour — syrup clings to a jigger and a "splash" is rarely the same twice.
- What to change
- Cut white peach purée by about a third and rebuild. If it is already made, a squeeze of citrus is faster than starting again.
- What that does
- It will taste drier and slightly thinner — sugar carries body as well as sweetness, so you lose a little weight along with it.
It tastes weak
- Likely cause
- With no alcohol to carry flavour and no heat to cut through, an alcohol-free drink has to work harder for the same presence — thinness here is almost never a measuring error.
- What to change
- Add acidity or bitterness rather than more fruit. Sweetness is what is usually already too high in a thin mocktail.
- What that does
- The drink gains definition without gaining sugar. It will also read as slightly sharper, which is what 'more presence' usually means in practice.
It's gone flat
- Likely cause
- Prosecco loses gas to warmth, to agitation and to anything it can nucleate against — pulp, sugar crystals, a dry glass.
- What to change
- Chill the mixer properly, add it last, pour it against the inside wall of the glass, and stir once at most.
- What that does
- The bubbles last, which also makes the drink taste drier — carbonation contributes a real acidity of its own on top of the lift.
It doesn't smell of anything
- Likely cause
- This drink's aroma comes from orchard fruit and stone fruit, carried in the liquid. Serving it too cold suppresses that: volatile compounds do not leave a very cold drink.
- What to change
- Let it sit for a minute before drinking, and use a glass that narrows towards the rim to concentrate what does escape.
- What that does
- More of the aroma escapes and the drink reads as more intense. The cost is temperature: a drink left to warm also dilutes faster, so this is a trade against how long it stays right.
It tastes one-dimensional
- Likely cause
- With 2 components there is nowhere for complexity to hide — a long and lengthened drink is exposed by design, so a dull one is usually a dull ingredient rather than a missing step.
- What to change
- Change the quality of what is there before adding anything new: fresh citrus rather than bottled, a better base bottle, a dash of bitters. Bitters add layers at a scale nothing else matches.
- What that does
- More going on at the same strength and sweetness. Adding a whole extra ingredient instead usually produces a muddier drink rather than a deeper one.
Taste profile
- Sweetness
- 3/5
- Sourness
- 1/5
- Bitterness
- 0/5
- Strength
- 1/5
- Fruitiness
- 4/5
- Freshness
- 4/5
- Creaminess
- 0/5
- Smokiness
- 0/5
Nutrition & alcohol
Estimate onlyPeach purée sweetness varies with fruit ripeness and brand.- Calories
- 95 kcal
- Sugar
- 9 g
- Carbohydrates
- 10 g
- Alcohol units (UK)
- 1.1
- US standard drinks
- 0.61
- ABV
- 9%
- Serving size
- 120 ml
Show calculation assumptions
Source: Calculated from standard measures
Calorie breakdown: ~60 kcal from alcohol, ~35 kcal from sugar and mixers.
Likely range: 71–119 kcal, reflecting the confidence level above — not a lab-measured figure.
Based on 90ml prosecco at 12% ABV and 30ml peach purée with no added sugar.
These figures are estimates, not laboratory measurements — individual tolerance to alcohol varies. See our responsible drinking guidance.
Variations
Prefer it alcohol-free?
Try the Alcohol-Free Bellini, built to carry the same flavour without any alcohol.
Rossini
Swap the peach purée for strawberry purée for a deeper red, berry-forward version.
What kind of drink this is
The structure behind the recipe
A built build: a long and lengthened sparkling-wine-based drink, served long, over ice — sparkling in the mouth.
Long and lengthened
A short measure stretched with a mixer or juice — the drink's length, not its concentration, is the point of it.
Modifier
White peach purée
A short measure of low-acid juice — flavours rather than lengthens or sours.
Lengthener
Prosecco
Sparkling wine, beer or cider — lengthens and lifts.
2 components' roles areworked out from the ingredient's category and recorded taste attributes rather than set by hand — the reasoning is shown above so you can disagree with it.
Technique
built
Components are poured into the serving glass over ice and stirred once, or not at all. Dilution happens while you drink rather than before.
The drink changes as you go: strongest at the first sip, longest and most diluted at the last. That drift is a feature of a long drink and a fault in a short one.
What it ruins: Nothing, but it cannot properly combine anything viscous — a syrup poured last will sit at the bottom.
Everything about building in the glass →How the technique works →Dilution
In the glass, as you drink
Water from ice typically makes up around 15% of the finished drink for a built build (commonly 10–20%). Dilution is an ingredient here, not a side effect.
Why dilution is an ingredient →Served
Long, over ice
Champagne flute · 120ml
Served on ice, so it keeps chilling in the glass. A larger, colder, slower drink than the same spirits served straight up.
Texture and aroma
Carbonation lifts aromatics and adds a slight acidity of its own, which is why a long drink can taste drier than its sugar content suggests.
No dedicated aromatic component — what you smell is the spirit itself, which is a deliberate choice in a drink this spare.
Where to go from here
Each of these is here because of something specific about this drink, not as a standard set of links.
Why this drink matters
This one carries 2 independent kinds of the evidence used to identify influential drinks — each with a test you can check rather than a ranking.
Drinking this with food: chilli heat
On its recorded taste scores this drink meets the test for chilli heat — the page explains the principle behind it rather than simply asserting the pairing.
Making good drinks at home
A good drink to learn on. The beginner path covers the four things that actually make a home cocktail disappointing.
Where this fits in a home bar
Sparkling Wine is bottle 9 in the order that unlocks the most drinks — buying it opens up 5 recipes beyond the ones before it.
Where it comes from
Origin and family
Origin of the Bellini
Created at Harry's Bar in Venice, Italy, in the mid-20th century.
On drinks history
Cocktail origin stories are frequently repeated and rarely evidenced. Our history section separates what is documented from what is folklore rather than picking whichever version reads best.
History and culture →Try this next
Hugo Spritz
You may like this because it shares a refreshing taste profile with the Bellini.
- Pimm's Cup
Pimm's Cup
You may like this because it shares a fruity-forward profile with the Bellini, but uses liqueur-led instead of sparkling-wine.
Mimosa
You may like this because it's part of the same sparkling wine cocktail family as the Bellini.
Questions people ask
- Can I use Champagne instead of prosecco?
- You can, but it is a waste. The peach purée buries exactly the complexity you would be paying for. A dry prosecco is the traditional and better choice here.
- How strong is a Bellini?
- It is one of the lighter drinks on the site — mostly purée and sparkling wine, with no spirit at all. See the nutrition panel above for the exact UK units, and the lighter drinks page for how it compares.
- Is there an alcohol-free version?
- Yes — the Alcohol-Free Bellini, built identically with an alcohol-free sparkling wine. It is one of the closest substitutions on the site, because the peach was always doing most of the work.
Use up your ingredients
Bought a bottle just for this? Here's what else it's good for.
Related tools
Scale this for a party
Work out bottles, mixers, ice and total alcohol units for any number of guests.
Recipe confidence
Well-documented two-ingredient classic with consistent proportions.