Venturing in Venice, one glass at a time
THERE’S a three-way intersection about a 20-minute walk from Saint Mark’s Basilica. It’s somewhere between two canals. Here, you’ll find a small grocer and a couple of bacari, the wine-and-small-bites joints that are the Venetian answer to pubs. Aside from an internet café nearby, they’re all old-fashioned businesses with modern storefronts in weathered buildings that look like they’ve been around since the fall of the Republic of Venice in 1797. But on a chilly afternoon this past winter, my attention was drawn to one wide window that looks in on a cosy, sepia-toned bar with nary a wine bottle in sight.
Time Social Bar was just opening for the evening when I wandered in last winter. The bartender handed me the cocktail menu, an enticing mix of classic recipes, creative inventions and decidedly Italianaccented versions of familiar drinks. The house Sazerac, for one, substitutes the absinthe that traditionally is used as a rinse for Sambuca.
The bartender, Eleonora Contessi, had only recently started on the bar after helming the morning coffee shift. As she mixed my drink, she told me that she’d come to Venice after high school in 2012 to study economics and Japanese. After she got her degree, she waitressed at the Hard Rock Cafe in the city centre, where she worked with Alessandro Beggio, who opened Time in 2016. With the cocktail wave cresting in other parts of the world, she saw an opportunity to be part of Venice’s own impending cocktail renaissance.
“Venice has always had grand hotels – legendary ones like Metropole and Danieli – and they all served cocktails in their bars, but more recently for a long time, people perceived cocktails as something for a disco bar,” she told me. And with that she suggested I try the Pear Cheers, a vodka drink with pears and honey shaken with, of all things, ricotta cheese, which is strained out. It was a beguiling balance of rustic flavours with just a whisper of sweet cream. Changing times, indeed.
Venice’s imbibing history is long and wonderful. Caffe Florian, an elegant institution that opened on the main square in 1720, is said to be the oldest café in Italy. The majestic hotel bars that Contessi referenced, the epitome of antique grandeur, are the stuff of fairy tales.
The fabled Harry’s Bar is an anomaly for not being in a hotel, but it’s the most celebrated bar of all, as it lays claim to Venice’s most famous drink, the Bellini. The city is indeed upping its cocktail game lately, but still, a trip to Venice without visiting Harry’s is simply out of the question. Yes, it’s part of the mighty Cipriani empire, which is synonymous with extravagant Italian restaurants in New York, Hong Kong and elsewhere, but Harry’s Bar is far more famous for its small dishes of giant complimentary olives and bartenders who wear crisp, white jackets, barely smile and serve martinis in undersized glasses.
If Harry’s calls Venice’s recent past to mind, Il Mercante di Venezia offers a very modern narrative of ancient history. The bi-level bar, which opened in 2016, is retrofitted into a splendid, historical café. There’s a marble bar by the entrance, but my friends and I opted to kick back upstairs on comfy couches. The menu features an illustrated Silk Road map and collectively the drinks chronicle Venetian traveller Marco Polo’s stops along the route.
Those cocktails are as exotic as I imagine his journey east was. Spices and herbs are featured prominently: Valerian and camomile syrup elevate a cognac drink; a calvados cocktail involves pink-pepperinfused vermouth and matcha tea. My cognac-based Down in the Forest, which included a mushroom tincture – among other eccentricities – was served in a triangular glass nestled in a small globe filled with colourful bits of vegetation, terrarium-style.
“It describes a moment when Marco Polo went to the Khan gardens, where a collection of the most beautiful trees from all over the realm was moved to,” said Alessandro Zampieri, a bartender and one of the owners. “Walking through this forest, a swarm of bees stung him and he fainted, falling on the ground. Luckily the ground was covered by moss.”
But before we got to those baroque productions there was the aperitif menu. Enhanced spritzes are one of the draws at Osteria all’Alba, which gives off a punk-rock attitude. The walls are festooned with vinyl and graffiti in 12 languages, or so they say. We ordered a few appetisers and a round of the house specialty (the Mi To – Campari and soda bulked up with Punt e Mes).
On the last night of my stay, I had old-world intentions. To that end, I made my way to the Gritti Palace on the Grand Canal. Once the residence of the city’s chief magistrate, it’s now an opulent hotel that underwent a $37 million renovation in 2013. Its Bar Longhi has an aristocratic air about it. Aperol spritzes are the signature, but my interest was piqued by a few bottles of grappa arranged on a silver platter at the bar.
The bartender explained that they all were made by the Nonino family, which for generations has run a rustic distillery about two hours outside Venice. He offered me a taste of Picolit, one of Nonino’s singlevarietal grappas. The family pioneered that style, often sourcing from a single vineyard as well. Accordingly, the spirit tasted fresh and juicy, nothing like the fiery and rambunctious grappas I had tried before. Same goes with the family’s merlot grappa, which offered ginlike notes of roses and violets. Staring from the window over the Grand Canal at Santa Maria della Salute beyond, it felt like Venice’s past and future were mixed the same way.