The Bombardino Is the Italian Alps’ Favorite Winter Drink

Like many Italian cocktails, the Bombardino begins with a simple story that’s been repeated often enough to have become legend.

Some of the details are murky, but almost everyone agrees that the drink was invented in the 1970s in Livigno, a ski town bordering Switzerland, by a lift manager and lodge owner named Aldo Del Bò. One day, the story goes, a group of skiers staggered into his rifugio (mountain lodge) and asked for something to warm them up. Del Bò had been experimenting with a new concoction in his spare time, and so his manager, Erich Ciapponi, went behind the bar and made it for them. 

Ciapponi heated up some Vov—an Italian egg-yolk liqueur akin to zabaglione, already popular among the ski crowd in the area—spiked it with Scotch, and then topped the mixture with cold whipped cream. One of the first to taste the new house drink reportedly exclaimed, “È una bomba!” (“It’s a bomb!”), because of its explosive strength. 

The name stuck. And thus, the Bombardino—Italy’s ski-season staple—was born.

When the snow starts to stick each year, Italians make for the mountains. As they trade the damp winter gloom of cities like Milan and Turin for long days on the slopes, aperitivo becomes après-ski. The drinks, for the most part, are the same as in the cities—beer, wine and spritzes—except for this one winter-only outlier.

The first time I tried a Bombardino was at Rifugio Palù in the Valtellina region. Getting there required a two-mile uphill hike through snow. I was cold and exhausted and the lodge was in full après mode by the time I arrived. Skiers, snowboarders and hikers had stripped off top layers and packed the terrace to sip the drink from paper cups, so I opted for the same. The Bombardino was a quick hit of boozy, high-calorie energy.