I have recently returned from a vacation in the Italian countryside, where I enjoyed the food and wine with great gusto.
In between visits to museums filled with ancient art and architecture, the wines were ever-present, and the food was universally delicious.
Despite the local history going back to the Roman Empire thousands of years ago, Limoncello is an Italian specialty that is barely a century old.
There are competing claims from different Italian cities, each claiming to be the first to develop the golden liqueur. The most widely accepted is the story of an innkeeper on the island of Capri, just off the Amalfi Coast.
The innkeeper had a grove of lemons on the property, and would mix up a sweet concoction as a treat for the hotel guests. In the years following WWII, the innkeeper’s son began selling his mother’s concoction at his nearby restaurant, which became a local treasure, but remained unheard of outside of that tiny island.
That all changed in 1988, that decadent decade of New Wave music, big shoulder pads, and even bigger hairdos. Limoncello was finally registered as a trademark, and started to be sold across Italy, and then internationally.
Today, Limoncello is widely available both throughout Italy and abroad, with production still concentrated on the Amalfi Coast, where the majority of the Italian lemon groves are planted.
A knock-off version is available in the USA made from California lemons, but Italian Limoncello is still considered the gold standard.
Despite the name, Limoncello does not contain any actual lemon juice. Rather, the lemon zests, or outer layer without the pulpy pith, are carefully peeled off, then steeped in a solvent of grappa or vodka to extract the lemon oils from the peel.
The extracted oils and spirit are then blended with equal parts sugar and water, resulting in a viscous liquid with a deep yellow colour.
Since the recipe is very simple, and only takes 3 months of aging, many Italian households will produce Limoncello for personal use from their own lemon trees. Each family has a slightly different ratio of ingredients or time spent on extraction, making each Limoncello unique.
The large distilleries churn out millions of litres at a time according to a tightly controlled industrial process, so the small family-produced Limoncello is harder to find, but can have more subtle flavours than the large brands.
Interestingly, many farms will grow alternating crops of lemons, grapes, and olives. Since each crop is harvested at a different time of year, the farm hands are kept busy without excessive downtime, and cash flow is more regular and predictable with multiple harvests.
Perhaps the best meal I had in Italy was at a small 20-seat restaurant run by the fourth generation of the same family, who sourced many of their ingredients from the family farm.
The olive oil was most definitely not a free garnish on the table, but the few euros I paid for it with a nice focaccia bread were well worth it. It turned out that the family farm was only able to produce 500 bottles of olive oil per year, and they usually ran out of the good stuff every 6 months, so I was lucky to taste the freshest and most local olive oil ever.
After a dinner with the finest handmade pasta and homegrown tomatoes, I partook in the Limoncello as a traditional Italian digestivo, or after dinner drink.
This was great-grandpa’s recipe, left unchanged for decades, and I could see more than a hundred bottles stacked deep in a glass display case, giving a warm yellow glow to the room.
Limoncello best made with the so-called Sorrento lemons grown around the town of Sorrento, although I have made my own knock-off version here in Alberta with supermarket lemons.
I carefully peel the zest from a dozen lemons, then stuff them into a jug containing half a bottle of unflavoured vodka. I wait about a month for the lemon oils to be extracted, then strain out the peel and refill the bottle with equal parts of water and sugar. The bottle then goes in the freezer for another month or two to allow the flavours to marry, with the occasional turn to prevent the sugar from falling out of solution.
Try a shot after dinner at an Italian restaurant, or be courageous and make your own!
