Life Gave Her Lemons

(LOOK WHAT IT MADE HER DO!)

I never thought I’d be married to a moonshiner.

A winemaker I could imagine. That idea conjures up elegant palazzos in the countryside; linen-wearing farmers strolling among vines that lace the soft rolling hills. Idle aristocrats watching the purple fruits of the terreno ripen in the Mediterranean sun.

I have none of that. My story is more like cousin Jethro brewing up hooch in the shack behind the farmhouse. A spaghetti Western blend of “Deliverance” and “Breaking Bad”.

Cue: Morricone music.

It started out, as these things so often do, in the most idyllic of settings: a long table on a terrazzo on a mid-summer evening, friends gathered after a sumptuous dinner, the party winding down as easy as the candles keeping the bugs at bay. Our host Jimmy was making the rounds with his basket, like Little Red Riding Hood in the forests of Le Marche.

In his wicker hamper, he had an assortment of obscure spirits in unmarked bottles, all improbably devoted to improving the digestive process. Each one looked like an ongoing science experiment. There was grappa, mistra, amaro, maybe something made from eye of newt and toe of frog.  Some of the bottles seemed to have small organisms growing inside.

As we each chose our personal poison, C hesitated just long enough for Concetta, Jimmy’s wife, to step out of the kitchen bearing one more exotic potion. If one were ever going to walk on the wild side, Concetta would be the person to follow. Her concoction was a radiant nectar that looked like sunlight in a bottle

Here comes trouble. Concetta— great friend, dangerous influence.

“Maybe you prefer a limoncello?’ she asked, like the Sicilian sister C never had. Before C could accept, Concetta leaned in and added, with just a hint of a dare: “You know…I make it myself”.  From these words, a flame was lit. It was only a matter of time before C’s firewater factory rolled into action.

Limoncello is an after-dinner liqueur that is clearly rooted in Southern Italy, primarily in Sorrento and the Amalfi coast. The history is a little blurry, as things often are around limoncello. But many sources credit Maria Antonia Farace, the owner of a small hotel in Capri, as the one who first mixed the lemons and oranges of her garden with just enough grain alcohol to instantly conjure up endless summer nights, striped beach umbrellas, and accordion serenades. It’s so quintessentially Italian, it’s almost too much.

Sorrento- Land of limoncello

In fact, limoncello has a mixed reputation now. Purists who prize it as a homemade concoction have almost given up on the stuff, as it’s been industrialized into something fit only for a last-minute gift purchase at the Rome airport. Concetta’s homemade version was a reminder of just how good it can be.

As we drove home that evening, it was clear that C had drank the Kool-Aid and was now determined to make some of her own. I reminded her that Concetta was Sicilian, someone who grew up watching her ancestors make magic from lemons, oranges, even fennel.  C and I are Scandinavian. Our Viking forebears did not sit around drinking sweet, lemony digestives. They were proud, scurvy-bearing warriors who drank things that tasted like battery acid soaked in fish brine. “Besides,” I asked, “where would you ever find grain alcohol?”

C was far more concerned about finding the lemons. Traditional recipes call for Santa Teresa Femminello  lemons which are found on the Amalfi Coast. But we knew that Concetta brought her lemons back from Sicily after the annual family visit, so clearly allowances were made for regional loyalties. In any case, our home in Central Italy was a long way from the southern citrus centers. The sometimes cold and wet winters in Le Marche are meant for making tartufi, not limoni.

I’m not sure if it was my objections or just a lack of supplies that managed to dampen C’s enthusiasm for the undertaking. But after a few summers passed, I thought I’d squashed the idea altogether. Until one morning two years ago, when we passed a new shop that opened on the main road near our home. In an empty storefront, a farm stand had popped up overnight with a banner proudly proclaiming: Agrumi Siciliani. Inside there were wooden bins piled high with Sicilian clementines, blood oranges, pink grapefruit, and of course, Southern sun-kissed lemons and limes.

To the extent that God ever directs people to go make booze  in their basement, we had clearly received a message. Even I was somewhat persuaded. I reminded myself that the Benedictine monk Dom Pierre Pérignon came up with champagne right there in the abbey, and that worked out pretty well.

Once we’d packed several bags of lemons into the trunk, we headed further down the road in search of a little white lightening. That required less divine intervention. In Italy, all it takes is  a simple trip to the supermarket and soon you’re loading jugs of Alcool, an ethanol concoction not unlike Everclear, into the trunk. No one seemed to notice or care that we were building a  backwoods car bomb in the supermarket parking lot. Properly armed with lemons and liquor, we headed back to our hideaway in the hills.

Turns out there’s not much more to making limoncello than that. C knew better than to have asked Concetta for the recipe (“Darling, I could give I to you—but then I’d have to kill you”), so like anyone cooking up intoxicants, she googled it. The process comes down to carefully shaving off the peel of the lemon while avoiding the bitter white albedo underneath, and adding that lemon zest into a jarful of Alcool.  Then you take the jars and hide them (of course you do) in a dark cool room, where they gestate for thirty days.

That was the moment my mind started playing tricks on me. As I lay in bed that night, I couldn’t stop thinking about the science project taking place in the storage room just below us. This wasn’t a big oak barrel of vino cotto like every Marchigiano farmer has in the cantina, where the musty grapes sleep quietly for decades in the dark. This was a chemical reaction being conducted in a Mason jar.

All it would take is an electrical storm, a spark from a stray wire, or a field mouse furtively smoking a cigarette to trigger an explosion of pyrotechnic proportions. It would be a perfect Neapolitan ending to the most Neapolitan of illicit activities.

The next morning, I couldn’t take it anymore. I went down and moved all of the jars into the tiny outbuilding behind the main house. I lined them up in a row on a rough wooden shelf and vowed to come back and check on them in a month.

Where the magic happens...

I didn’t really give our secret stash much more thought until it was time to return. As we were driving up to the house, C mentioned that by now the lemon zest should have turned the Alcool a vivid yellow color. At that moment, I struck me that Peppe, the farmer next door, would likely have stopped by the outbuilding in which both of us store firewood, tools, and other rustic artifacts. He was probably wondering why we’d turned the place into an urology lab.

I didn’t love the idea of explaining to Peppe that we were making limoncello. Having been the lucky recipient of a lifetime supply of Peppe’s coveted vino cotto, I know he’s not above mixing up his own liquor. But the drink of choice for people at café tables in Capri would not be something of interest to him. We may as well have been making sake.

Happily, we arrived to find the jars nearly glowing in the dark. We hustled them into the kitchen and C set about the final steps—straining the liquid through a cheesecloth, adding sugar and popping the bottles in the freezer.

Stage One of the science project

Two nights later, we were once again gathered with friends at a long table on a terrazzo after a big meal, this time at our own house.  As C poured out the fruits of her labor into a tray full of shot glasses, she couldn’t help adding “You know…I make it myself”.

“Yep. And the house is still standing,” I added.

But when I tasted it, I had to admit that her renegade act of cultural appropriation had come off quite well. Not too sweet. No chemical after-taste. I could almost hear Dino singing “Come Back to Sorrento” as I sipped.

As bravos resounded around the table, C quickly took advantage of the international nature of the guests (Italians, Americans, a few Brits, maybe even a Spaniard somewhere in there) to dub it her “world-famous” limoncello. Since then, she’s never referred to it as anything else. Outlaw that she is, she immediately turned to strategizing how we could smuggle some back to New York.

Crushingly, last year’s follow-up vintage was not up to par, which kind of summed up 2023. No olives, no tartufi, no limoncello. By July, we were buying bottles in the Duty Free shop at Fiumicino.

So the tension is running high for our upcoming visit to Italy.  Apparently, the whole world is waiting on that moment next week when we grab the jars of yellow gold off the shelf and see what we’ve got to work with this season. Check this space for results.

Salute! Let the summer begin…