Limoncello

I first tasted limoncello the way most people do: chilled, in a small frosted glass, at the end of a long Italian dinner I did not want to end. I remember being surprised — not by the sweetness, which I expected, but by how much the glass smelled like an actual lemon grove. That gap between the drink and the fruit it comes from is, in a sense, the whole subject of this book.Limoncello has become one of Italy's most recognisable exports, sold in gift shops from Positano to airports on the other side of the world. Yet behind the bright yellow bottles and the postcard image of the Amalfi Coast lies a much older, quieter story: of families guarding recipes across generations, of a specific lemon that will not grow properly anywhere else, and of a household ritual — steeping peels in alcohol, waiting, straining, waiting again — that has almost nothing in common with industrial liqueur production.This volume was assembled to give that story its due. It moves from the disputed origins of limoncello, through the groves and growers who make it possible, into the kitchens where it is still made by hand, and finally into a set of recipes — traditional and modern — that readers can attempt themselves. Along the way I have tried to include the voices of the coast itself: producers, grandmothers, bartenders, and the lemon growers who talk about their trees the way other people talk about their children.My thanks go to the many families of the Sorrentine and Amalfi coasts who shared their methods, their disagreements, and their limoncello with me over the years this book took shape. Any errors of fact or emphasis are mine alone.Guido Valli