It is made with lemons. And with the certainty that it will be appreciated by anyone who will taste it, rigorously taken out of the refrigerator, after lunch or dinner.
It is a liqueur that is obtained by macerating lemon peels, quite simple when the raw material is good. And it can also be produced at home, to be shared with family and friends. But in order to be called "limoncello", using a name that is now famous and highly sought after in the world, the fundamental and essential condition is that only the Sfusato amalfitano IGP and the Oval di Sorrento IGP are used. Two cultivars that identify with well-defined territories. In fact, the first is characteristic of the Amalfi Coast and the second of the Sorrento Coast and the island of Capri. Therefore, limoncello is a lemon liqueur from Campania, linked to the Coasts and the Blue Island, which contend for paternity and originality.
The recent, recognized and official history of limoncello began in Capri at the beginning of the twentieth century. In the kitchen of Maria Antonietta Farace, who made a liqueur with lemons from her citrus grove for the guests of her boarding house. Marie Antoinette's recipe, kept and handed down in the family, was to be taken up a few decades later by her son, owner of a restaurant, which became renowned for its excellent lemon liqueur. A fame also due to the appreciation of the writer Axel Munthe, near whose villa the restaurant was located, and of the other intellectuals and personalities who frequented the island in those years. Subsequently, Massimo Canale, the lady's nephew, started an artisanal production of limoncello and registered the brand in 1988. And it was precisely in the 1980s that liqueur, increasingly widespread, obtained worldwide recognition thanks to a lucky joke by the actor Danny De Vito, who also launched it in the USA.
On the other side of the sea, also in the Sorrento Peninsula, with so many excellent lemons available, a homemade liqueur was obtained, which was used to serve guests as early as the beginning of the last century. Moreover, in reconstructing the history of limoncello legends and tales overlap, which in some cases are lost in myth, as is the "rule" especially in the coastal areas of Campania. Among the various versions, the one that traces limoncello back to the use made of it by farmers and fishermen when the Barbary pirates raged. Clear reference to the historical fact that the cultivation of lemons arrived in Italy with the Arabs and that Campania was among the first areas of diffusion of the precious citrus capable of defeating scurvy. Precisely this property, discovered by Amalfi sailors who traded with the East and with the Arabs, prompted them to plant lemons on the cliffs of the coast, to embark them on their ships, where it became mandatory to always have a supply, and also to supply other crews. as news of the effect of vitamin C against scurvy spread.
Subsequently, the word "limoncello" began to be used in the fourteenth century in Sorrento in reference to a lemon drink. And the first written mention dates back to 1590 in the Vocabulario de las dos lenguas de Toscana y Castellana by Cristobal Las Casas. In the seventeenth century, the consecration of the Accademia della Crusca, which cited it as a synonym of cedar.
Before limoncello became famous and even fashionable, a liqueur with four citrus fruits was widespread in Naples and its surroundings: lemon, orange, mandarin and silt, an ancient Campanian citrus fruit with a very fragrant greenish peel, of which very few specimens remain in private gardens.
