SORRENTO, Italy - Standing on volcanic soil in
a grove of trees above the sea, where honeysuckle and magnolia grow
thick on a craggy coastline, a man with big hands pulled out a pocketknife,
peeled a ripe lemon, and smiled as a spray of juice glistened in the
hot breeze.
The knife clicked shut; the man bent, pushing his fingers into the earth.
He held a clump of dirt, gray-brown and as light as dust. The man said
it was magical, as old as Ulysses. He scattered it across patterns of
shade and sunlight, turned, and went about inspecting his lemons.
"If they want to make lemons like ours, they'll have to steal our
soil," said Mariano Valentino Vinaccia, president of Sorrento's
Solagri lemon cooperative. "Look at this - this is a lemon. The
rest is just yellow fruit. This lemon speaks for itself. It is why our
limoncello is the best in the world."
A sweet liqueur made of lemons, sugar and alcohol, limoncello - once
a homemade elixir sipped chiefly by farmers along the Gulf of Naples
- has become Italy's most popular and competitive drink (not, of course,
including wine). Production has exploded, rising from five million bottles
in 1998 to 12.5 million last year.
Now limoncello is catching on in Europe, Japan and the United States,
and can be found everywhere from New York restaurants to Siberian vodka
shops.
The widening market has little lemSee LEMONS on A16
By Jeffrey Fleishman INQUIRER STAFF WRITER
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