SORRENTO, Italy — On a hill above the Italian city of Sorrento, overlooking the Bay of Naples, is a communal farm. Warmed by the southern Italian sun and protected from chilly northern winds, Le Colline di Sorrento is ribboned with groves of lemon trees.
The lemon has come to define this part of Campania. Wind through the hills above the Tyrrhenian Sea by automobile this time of year, and you can see miles of green netting covering the lemon groves. The netting protects the lemons from wind and sun and is then rolled up as the harvesting season approaches. Every lemon is precious to this region’s economy.
Although we have traveled frequently throughout Europe, this was our first trip to Italy. And we didn’t begin with big cities. We stayed high on a hill above the town of Vietri sul Mare, which has a population of about 7,000 people. As soon as we set foot on the hotel property, we saw lemon trees and knew we had chosen the right place.
Lemons are essential in our kitchen. We’re never without them — always ready for a chicken piccata or a pasta dish with seafood. As for limoncello, the popular Italian liqueur, there’s a bottle, barely touched, in our freezer. But that will change with this trip. It is literally everywhere in this part of Italy — Positano, Sorrento, Amalfi, Vietri, Capri. Some restaurants offer it up as an aperitivo before the meal, some as a meal-ending digestivo.
The bottle in our freezer has remained largely untapped because I thought it was a bit too sweet, but a limoncello spritzer may be the answer. Mixing in some prosecco calms the sweetness.
From what I’ve been able to discover, Italian lemons originally were almost inedible. Orange trees, brought into the country from the Middle East and the Iberian Peninsula, produced a more palatable fruit, and their branches were eventually grafted onto lemon trees. Lisa at the farm we visited demonstrated how the grafting has been done, which results in a sweeter lemon, with just the right amount of acidity.
In this part of Italy today, lemons aren’t solely used for their juice or their zest. They are often eaten just like we would eat an orange. One thing we noticed was that most private villas don’t have large planters of flowers, shrubs or a variety of small trees like we do here in the United States. Instead, you will see planters of lemon and orange trees, or even a small lemon and orange grove if the property is large enough.
During our days on the Amalfi Coast, we found lemon-seasoned pasta, lemon-drenched octopus, and lemon-moistened sponge cake. The lemon was present, in some form, at just about every meal. And on most every street in most every city, there were stands selling lemon sorbet and lemon gelato. For travelers, the trophy photograph is lemon sorbet swirled into a lemon the size of a softball.
Italians savor every part of the lemon, and they’ve turned it into a national symbol of pure joy.
Fred Sauceman is the author of “The Proffitts of Ridgewood: An Appalachian Family’s Life in Barbecue.â€
