Fabrizia Limoncello. I was in Italy early this year and definitely couldn’t ignore the abundant popularity of limoncello, typically imbibed post-dinner alongside a selection of grappa and various amaro. It’s one of the cultural “norms” that has (unfortunately) gotten a bit too mainstream…and the limoncello I actually tried in Italy tasted grossly like an artificial lemon drop candy.

Limoncello is a lemon-based liqueur. It’s *not* like a boozy lemonade (lemon juice, sugar, water), but instead is much more sophisticated, traditionally made by extracting the rich oils from decadent South Italy lemon peels in alcohol, then sweetening. Though there are plenty of artificially flavored limoncello out there, luckily there are still artisan producers of this traditional Italian spirit, including Fabrizia Spirits. Their liqueur tastes fresh and natural, rife with the magic of citrus oil.

Limoncello takes on an opaque cloudy color due to the content of the oil in the lemon peel (not because of impurities from the infusion). The reason it’s cloudy is the same reason absinthe turns cloudy when you add water. The oil molecules from the peel are dissolved in high proof alcohol (visually translucent), and the addition of sugar lowers the ethanol % and brings the oils out of solution to “mix”/emulsify with water molecules.