How to make limoncello

This summer I went to a dinner party in Minnesota thrown by friends of my parents, the Butchers. At the start we had Italian cocktails of Aperol and soda, and at the end came frosty little glasses, straight from the freezer, of homemade limoncello. For the uninitiated, limoncello is a liquor famously originated on the Amalfi coast, home of sunny terraced cliffside cottages, and lemons the size of your head.

Mary Butcher brought out the blue glass limoncello bottle, glistening with condensation, and sporting a masking tape label saying "2005". She explained that it contained no lemon juice, or even lemon rind, but lemon skins only. This is infused with 100 proof vodka, and simple syrup. It's important that the vodka be 100 proof, or else it will slush in the freezer, where it should stored.

Graciously, as we left, Mary handed me a spare copy of her recipe, and ever since I've been excited to try making my own. We eventually scored some organic lemons at a grocery store (I couldn't find these at the Farmers Market, surprisingly), and after about a hour with a couple of dull vegetable peelers, Kristi and I had a jug full of lemon skins soaking in 750 mL of vodka.


We were very careful not to kind any of the white pulp rind in the mix, which would introduce bitterness. If we did get some rind with the skin, we flensed this off with a sharp knife. The jug is supposed to sit for forty days, in the dark, at which point we add another 750 mL of vodka and simple syrup. I'll give an update in a few months!