The best of the zest

Dennis Kercher, in pursuit of acerbic knowledge, in an almost Edenic plucking of fruit, in a zealous example of "locavorism," opens his front door and pads down the walkway to his prized vineyard of sorts.

There, by the sidewalk, posed like garden gnomes, are a matching pair of Meyer lemon bushes – thick, hardy, drooping pearls of sunlight, their yield as prolific as any Grandpere Zinfandel. Though their limbs are mostly depleted of late-winter fruit, there still lingers a fragrant regret of citrus luxuriance.

From these two bushes, plus a tree planted near the house – a harvest supplemented by bags of lemons left on his front porch by neighbors happy, no, eager to orphan their own bumper crop – Kercher makes limoncello. His freezer, devoid of peas or sirloin, is instead loaded with ponies of limoncello, stacked like cordwood, a frosty cellar of tangy icicles.

Limoncello is a popular Italian liqueur. It is a welcome digestif after a full meal. It is served in a cordial glass, though it can be drizzled on ice cream. It is the perfect drink for summer. It is ice cold, puckery, refreshing – and packs a jolt.

Limoncello, like good champagne, is expensive, upwards of $35 for a 750-milliliter bottle. But why bother with such an expense? You can easily make limoncello yourself. All it requires is lemons, a bit of elbow grease and a grade-school grasp of bootlegging science.

Despite the drink's simplicity, Kercher is a serious limoncello maker, an aspiring Mondavi, whose lush liqueur expresses its prime Land Park terroir. (Is there one neighborhood in the city that boasts more lemon trees per block?) With an unquenchable curiosity, the rigor to shave a moon-size supply of rind, he's a man on a limoncello mission.

Better yet, he has a recipe to share.

Now, on a late afternoon, Dennis Kercher and his limoncello accomplice, wife Mary, are sitting in their professional-caliber kitchen. Dennis, 55, is a global account manager for Kodak; Mary, 54, is a painter. They have two grown daughters.

The Kerchers' love affair with limoncello began, like all great love stories, in Rome, where Mary lived as a young girl and befriended an unforgettable character named Renzo Belli, then a reporter for Il Messaggero.

"He's very Roman," laughs Dennis, who befriended Belli many years later. "He would lecture us on everything. How to make pasta. How to make the sauce. The right way and the wrong way to do everything."

One evening, after a home-cooked meal, Belli introduced the stuffed couple to limoncello. Rapture! They were baptized anew. And hooked.

That was nine years ago. Since then, the Kerchers, through trial, error, if not ascorbic acid overload, have been engaged in a single-minded effort to make a transcendent limoncello.

"I love the scent," says Dennis, holding up a Meyer lemon as though it were a sunny jewel. "It's almost a perfume. It's so distinct."

Then, while sitting in a chair, he takes a keen, raspy micro-planer and vigorously abrades the lemon's skin.

Soon, a cloud of lemony mist fills the kitchen (yes, rather like a sudden hiss of Lemon Pledge), and a fluffy pile of lemon zest begins to rise on the tabletop.

The zest, not the fruit, rind or pulp, is added to a quantity of Everclear, allowed to steep, then strained, and mixed with a syrup of sugar and water. Then it's bottled. Served cold.

That's the basic formula. But the Kerchers have gone beyond concocting pedestrian limoncello. They also make a crema di limoncello, plus a spectrum of unlikely flavors. Is it possible to make a limoncello with coconut milk and lemongrass?

You would be pleasantly surprised.

To get further perspective on limoncello, we turn now to the pope – not Benedict XVI but Darrell I.

Darrell Corti, of Corti Bros., can, at the drop of a hat, give expert and lengthy disquisition on any drink or comestible. Limoncello, no exception. What is severely distilled here is that limoncello hails from Italy's Amalfi Coast and is made from a large, elliptical-shaped lemon (lo sfusato Amalfitano), which is tart, fragrant, and boasts a thick, oily skin. Corti says it is typically raised trellised.

About the writer:

• Call The Bee's Bob Sylva, (916) 321-1135.