Summer in a Bottle

Fruit liqueurs are the essence of summer, poured out of a bottle. Spring’s strawberries, apricots, and cherries are long gone, but we consoled ourselves with hot-weather fruit: watermelons, peaches, and nectarines. Now the sidewalk displays outside greengrocer’s boast of mangoes, figs, new apples, the first tangerines.  Already a few pineapples and pomegranates appear, Shechechiyanu fruit for Rosh HaShanah. Early September mornings are suffused with a softer light, and evenings fall sooner than just a week ago. In spite of the mid-day heat, summer’s drawing to a close. I always feel a little sad at the fading of a season, because of course it will never come back. Maybe that’s why I make a few liqueurs every year – to capture the sweetness of the past summer, to keep time in a bottle.

Left to right: apricot, limoncello, strawberry - Rumpot behind. Origami crane by Daughter.

Rumpot is fun to make. Every so often, you macerate a new fruit in half its weight of sugar, then add it to the pot containing rum and the previous layers of fruit. By the end of summer, the rum is infused with tutti-frutti.

A standard recipe for any fruit liqueur is 1/3 fruit, 1/3 sugar, and 1/3 vodka. Choose a medium-quality vodka. The good brands have too strong a character: you want the fruit to dominate. The simplest way is to combine all the ingredients in a jar with a tight-fitting lid and allow it to infuse for 3 months. Strain, then strain again after 2 weeks. You can see that my apricot was strained only once – but I just shake the bottle up to distribute the pulp, which is delicious, itself.

It’s not too late to make a liqueur or two. Lemons are bright yellow and juicy now, so a sharp Limoncello is a good choice. The surprise about Limoncello is that it’s made exclusively with the lemon rind, and if you have a few fresh green leaves, even better. Freeze the juice for lemonade or a snowy Daiquiri. Limoncello keeps forever, just getting mellower and mellower. I only make mine once every two years, and give most of it away on Purim. Friends love it.

Mellow Limoncello

Yield: approx. 3 liters

12 lemons

6 fresh, washed lemon leaves, if you can get them

750 ml. water

1.5 liters medium-quality vodka

750 grams sugar

Peel the lemons, avoiding the white pith.

Put the peels and leaves in your jar: pour the vodka over them.

Cover and allow to steep 2 weeks.

Make a syrup of the water and the sugar by simmering them together for 5 minutes.

Cool the syrup and add it to the jar.

Leave it alone for another 2 weeks.

Strain into a clean jar. A piece of cheesecloth works well, and so does a never-used, rinsed nylon stocking.

Decant your liqueur into bottles. Cap tightly.

Drink limoncello well chilled.