By Thomas
For some reason I have a few bottles of Limoncello around the house, and last night I pulled one out of the freezer for a drink. The bottle is half a liter and still mostly full, and upon the first sip I remembered why it’s still mostly full. Limoncello – so I hear – is pretty simple: drop some lemon peel and sugar into a bottle of vodka and let it sit. Sounds good right?
Lemon peel is not “lemon” as you and I know it. The lemon taste we expect is the juice: a simple tart flavor with the barest hint of fruit behind it. Sugar balances it out nicely, leading to lemonade, and the filling for lemon meringue pie.
The peel, on the other hand, is an oily, resinous, bitter lemon-ish taste, which is fine in very small quantities but requires balance so as to avoid overtaking a composition. Compared to lemon juice, the peel’s scent has a great deal more complexity and character – which is a good thing, provided you don’t try and drink it.
Seems like a good place to start in discussing Signoricci, because if I told you that Signoricci opens with a big wet lemon note, you might think Country Time lemonade. That would be grossly inaccurate. Signoricci opens much like Limoncello, but better – the oily resinous bitter lemon peel is balanced not by vodka and sugar, but with a touch of lemon/lime juice tartness, basil, random florals, and I don’t see it listed…but I’d swear that hedione figures somewhere in here. It is astonishingly fresh, full, and vibrant.
The lemon hangs around surprisingly long – it doesn’t disappear until at least lunchtime, but before then – oh, about two hours in - other notes have come around: vetiver, jasmine (is that the wet fullness?), maybe a few other flowers around here, and the brown sugar/amber/musk base starts to nose its way around.
This doesn’t last anywhere near a full day (just six hours the last time around), but after lunch the amber, musks and vanilla are starting to assert their dominance, and we end up with a tart mossy vanilla musk. Still quite good, similar in temperament to the beginning and, again, well-balanced from beginning to end.
Yes, yes, I know, lemon opening, floral mid notes, musky drydown…another classical cologne, pardon me while I yawn…but as is often the case, the difference lies in the execution. This opening hit me like a lemon hammer at first sniff, and years later Signoricci continues to exert the same effortless control in brightening my mood. As long as I have this, not even Chanel’s Cologne tempts me.
Year: 1976
Notes: Galbanum, Petit Grain, Bergamot, Lemon, Carnation, Mandarin Orange, Lily-of-the-Valley, Rose, Labdanum, Tonka Bean, Amber, Civet, Oakmoss, Vetiver, Cedar
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