This is a story of a bottle of liqueur. 

It is also an Italian story of love and loss, romance, hope and dashed expectations, creative splendor and artistry denied, and the totally nutty times we live in.  The saga began with me on a sunny day on the Isle of Capri in the Bay of Naples. I was in Italy for a whirlwind six day “guided tour”-style vacation, a desperately needed break from the past few years of serial family emergencies and other deadlines. The early October sun was warm on my bare shoulders, and my brain was fully in vacation mode, half a planet and a thousand miles away from daily details. In the words of the Mary Chapin Carpenter song, I “don’t speak a word of Italian.”

But the bottle of Limoncello’s story starts before that, as a bunch of ripe lemons grown under Mediterranean skies in soil rich with volcanic ash, and laboriously processed and aged with sugar and alcohol to produce a sweet liqueur that, along with gelato, is the essence of Italy distilled to dessert. Tiramisu can't hold a candle to those two, in my view.

During the preceding several days, I had seen no end of souvenir bottles of Limoncello on display in Rome and Pompeii and Sorrento, many of them shaped like a three-dimensional version of the Italian peninsula. Garish and clunky, they sparked no desire in me as I indulged my shopping impulses among fine chocolates and a leather shop on a cobblestoned street in Sorrento.

But at the tail end of a day on Capri that included a visit to the famous “Blue Grotto,” I became enamored of the idea of bringing home a bottle of Limoncello (which in fact originated in Capri) to share with the man in my life who would be waiting for me at the airport.  While I had other souvenirs for him tucked away in my suitcase, the idea of celebrating my return with a palpable taste of Italy was rapidly becoming irresistible. He had lived in Italy for several years a long time ago when he was in the military, and his house is decorated with many reminders of that time.

My eye was caught by a display of “Limoncello di Capri” bottles in a shop near the Marina Piccola. They were tasteful. They were attractive. Even empty, I could see keeping the bottle as a souvenir and using it for a flower vase. And they were even packaged in boxes, providing a little extra padding for the long trip home.

I bought one, imagining the smile on my man's face when I brought it out of my tote bag, and hurried to stay close to the tour guide. The bottle of Limoncello and I then crossed the Bay of Naples by high speed ferry to Naples, where I then transferred to another bus for the three hour return trip to Rome.

On the day I finally departed, I awoke before daybreak.  Took my last shower in an Italian hotel, and snuck out on to the hotel’s rooftop garden with a cup of hot “cioccolato” to watch dawn break over the Roman horizon. It was beautiful. Back in my room, I stuffed the neck of the box with a few pair of underwear to keep the bottle from jiggling, and then carefully wrapped the box in two dresses before tucking it into the bottom of my tote bag. I felt I didn’t dare pack it in my soft-sided suitcase for fear it would break. Then, all packed up and with a smile on my face, I checked out of the hotel and awaited my private car transport to the airport. I knew that by the end of the day and the seventeen hour journey, I would be too tired to open my suitcase, but looked forward to pouring a drink and putting my feet up and toasting to a great many things.

 I checked my suitcase at the airport, then trundled off to the security checkpoint. I expected no holdups, since I’d packed all my little bottles of shampoo and moisturizer in the suitcase rather than my carry-on bags. My brain was still in fully “vacation mode.” The thought that all the anti-terrorism hoops that require us to pack our tiny travel sized tubes of toothpaste and hair conditioner in quart-sized Ziploc bags for individual scrutiny by the federales would somehow apply to my carrying on a bottle of quintessentially Italian booze bought on a whim on a sunny day at a tourist shop never crossed my mind. Just a few years earlier, I had flown home from Germany with two bottles of wine swaddled in bubble wrap and nestled in a backpack which I had carried on to the plane with me without a hitch.

I blithely sailed through the metal detector, gathered my purse and tote bag, and headed toward the rest of the airport.  Behind me, someone said “Madame, just a moment.” I paid the voice no heed the first and second time, but on the third I finally turned around. “Who, me?” A female security guard beckoned me back and asked me to put the bags on the table. She said something about the bottle. I dutifully dug out the Limoncello and unwrapped it. I could not bring a bottle of liquid on the plane, she explained politely. My face fell.  My options were to either arrange to mail the bottle home, or to throw it away, she said. “I don’t know how to send it,” I replied.  Was there no one else I was traveling with that could do this for me? No, I was traveling alone, with no one to hand the task off to.

I shrugged sadly, still in shock. You can’t fight City Hall.  I opened the top of the box and retrieved my underwear—thank goodness I had packed the neck of the bottle with couple of pair with animal prints for visual interest just in case the security checkpoint inspection would be incredibly thorough. It would be one thing to have your bags searched down to the lining by a security detail in Rome, but entirely another to stand accused in this international fashion capitol of having boring panties.

I handed the officer the bottle. “Enjoy,” I said with resignation, as we parted company.

I hope, at least, that she or some other officer actually got to take it home and drink it, since the thought that this exquisite, lovingly  crafted bottle of lemon liqueur would end up in a trash bin at an airport named for Leonardo da Vinci would be just too harsh and ironic to contemplate.

I mentally recalibrated my opening words to the man who would meet me that night, and adjusted them to start with “honey, I bought this great bottle of Limoncello for us in Capri but…” I know it’s the thought that counts, but sharing the drink after the journey would have somehow counted more.

In the meantime, somebody please flag down Dan Brown for me, I think I have the name of his next book here.

How about “The Limoncello Code”?