It’s often hard to recall feeling anything but joy during summer. Of course, everyone encounters unpleasant moments no matter the season, but the highlight reel of summer, when played back, glosses our memories in a patina of sunshine and tranquility, lending them a generosity unavailable at their inception. In hindsight, every recollection of summer might well have taken place beside a shimmering lake or on a sunny rooftop bar, accompanied by its own soundtrack, with sunshine radiating off our skin, ice cold glasses in our hand, our laughter filling the warm air like a luminous liquid poured from a frosty bottle of exotic origin.
Lauren Oscilowski, the owner of Spotted Bear Spirits in downtown Whitefish, had that in mind when she received a request to create something unique for the newly opened boutique hotel Larch House. Tapping into the warmth of her own summer memories while also imagining herself on their rooftop bar, she imagined blending Old World tradition with modern ingenuity.
“It just hit me out of the blue. Huckleberry Limoncello,” Oscilowski said of the bright citrus digestif. “It’s the perfect rooftop pounder.”
The fusion of the two iconic summer flavors and the throwback to an Italian has already proven to be highly popular.
“We didn’t do any marketing. We didn’t have our sales reps pitching it. Not a thing,” Oscilowski said. “We’ve done that before and a year will go by before people know we have something. This product — we can’t keep up. Everyone is backordering it. Somehow they found it.”
Limoncello is a traditional Italian liqueur made from lemon zest. Chilled and often served after dinner, the sweet digestif is described as hazy or “turbid.” A word I admit I had to reach for my dictionary to comprehend: (of a liquid) cloudy thick or opaque with suspended matter.
The suspended matter giving Limoncello its foggy appearance is innumerable tiny bubbles of lemon oil. A spontaneous emulsification known as the louche effect induces the fragrant oil to hover in the liquid, scattering light and creating a cloudy appearance in the brilliant lemony beverage.
Each batch of Spotted Bear limoncello requires 20 cases worth of organic lemon peels and an assemblage of friends and family armed with citrus peelers.
“We gather anyone up for peeling: bartenders, friends of bartenders, partners of our bartenders, relatives of our bartenders,” Oscilowski said, describing what sounds like a carpal tunnel-inducing amount of effort. “We’re just like little old Italian women, peeling, peeling and peeling.”
The lemon peels are collected into muslin bags and steeped in vodka. Once the lemon oil has incorporated into the ethanol, they are removed and discarded. The huckleberry flavor is added using real huckleberries, through a technique simply referred to by the Spotted Bear production team as “painful.” A little bit of sweetness is then added, along with enough water to ensure the final product is a consistent 70 proof.
Most American limoncello producers use “natural flavors” to avoid the exhaustive methods Spotted Bear endures. But for the production team at Spotted Bear, adhering to the traditional process ensures a natural tasting product, while the lemon oil itself affixes each bottle with a marker of authentication, called a collarino.
“It’s a ring of oil that will form around the neck of the bottle with time. We have to do a bit of education around that. ‘It’s natural. It means we’re using real lemons,’” Oscilowski said of the context she provides customers. “The Italians pride themselves on it. ”
The Spotted Bear Huckleberry Limoncello is a vibrant cloud of tiny lemon oil droplets floating in a purple huckleberry blush. Visually, it’s a liquid manifestation of summer memories; a miasma of summer recollections — those moments whose specific details may remain murky in our minds, even as their spirit returns crystal and bright. Tiny droplets of sunshine, languidly dangling in a cloud of memories.
Whether or not you can find it on the shelves, the popular new liqueur will be available all summer in the Spotted Bear tasting room, showcased in the summery Lemon Drop cocktail. Equal parts limoncello, vodka, simple syrup and organic lemon juice, the Spotted Bear Lemon Drop is a tart, jammy, saccharine explosion of flavor. The citrus and syrupy berry notes lightly dance across the palate like a catchy little melody, or a laconically plucked guitar riff. The finish sweeps past like a breezy chorus of “oohs” and “aahs.”
This summer will be imperfect, just like those before it and those yet to come. Each ephemeral scene will be weighed down in its own way with the burdens of the present. But while passing through the brief window of the season, it’s important to remember that, one day, all the memories important enough to remain with us will be engulfed in a vaporous phosphorescence; chilled in a foggy bottle, luminescent, and ready to be shared and savored.
Pub Facts
Limoncello:
Limoncello was invented 100 years ago in Southern Italy, though the exact origin is disputed — either Sorrento, Amalfi, Capri, or maybe Sicily.
Traditionally, limoncello is made from the zest of Sorrento lemons.
Lemon Drop Cocktail:
The Lemon Drop, a distant cousin to the Brandy Crusta, was invented in the 1970s by Norman Jay Hobday, founder and proprietor of Henry’s Africa, one of the original Fern bars in San Francisco.
Traditional Recipe:
2 oz. Vodka
½ oz. Cointreau or Dry Curacao
1 oz. Simple Syrup
1 oz. Lemon Juice
Garnish: Sugared Rim