We climb to a terrace clinging to a cliff high above Amalfi, in the Valle dei Mulini, where Italy's brightest lemons are still picked by hand, knee and back. We meet Salvatore Aceto, whose family has worked these near-vertical slopes since 1825, seven generations of a job so steep and punishing that he sometimes struggles to explain how it was ever possible, and how it still is.
The prize at the top of all that climbing is the Sfusato Amalfitano, the coast's yellow gold, prized for its huge fragrant zest and its wealth of essential oils, grown organically with a few closely guarded secrets. Now Salvatore is preparing something new for the harvest. Drones. After a first demonstration just weeks ago, he believes he is ready to deploy them within the year to carry loads up and down terraces too steep for any machinery, a change he calls a revolution not only for growers but for the coast's many abandoned buildings.
From spaghetti al limone and scialatielli to his wife's lemon cake and a properly served limoncello, poured cold like a white wine rather than frozen into a bomb of alcohol, this is the story of a fruit, a family and a vertical world finding a way to keep going.
Climb up here once, taste the zest, and you will understand why they refuse to let go.
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