Wineries are typically quieter midyear. The harvest is over, wine is resting in barrels and things slow down. Not so at Zonzo Estate – at least since last year, when founder Rod Micallef was testing the answer to a question he’s often been asked: why don’t you try your homemade limoncello on a commercial scale?
“We peeled 32,000 lemons, literally with two of us,” says Micallef. “One day Caroline [Mooney, winemaker] walked in and there’s this misty haze over the whole winery, and it was from the lemon zest. She said, ‘I’m not very comfortable with this, I don’t know what this is going to do to the barrels.’ So I went to Bunnings and bought a tent, and it looked like something out of Breaking Bad.”
Micallef learned to make his limoncello (which he’s dubbed “Zoncello”) while running his first restaurant, Abbotsford’s E-Lounge, in the late ’90s. The traditional recipe takes four months to make, something that’s kept it on the backburner until now.
First, a neutral spirit – which forms the base of the limoncello – is distilled from spent winemaking grapes. Lemon peel is steeped in this spirit, and the rindless fruits are sent off to Healesville soda company Yumbo to become lemonade. Finally, filtered rainwater and sugar cane dilute and sweeten the liqueur. If you’re drinking it at home (it’s traditionally a digestivo, so post-dinner), Micallef recommends keeping a bottle and a few shot glasses in the freezer, always at the ready.
That’s the traditional side. Zonzo, though, isn’t all that fussed about convention. Alongside its pinot noirs and chardonnays, the Italian-influenced winery has also produced premixed Bellinis, panettone-flavoured gin and now, to play off Zoncello, a premixed limoncello and prosecco spritz.
“Along the way I thought, ‘I think we need a bit more fun with this,’” Micallef says. “I think it’s got the perfect mix of sweetness and acidity, that lemon zest tanginess that you’d expect.”
Micallef might have lemon oils floating around in his blood by now, but it hasn’t dampened his enthusiasm. He’s thinking big picture – Zoncello-branded hot air balloons (coming soon to a sky near you), an already-planted lemon orchard and, shortly, a Zoncello bar complete with boozy gelati and icy poles. It all means Zonzo is edging further away from the traditional wine market, but Micallef doesn’t care.
“We call ourselves more of a beverage company now,” he says. “We did the panettone gin for Christmas. That was so popular and unexpected. We’re doing stuff that captures people’s interest in the Italian theme.”
Zoncello Limoncello Spritz is $25 per 750-millilitre bottle, and 9 per cent ABV. Zoncello limoncello comes in 200 millilitre ($23) and 500 millilitre ($50) bottles, both 34 per cent ABV.
