20 Feb The Source of Our Citrus

A market in fair Verona, where we lay our scene

I woke up at 4 AM with sleep in my eyes and a dark ball of anger curled up in my chest. On second thought, that was just the beginnings of a nasty cold—I was about to be sick, and I could feel it. Still in bed, blinking in the harsh glare of the overhead light, I ran my hands through my hair and turned to our host to say, quite literally, “Florian, why are you doing this to me?”

There are some things about a person that just cannot be helped. Paula Deen cannot help but add a pound of butter to everything she makes. Nicholas Cage cannot help wearing pinky rings the size of a newborn’s fist. And me, I am someone who needs sleep. It’s not that I like it (which I do), it’s that my body requires it of me. It cannot be helped. At the moment that Florian flipped the switch, flooding our little Italian hotel room with light, I’d probably had a combined 20 hours of sleep over the previous five days, and was definitely still struggling to shrug off the lingering jetlag. To paraphrase, I was really, desperately tired.

But our plan for the morning demanded that we rise, so that’s what I did. Even though it was just after 4 AM and the sun still wouldn’t be up to greet us for a couple of hours, we were already late. I could see my breath puffing out in front of me when we spilled out of the hotel. The market that we were going to was in Verona, more than an hour’s drive from Bassano del Grappa, and it opened at 3 AM each morning. We weren’t going to get there until nearly 6, which was well after the rush and kind of made you question why you’d even bothered to show up at all.

Our journey in the car was dark and quiet, with me helping to direct Florian, who was behind the wheel. As we pulled off yet another roundabout—Europe is lousy with them! And that’s not a criticism; they’re great—in the midst of an industrial park in Verona, we could see a hulking mass of building situated past a row of security checkpoints. We drove up to one booth and spoke to a man who checked our names off a list and collected our fee.

After passing through the checkpoint, we could see more clearly the building that housed the market. It must have been a mile long and was bustling with vendors and Italian forklift drivers swinging their steeds around tight corners at a breakneck pace. 

When I say market, I fear you might be picturing your local neighborhood grocery or even a particularly well-attended farmer’s market—this was not that. This place was a supplier of fruit and vegetables to all of Northern Italy by the looks of it, and other areas in Europe as well, as evidenced by our presence there. The produce was displayed and purchased by the pallet and could originate from Italy, Spain, or even Central America. And the space itself was huge. The building that had looked a mile long from the outside seemed to stretch on for many miles once you got indoors. A child could get lost in there. I almost did.

But there wasn’t any time for that because we were on a mission. We had to get all the citrus for the distillery, not only for our own gin but for Florian’s gin, as well as some of his other products. Our goal was to head back to Austria with at least 800 kilograms of lemons, oranges, mandarins, and limes, and there was the added challenge of seeking out the best quality and then negotiating a lower price despite the fact that not one of us spoke Italian. In today’s modern age, that doesn’t matter so much—Florian had his phone ready in case Google Translate was called for.

We did a lap and checked out a couple of stands, which were really whole sections of the giant hangar that this market was housed in. There were a lot of fruits and vegetables to see, but we dialed into our quest for citrus fruits, finding and sniffing lemons with an increasing level of focus.

Again, these were not your garden-variety lemons; the ones we were looking for were big, lumpy eggs with thick piths and an intense aroma. Florian liked to rub two fruits together to get a sense of their smell. I was distracted by both the overwhelming selection and my aforementioned exhaustion and didn’t sniff nearly as many fruits as I should have.Eventually, we found a vendor who had some really fine-looking lemons that hadn’t been sprayed or treated with pesticides, which was important as the exterior skins needed to be edible, and Florian proceeded with his typical assessment. It involved whipping out a peeler and taking off a bit of the lemon skin to test and also cutting the lemon in half to see and smell the inside. These lemons were the seconds ones we’d cut into and the difference in the intensity and quality of the aroma was staggering. In broken Italian (though a damned good effort), Florian asked about the price. Florian asked about the price. He was quoted a high number, much higher than last year, so we continued on to get an idea of what else a lemon goes for around these parts.

Quickly, we realized that the center lane of the hanger is not for human traffic; it’s reserved for fast-paced forklift drivers only (I still risked getting run over to snap a pic of the space). Instead, we were directed toward a yellow walkway that wove in between palletized cauliflowers, kiwis, cabbage, and more. Florian has a fast gait, and it seemed like each time I’d stopped to snap a picture, I’d look around and find them 20 yards ahead of me and I’d have to come clomping after them, yelling after them so I wouldn’t be left behind.

After applying Florian’s patented peel-and-cut testing method to a couple other lemons, we found that our second stop was by far the most superior and returned there. So commenced a bit of light negotiating; could the price of lemons come down 20 cents a kilogram? What if we also bought a couple mandarins, would that sweeten the deal? Indeed; they came to an inevitable agreement, and soon we were settling our bills and finding forklifts of our very own to cart our haul out to the van.

The lemons we decided to buy were Italian, a fact we were well aware of since nearly each one had a small “100% Italian” sticker affixed to it. As Florian paid the lemon suppliers, Colton and I tried to find a couple of loose dollies to use. After getting our hands on a straggler, we were quickly informed that we didn’t have the proper certification to drive our own dolly and the market employees would need to do it for us. I began leading one such employee, who’d scooped our stack of crated lemons with much more finesse and professionality than I could ever muster, out to the van, and on our way, we attempted small talk. I indicated that I could only speak English but got the jist that he was asking where I was from, saying something that I thought translated to the United States. It was then that I noticed one of the “100% Italian” stickers had found its way to my coat, and turning to him, I pointed at my chest and said, “No, don’t you see? I’m 100% Italian.” To my relief, he burst out laughing, and truly I have never felt better or more accomplished than I did in that moment. Turns out cheesy humor is a universal language.

By this point, the cold brewing in my chest paired with my icicle fingers was threatening to ruin a good time. After loading up the van, whose capacity we absolutely were pushing to its limit, I was happy for the warmth of my middle seat and ready to drift into a comfortable, albeit short, sleep. The market was not an experience we would soon forget, but the saga of making citrus distillates was far from over.