Food has always been one of the great axes around which social, economic and political development has revolved. Harvests, taxes, famines and trade have drawn and erased borders, provoked wars or sealed alliances. Some innocent lemons are, for example, a key piece in one of the best-known chapters in Italian history that continues to this day: the mafia. This is how Vicent Todolà explains it, a worldwide eminence when it comes to citrus fruits, who recalls how the lemon business in Sicily in the 18th century gave rise to Cosa Nostra.
Now we are on another island, in Mallorca. Todolà displays on a table a collection of citrus fruits brought from his field in Palmera, Valencia. An art connoisseur and director of London’s Tate Modern for seven years, he currently cultivates the largest collection of citrus fruits in the world: more than 400 varieties, including more than 60 lemons. Surely all that exist, he tells us.
Krug, the mythical champagne house, has chosen this place and this product, the lemon, for the presentation of its new vintage. Or, using the language of the house, edition. The 171, more specifically. Lemon, a humble and omnipresent product, stars in the menu that Andreu Genestra has prepared for the occasion, as well as a sophisticated recipe book created by some of the best chefs in the world to celebrate the arrival of this new reference.
We are surrounded by lemon trees, but the ones that Todolà has ​​brought have little to do with those of these trees along the Majorcan coast. There are huge and wrinkled ones, others that are barely acidic and border on sweet, some that the only edible part is the white rind… Between stories about varieties, families and origins in this kind of masterclass on the ground, slips a piece of information: the mafia took his first steps around the lemon business in Sicily.
We take note and, days later, he confirms that we heard correctly: the mafia and lemons have a direct relationship. Following her advice, we read Helena Attlee who, in hers The Country Where the Lemon Tree Blooms, reviews the history of Italy through her citrus. With an obligatory stop in Sicily and at the rise of the Cosa Nostra.
But what was special about these lemons? How could an apparently humble product be so lucrative as to foster the birth of a criminal organization? “The start of the lemon boom came when the British Royal Navy accepted that lemon juice, or agro, as its concentrated bitterness was called, could be used to both prevent and cure scurvy,†Attlee writes.
The disease, linked to the lack of fresh food during the long voyages, turned the lemon into a coveted medicine. And to the island of Sicily in a large lemon and juice production factory. That exclusive contract for the island lasted barely 50 years —recalls the author— but then came exports to the United States, where shipments of lemons from Sicily arrived every month. According to the data she manages, in 1857 more than 19 million kilos of fruit crossed the Atlantic towards this market.
“In 1860 the production of Sicilian citrus provided more money than any other agricultural activity in Europe”, it is stated in this book. A flourishing business that created an extortion network in parallel.
The mafiosi were actually rich landowners who offered protection to the fields of small producers, loans to install an irrigation system, bought the crops in advance, managed the transport to the port, the stevedores who loaded the ships… The same structure that would later work with drug trafficking or other businesses, he took his first steps here.
Stone walls up to three meters high began to be built around the Sicilian gardens full of lemon trees. The result was a labyrinthine landscape of which remnants still remain and which is as visually appealing as it is tricky. The walls —explains Todol× not only protected the trees, but also prevented the extortion that took place in some fields from being seen and allowed mafia snipers to work in a very comfortable way.
Threats, violence or felled lemon trees were the usual language of the Cosa Nostra with those who did not meet their conditions. The first measure was to cut off the water in the field, which, logically, left the lemon harvest in suspense. And that’s how verdelli lemons were born, explains TodolÃ, referring us back to Attlee’s book that includes this story.
“In April 1867 a farmer named Ignazio d’Arpa refused to pay a pizzo in exchange for protecting the irrigation water of a small orchard of lemons of the Femminello variety. At first the consequences of his refusal were simple and predictable. They immediately cut off his water supply and by July it seemed that the trees were going to die of thirst, â€he recounts in the chapter dedicated to the relationship between lemons and the mafia.
In the end, he paid. The water returned and the lemon trees bloomed in August. The water stress caused by the mafia meant that, a year later, those trees produced smaller, greener lemons at the end of summer and which, baptized as verdelli, ended up being a highly valued jewel thanks to the acidity of their juice.
“I did the test and any lemon tree that you torture with thirst responds like this,” explains Todolà about the verdelli lemons and their origin. It’s one of the few happy endings in this long story of lemons and gangsters.
