Review: Fabrizia Italian Style Lemonade

By Christopher Null | June 30, 2019 |

New Hampshire-based Fabrizia, which makes just about every type of alcoholic beverage you can that includes Sicilian lemons, is out with yet another lemon-heavy product: Italian Style Lemonade, a ready-to-drink, canned product that’s made with vodka, limoncello, and lemon juice.

I love the idea of making lemonade out of limoncello, but Fabrizia’s rendition falls a bit flat. It’s very light all around: Light on fruit, light on sweetness, light on character. The lemon feels overly bitter, almost green at times, and fairly herbal on the back end. On my first sip (and straight through to my last) I was reminded of good old fashioned Country Time Lemonade, invariably served straight from the can on a Sunday afternoon, usually not quite chilled as much as it should be, complete with a chalky note reminiscent of Country Time’s own powdered lemonade mix — or, sometimes, chewed-up aspirin. The finish, as with Country Time, feels a bit watery and weak.

Fabrizia’s Lemonade isn’t quite as daunting as honest-to-god CTL, but as sense memories go, the callback here is palpable. Children of the ’70s, tell me if one sip of this doesn’t make you wonder when The Wonderful World of Disney is coming on.

Update 9/2019: Concerned that I had received a “bad batch,” Fabrizia sent a second six-pack of Lemonade for re-tasting. My notes were a bit different but mostly the same — namely that the beverage was quite a bit too watered-down to pass as real lemonade. That said, I found this batch to be a bit sweeter and more in balance, lacking the overbearing bitterness of the first sample. Based on this tasting, I’d upgrade my opinion to a full B.

7% abv.

B- / $10 per six-pack / fabriziaspirits.com [BUY IT NOW FROM TOTAL WINE]