At Sorrento’s most majestic grande dame, the Grand Hotel Excelsior Vittoria — presided over by the Fiorentino family since 1834 — I savoured the iconic Sorrentino Cocktail.
Crafted by the illustrious Colin Field, hailed by Forbes as the “best bartender on Earth”, this original limoncello spritz was born 12 years ago in La Pergola, the hotel’s intimate bar and wisteria-fringed terrace. Field’s creation, framed in a broad wine glass, encapsulates the essence of the Tyrrhenian Sea in each sip, drawing from the hotel’s own limoncello, pressed from lemons handpicked in their sea-salted grove, a fragrant enclave where Roman ruins lie like jewels in a lemon-scented Pompeii. Six gardeners tend to these trees, and beside the pool, a villa remnant, and an ancient well in the cellar, lend the hotel a museum-like splendour, as Peter Fiorentino, sixth-generation guardian of this palace, explained to me over a glass.
