There are two hundred and forty lemon trees above the house and they fruit, in a serious way, for about nine weeks. Everything else you will taste that has lemon in it — and at Marena that is most things — comes from work done during those nine weeks and stored.
Salt first
The bulk of the crop goes into salt within two days of picking. Whole fruit, coarse salt, glass jars, cellar. They are usable after six weeks and better after six months, and they are the backbone of the kitchen from January onward. We put up about four hundred kilos a year and run out in September, every year, without fail.
Then leaves
The leaves are the part visitors are surprised by. They are picked continuously — the trees do not stop making them — and they carry a flavour that is more floral and much less sharp than the fruit. The ice cream at Marena is made with leaves and no juice at all, and about one guest a week asks the kitchen to confirm that.
What we do not do
We do not buy lemons in. It would be easy, it would be cheap, and nobody would notice for about a fortnight. But the arrangement with the Rasetti family, who farmed these terraces before we existed, is that we take what the terraces give and work around it. If the crop is poor, the menu changes. In 2024 it was poor, and it did.
