You cannot say you have tasted Livorno without first sipping at least once the Ponce, a mixture of tradition and passion that perfectly embodies the determined and warm city spirit. Also a result of imported stimuli and ingredients, like almost all Livorno recipes, the Ponce is a perfect blend of the warmth and alcoholic intensity of sugared rum, the aromatic scents of coffee, and the freshness of lemon.
Served strictly boiling hot in a traditional “gottino” glass, whose tall and heavy bottom prevents you from burning your fingers, the Ponce is not just a drink, but rather an elixir that warms the soul and cures any melancholy. As the people of Livorno say: “Come here, have a Ponce and you’ll see that everything will pass!”
In Livorno, in all the “barri” of the city, the “barristi” (bartenders) from Livorno, with the double “r”, know perfectly how to prepare it. For the people of Livorno, in fact, it is an almost daily ritual, usually consumed after meals, more often in winter as an excuse to warm up.
In short, the Ponce is an experience absolutely worth trying! But be careful not to overdo it. By going from the singular Ponce to the plural Ponci (yes, the name also conjugates in the plural), you could encounter an escalation of side effects directly proportional to the number of glasses emptied: increasing hilarity, hot flashes, loss of clarity and control, etc. In this sense, the refrain of a Livorno nursery rhyme is enlightening: “Onci onci onci, drink less Ponci, see how you stumble and drink them all!”
Also, do not forget the most common warnings: you must sip the Ponce calmly while it is still boiling hot and finish it before it starts to cool down. But above all, never try to do what Buffalo Bill did when he passed through Livorno with his famous circus in 1906, attempting to drink the Ponce all at once, failing miserably and permanently jeopardizing his reputation as a drinker.
Until the beginning of the 20th century, Ponce was prepared by boiling ground coffee in a pot of water, resulting in an infusion that was then filtered with a wool cloth and poured into a coffee pot. A measure of “rumme” was then added to the super coffee that came out of the machine: an amber-colored distillate made with sugar, caramel, and occasionally, rum essence, also called “rum fantasy”: perhaps because it took a lot of imagination to call it rum.
Today, the recipe for Ponce is now crystallized. Its preparation involves the steam boiling of “rum fantasy” together with sugar, to which a very strong and short coffee is subsequently added, and finally a lemon peel called “vela” (sail). The addition of the “vela” has its own particular genesis. Apparently, liquor store owners, to give a touch of freshness to the drink, used to sterilize and moisten the glass cups with a slice of lemon, which was then placed on the edge of the glass evoking the sails of ships. For this reason, Ponce is also known as “Ponce a vela” (sail ponce). Poetic, don’t you think?
In the large family of Livorno alcoholic beverages, the Ponce is undoubtedly the mother recipe, but there are also other variations and inspirations that are still very successful. In the unlikely event that the “natural” Ponce does not satisfy your palate or you are simply very curious, we present to you some “brothers” of the Ponce and even a “sister”, all to be enjoyed:
Like every other typical recipe of Livorno’s gastronomy, Ponce has its origins in the melting pot of cultures and peoples that shaped the identity of this unique city. In this case, it was the English who inspired us. We can say that Ponce is a sort of creative reinterpretation of two alcoholic beverages that arrived in Livorno almost simultaneously:
In reinventing them and bringing Ponce to life, the people of Livorno used what they had available. They kept the sugar, limited the citrus to only lemon, replaced tea with coffee, and changed the quality of Caribbean rum with a poorer version invented specifically for this purpose. A distillate with an amber color made with sugar, caramel, and occasionally rum essence, renamed “rumme” or “fancy rum”, perhaps because it took a lot of imagination to call it rum.
A formula, then perfected in 1929 by the accountant Gastone Biondi of the company Vittori, which is still today the fundamental ingredient of Ponce alla Livornese.
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