Our Story
How a garden in
Roquebrune
became a brand.
Romancello started as a joke between friends — and a very good lemon.
A garden, some lemons,
and a flight to London.
My family has a house in Roquebrune-Cap-Martin — a village perched above the coast, a few kilometres west of Menton. Like many properties in the area, it has lemon trees in the garden. Not ordinary lemons. Menton lemons: thick-skinned, intensely fragrant, almost round, and unlike anything you can buy in a supermarket anywhere in the world.
For years, I'd bring bags of them back to London whenever I visited. Back home, I'd make limoncello — the old-fashioned way, steeping the zest, blending it with spirit and sugar, giving bottles away to friends. It became a ritual. A way of sharing something I loved about a place that mattered to me.
Somewhere along the way, my friends started calling it Romancello — a play on my name, Roman. It was a joke at first. Then it became the only name anyone used. And slowly, it started to feel like something more.
"My friends started calling it Romancello — a play on my name. It was a joke at first. Then it became the only name anyone used."Roman Galustian, Founder
The home batches, 2022. Before the label. Before the distillery. Before any of it.
From kitchen table
to back bar.
By 2022, something had shifted. My friends and I loved Romancello — but we wanted to enjoy it the way you enjoy a great drink: in a bar, at a restaurant, somewhere with atmosphere and good company. Not just at home, passed around a kitchen table.
That simple desire set everything in motion. If Romancello was going to work outside my kitchen, it needed to be something more than a home recipe. It needed to be designed for the glass — for how people actually drink today.
A new recipe,
built for the aperitif moment.
Traditional limoncello is a digestif: sweet, heavy, meant for after dinner in small cold glasses. It's wonderful for what it is. But it wasn't what I wanted to make. To do justice to the Menton lemon — and to create something people could actually drink in a bar — we needed a completely new recipe.
The brief was clear: drier, more natural, less sugary, more herbal. Something light enough to sip long, complex enough to mix. We worked to strip back the sweetness and let the lemon speak — its zest, its oils, its extraordinary fragrance — supported by organic botanicals that complement rather than compete.
The result is Romancello as an apéritif: 22% ABV, made entirely with organic ingredients, produced at a fully sustainable distillery. It starts with a lemon the world's best chefs have long known about. Everything else follows from there.
Three values.
One bottle.
Sustainable
Made at a fully sustainable distillery, with organic ingredients sourced from certified growers. The commitment to the planet runs through every step.
Authentic
Every bottle starts with IGP Menton lemons — the only Protected Geographical Indication lemon in France. There is no substitute, and we would never use one.
Mindful
Lower sugar, lower ABV, no artificial additives. Romancello is built for people who want the taste of something exceptional without excess.
"It started with a garden, a suitcase of lemons, and friends who gave it a name. Now it's in the glass. We hope it takes you somewhere warm."
Recipes, stories and the world of Romancello
From the lemon groves of Menton to Regent's Park — stories from the Riviera Edit.