Taste of London is a lot of things. It's chefs, it's noise, it's a marching band weaving between the food stalls on a thirty-five degree June afternoon. This year, it was also us — tucked into Stand P25, surrounded by sunflowers and Menton lemons, pouring ice-cold Romancello to around 1,500 people over the course of the weekend.
Regent's Park does something to a crowd. The trees, the light, the general agreement that summer has finally arrived — people arrive ready to be persuaded. They stop more easily. They ask more questions. They take their time over a tasting in a way that doesn't happen inside a shop or on a screen.
We've been looking for that kind of encounter since we launched. A moment where someone who's never heard of Romancello picks up a glass, tries it, and understands immediately what it is — without us having to explain it.
What we brought, and why
The setup was simple by design. A blue and white striped tablecloth, bottles of Apéritif Au Citron lined up and ready, a wooden tasting board, a bowl of Menton lemons, sunflowers. We didn't want a loud stand. We wanted something that looked like it had been transported from a market in the south of France and set down very deliberately in north London.
At thirty-five degrees, cold mattered. We brought a large ice bowl, kept it full throughout the weekend, and poured Romancello the way you're supposed to have it — properly ice cold. On the hottest days, we were also handing ice to people who just needed it. It felt right.
"Is it limoncello?" Almost everyone who stopped asked us that first.
Our answer, every time: no. It's completely different. Much drier. Unique. Taste it.
And they did. And almost universally, they got it immediately. People expected sweet — the way limoncello is sweet, cloying, the kind of thing you have once and regret. What they got instead was something cleaner, brighter, with the kind of citrus that comes from a specific place and tastes like it knows that. The reaction, glass after glass, was the same: oh. That's not what I expected at all.
We loved every one of those moments. Except, perhaps, for the one man who tasted it, nodded thoughtfully, and said he still prefers whisky. Fair enough.
Ice cold, every pour. The tasting board holds six glasses — we lost count of how many we filled across 1,500 visitors.
The lemons are the point
A question we got asked, more than any other: what makes it different from limoncello? The honest answer takes thirty seconds to give but a lifetime to appreciate. It starts with the lemons.
Romancello is made with IGP Menton lemons — Citron de Menton, to give them their full name. They grow on the terraced hillsides above Menton, right at the point where the Alps meet the Mediterranean. The combination of that microclimate — warm days, cool nights, sea air — produces a lemon with more fragrance and less bitterness than anything you'll find in a supermarket.
When you use a lemon like that, you don't need to compensate with sugar. You don't need to push the ABV down to make it drinkable. You can let the fruit do the work. Which is exactly what Romancello does — and exactly what people were tasting at Stand P25 when they stopped and looked surprised.
Left: pouring a tasting at P25. Right: three bottles and Menton lemons — the whole story in one frame. Photography: @roscoreckless
Stand P25 in motion.
On being at a food festival
Taste of London attracts people who care about what they're eating and drinking. They're not picking up something to tick a box — they're there to find something they didn't know they wanted yet. That makes it a very specific kind of opportunity. You're not fighting for attention in the way you might at a supermarket shelf or in an Instagram feed. You have a few seconds, a glass, and a conversation.
We're a small operation. We don't have a marketing budget that allows us to be everywhere. What we do have is a product that holds its own in a tasting — something that reveals itself clearly and quickly. A food festival, it turns out, is the ideal format for exactly that kind of reveal.
We're building the list of where Romancello will be this summer. In the meantime, you can order on Amazon UK — or find us in a growing number of bars and restaurants. See the full stockist list on our website.
The marching band passed our stand twice. The second time, someone grabbed a tasting glass, raised it in their direction, and drank. That felt about right.
1,500 people came to Stand P25 that weekend. Almost all of them arrived asking if it was limoncello. Almost all of them left knowing it wasn't — and understanding exactly why that mattered.
Thanks to everyone who stopped. We'll be back.
Stand P25, Regent's Park. Photography: @roscoreckless