Palermo and the Citrus Kingdom - by Erik Gauger

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Palermo and the Citrus Kingdom<br>A blue Škoda, a bottle of Cedrata, and a tree from paradise. Part I of The Citrus Kingdom.

Erik Gauger<br>Jul 30, 2026

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This article lives on Notes from the Road.<br>When I last visited Sicily, I noticed the citrus the way you notice weather: everywhere, but not yet meaningful. Returning now with Jane and our friends, and with plans to drive east from Palermo, I realize that there is more to Sicily’s love affair with citrus. Perhaps Sicily itself can be best understood by the citrus fruits it cultivated, transformed, and ultimately helped give to the world.

A few years ago, Jane and I were having breakfast in Central Oregon with Iva and Ivan, which of course meant a jar of Nutella and homemade crepes. If I have a lifelong love of oranges and other citrus, then our two Croatian friends have the same passion for Nutella, the creamy Italian cocoa and hazelnut spread. They are so devoted to it that they distinguish it by where it is made. Canadian Nutella is decent. Mexican Nutella is terrible. Nutella manufactured in Italy is the best.<br>Knowing our Croatian friends, I announced that I wanted to pitch parent company Ferrero on a new Nutella flavor. It would be orange-flavored Nutella, built around that balance you get when chocolate and nut spreads meet citrus. I would call it Nutella Naranja.<br>Iva slowly put down her knife and fork. Suddenly she was no longer relaxed. The sound of the silverware hitting the table let me know I’d crossed a line. You could even say she looked disgusted.<br>“Nutella is Nutella,” she said. “You can’t mix it with something else. I find that idea so ridiculous.”<br>Of course, I had only brought it up because I knew it would provoke exactly that reaction. But somewhere along the way the joke turned into a project. I began experimenting with different orange products, mixing them with our favorite alternative to Nutella, a palm-oil-free hazelnut spread.<br>After months of experimentation, I discovered that a blend of sixty-percent hazelnut spread and forty-percent orange curd produced something genuinely amazing: sweet, rich, and bright. I even started designing Nutella Naranja artwork, making sure to keep Iva and Ivan updated, hoping to elicit that not so sweet and bright expression from Iva each time.<br>Sicily is branded around the world as a place that is pure, ancient, and unchanging. It is as old as the sinister melody of The Godfather; frozen in Greek columns and the distant sails of Syracusan triremes. Iva and Ivan, who grew up in a heavily Italian-influenced part of Croatia, expect the Mediterranean to remain exactly as they imagine it: timeless, familiar, and reassuring. Like Nutella, it shouldn’t change. Then, just days before we land in Palermo, Ferrero announced the first new Nutella flavor in the brand’s history—Peanut Nutella.<br>Sicily is not a story of purity. It’s a story of invention. The citrus fruits that would land on these shores over the next thousand years would not stay what they used to be. Somebody grafted them, or crossed them with something else, or figured out how to keep them watered through an August that should have killed them. Sometimes, one tree would just mutate enough to change it, and somebody noticed. Nearly everything that makes Sicilian citrus famous today exists because someone was willing to mess with it.

A thousand years ago, courtyard gardens like this held wells, fountains, and a carefully tended tree. Watercolor and liner pen.<br>We exit Palermo’s airport and hail a cab van. Our driver, whose real name eludes us but who we later call Vito, is young, thin, bug-eyed, and driving as though the highway owes him money. He immediately begins weaving through traffic, tailgating cars, and throwing his hands in the air.<br>But one car, a blue Škoda Favorit, and one very elderly man driving that Czech hatchback, has thrown Vito into an absolute tizzy of anger. He guns the taxi van engine and rides the tail of the tiny car. The elderly driver isn’t actually driving slowly. Vito seems enraged simply because the old man looks like someone who should.<br>While Vito is swerving left and right, Ivan dismisses the action, “This is just the way it is in Sicily. Everybody does this.” This is Ivan’s first time in Sicily.<br>At the first opening, Vito cuts through an S-curve between lanes and dives in front of the little Škoda, braking hard behind a tanker.<br>I’m sitting shotgun, and I turn around to look at Jane and our fellow travelers.<br>I look in my sideview mirror, and Sicilian Grandpa is now behind us. An absolute Pixar character sketch. A defeated old man!<br>He pulls up alongside us and looks at me as if to ask whose side I’m on. I give him a subtle Hawaiian shaka. Then he threads the Škoda between a Fiat Panda and a Dacia Duster, surging past us, and reclaiming his place ahead of the tanker. From his rolled-down window, he gives us a sustained middle finger. Ivan says again, “This...