Sidro di Mela Limoncella is a cider: a drink obtained by fermenting apples, kept at a modest alcoholic strength. Regione Campania records a sweet, fruity character and about eight degrees of alcohol—enough lift for the fruit to stay in the glass rather than vanish behind heat. That combination is why the name is worth a closer look: not a generic orchard fizz, but a cider listed under this title.
The making follows a wine-like sequence. Apples are harvested, crushed and ground, then fermented and filtered before the liquid is bottled. Cider apples sit at the centre of that craft, so the fruit is treated as a fermentable crop rather than a table snack—pressed for juice that can turn, clarify, and rest in glass.
Cider itself is described as having been invented and developed in the Middle Ages in some French regions, especially in northern Europe. For this Campanian product, the same source says the drink was later perfected to a traditional recipe of the Sannio and, from that point, spread according to that recipe. The useful distinction is therefore local: a northern European craft lineage meeting a Sannio formula, not a claim that every Italian orchard works the same way.