Origins of this "air infusion" technique?

Barware, Equipment, & Technology
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I have come across this interesting technique for alcohol flavour infusion in Giuliano Bugialli’s 1985 book The Taste of Italy when he described a mandarin liqueur.

Instead of soaking the citrus in the alcohol, he hangs it above the liquid in a sealed jar not too dissimilar to how Bombay Sapphire do their basket vapour extraction for gins, except this is done at room temperature.

I’m familiar with the logic of why this works and the non-polar characteristics of both alcohol and citrus aromas, but does anyone know if this is a named technique and where it originates?

References for context:

1985 - The Taste of Italy, Giuliano Bugialli - Mandarin Liqueur - Above Alcohol Technique 1of2
1985 - The Taste of Italy, Giuliano Bugialli - Mandarin Liqueur - Above Alcohol Technique 1of2735×1023 73.3 KB

1985 - The Taste of Italy, Giuliano Bugialli - Mandarin Liqueur - Above Alcohol Technique 2of2
1985 - The Taste of Italy, Giuliano Bugialli - Mandarin Liqueur - Above Alcohol Technique 2of2735×1023 84.8 KB

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I’ve seen it used for home limoncello making in Italy, and Sicily in particular, since the late 1970s, so it’s pretty traditional over there.

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I have tried finding a proper name for this and it seems it’s not any of the following - at least not directly - though it seems to be somewhat related to how perfumers capture the air for testing volatiles.

  • Passive Vapour-Phase Extraction
  • Headspace sampling
  • Headspace Maceration (a wine term)
  • Dry Suspended Volatile Capture

“Passive Vapour-Phase Extraction” would be my best guess.

Vaoupr-phase extraction - you’re right about bombay using it - also is how you collect samples of gasses into a solvent - among other ways of testing samples of things, seems 1929 for some of these papaers, many of the uses of this technique i can find are more about sampling of vapour equilibrium than making limoncello

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