Poli Museo della Grappa Srlu

Homemade Nocino

• Plant: Persian Walnut, Common Walnut (Juglans Regia)
• Plant part: fruit
• Plant feauters: astringent, tonic, stomachic expectorant, purifying, eases scrofula

• Description:

  Superstition and magic have always accompanied the walnut since antiquity: an almost invulnerable plant, so that it was supposed it would never be strucked by lightning, a place of satanic meeting and a source of magical powers that could kill any unfortunate person who accidentally fell asleep in the shade of the tree.
  Magic and superstition accompanied also the fruit of the walnut as medicament.

  The Greeks called his fruit "Acorn of Jupiter", which was already known as one of the constituents of the famous antidote of Mithridates.

  It is the fruit itself that stimulated most the imagination of the population, which recognized in the sinuous folds of its kernel a certain resemblance to the cerebral convolutions. From this observation it is understandable that the proponents of this theory of similarities believed that the walnut would be a safe remedy for mental illness.

  Even by doctors from Salemi, the Walnut was regarded as an irreplaceable antidote against poisons.
  In view of recent pharmacological discoveries, these phenomenal effects are all the more questionable, given that the use of walnut is limited to a bitter-stimulating and astringent effect, due to its catechin tannins.
  For these properties the walnut is widely used in the liqueur industry to produce the famous walnut liqueur.

   

• Note:

  Caution is advised for internal application, because the substance could contain, according to recent studies, potentially harmful ingredients.

The recipe

• Ingredients:

  - 15 nuts not still ripe
  - 1 liter of Grappa
  - some cloves
  - some Cinnamon
  - some seeds of star anise
  - 2 tablespoons brown sugar

• Preparation:

  To make a walnut liqueur at home, which has nothing to do with the industrially produced liqueur, is relatively easy: you take 15 nuts not yet mature (suitably broken) and will leave them in a liter of Grappa for three months.
  To improve the possible too intense taste, it is useful to add to the walnuts some cloves, some cinnamon, some seeds of star anise and two tablespoons of cane sugar.
  The three months of aging and the following filtration give the grappa a green color and a bitter-sweet taste.
  Due to these properties the walnut liqueur is particularly suitable as a digestif.