The Tippling Point | The bewitching origin story of walnut liqueur

Green walnuts and spices like cloves and cinnamon are steeped in alcohol for 40 days to make this liqueur.

24 June.

It is the night of San Giovanni or John the Baptist in Italy. Virgins clad in white attires stand around the bonfire the farmer had painfully built for the evening. He knew the witches would be peering from the dark gleefully, looking for an opportunity to steal the walnuts he has harvested in the season. There is only one ritual that could keep those spirits at bay - the dance of the bare-footed virgins around the fire and their picking of the soft, dew-laden green walnuts from the trees using their bare hands.

You can't find a more appropriate time than the traditional annual festival, to pick walnuts that are still flexible for making walnut liqueur. A tradition that goes back to those pagan days in a far-off land - England - when Picts came to the island for the first time.

The men painted in blue (hence the name, Picts) brought with them so many interesting rituals along with a few drinking habits, one being a strange ritual of making crude brews from walnuts. Druids used this concoction to cure diseases in those days.

Later, the visiting Romans grew curious at the strange habits of Picts and on June 24, they drank the special brew to see whether they could also talk to goblins, elves and goddesses like the Picts. They might have, for the tradition stuck.

Still later when Christianity became the official religion of the Empire, it could not tolerate its people's belief in the divinity of myriad things in nature. The new religion began to stamp out pagan rituals one after the other, but the Picts' love for walnut liqueur and the rituals associated with its production were hard to score off. We do not know how this custom travelled from England to Italy and France. Perhaps the pre-Christian veneration for the walnut tree among the Picts resonated everywhere.

So once the virgins gather the walnuts (always odd in number) after dancing around the bonfire, the farmer leaves the nuts out overnight to let them impregnate with the special dew of that holy night which they believe is a panacea for all diseases.

(Image via Wikimedia Commons 3.0)

The following morning the farmer steeps the dewy nuts in alcohol along with spices like cloves and cinnamon. The drink would sit undisturbed for the next 40 days.

On the eve of All Saint's day (another pagan holiday), the bottle is opened. It's time to sip Nocino, walnut liqueur. Time to talk with the old witches.

Today in France, the walnut liqueur is called brou de noix, and in New Zealand, what you get is NutZino Walnut Liqueur. The one made in Romania - Nucata - is used as a digestive.

Italy's Nocino is a sticky dark liqueur coming from the northern part of the country. It is made from unripe green walnuts steeped in spirit. The aromatic potion leaves a bittersweet flavour in your mouth. Try village-made versions, if you can. Commercially made nocino has 40% alcohol by volume. So go easy on it.