Homemade Nocino (Roncadi) Recipe

From a posting in rec.food.drink from Luca Roncadi:

In all Modena province is very popular a liqueur home made named Nocino. Nocino is sweet-bitter, thick and syrupy, with a dark color like a ink. In Modena Land there are a lot of recipes to prepare Nocino, every family has his secret in composition, time and handling.

In Spilamberto a small town near Modena was founded a Association for Nocino, the members are all women and yearly they organize contest where is given a prize at the best Nocino of the year.

To infuse Nocino the tradition want to use a odd number of nuts (normally 29) and cut in quarter.

The bowl must be in a very sunny place and very often is better to control the level of the liquid inside and fill with syrup of sugar and water prepared before.

What you must know:

• The nuts for Nocino must collected the night between June 24th and 25th because in this days the nut-husk is rich of substance, but also because we consider this night magic especially the dew, its is knowing as "St. John dewy":
• Nocino must serve very cold at the and of the meal as a digestive
• In the past, after to had filtered the Nocino, the nuts remained inside the bowl was infused again with white vine to obtain a special vermouth.

Ingredients

• 30 walnuts (collected on the 25th of June of the year)
• 1 1/2 l of pure Alcohol [grain alcohol]
• 750 g sugar
• 10 g cinnamon
• 10 g cloves
• rind of 1 lemon, sliced and scraped
• 400 ml water

Cut the 30 green walnuts with the kernel into 4 parts and put them in a 3 litre jar, add the alcohol and half of the sugar along with the spices and lemon rind. Tightly seal the jar and place the infusion in a sunny place in direct sunlight.

With the water and the other half of the sugar, a water and sugar syrup will be prepared, by melting the sugar in lukewarm water on a low heat.

During the time that the infusion remains in the sun, ensure that the walnuts are covered at all times by syrup prepared previously. After 2 months the infusion of walnuts, alcohol and other ingredients will have a mauvish-black color - at this point add the remaining syrup and remove from the sunlight.

The infusion should be bottled during Autumn equinox; it should be filtered with special paper cones or with layers of gauze in the funnel.

Store the bottle in the cellar and consume after one year.

Serve ice cold; ideal as digestive after a meal.