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Eat, drink and be merry, right? Maybe. Go a little heavy on the eat and drink, and the merry gets ghosted. A remedy for overdrinking has yet to be found, so moderation still reigns. Fortunately, just about every culture has created a liqueur to aid with digesting a meal (a digestif), and we need but turn to the food-centric cultures of France and Italy to find the popular and beloved.
In the 1600s, as the story goes, one of King Henry IV’s marshals entrusted Carthusian monks with a manuscript containing a recipe to make the Elixir of Long Life. It took a century for the monks to develop the alchemic recipe into a formula using 130 different plants (barks, roots, flowers and spices) that they called Elixir Vegetal de la Grande-Chartreuse. They packed the elixir in wooden cases on the back of donkeys and sold the medicine in the surrounding villages to support their monastery located just outside of Paris. Still unchanged and in production today, 130-proof Elixir Vegetal is described as “a cordial, a liqueur and a very effective tonic.”
Chartreuse liqueur, a milder 110-proof spin-off of the original tonic, came on board in 1840. The U.S. is Chartreuse’s top market, and it has shown up in the chicest spots from Daniel Bouloud’s dinner table to a ZZ Top song (Chartreuse/La Futura) to Quentin Tarantino’s movie Death Proof.
“They’re very tied to their tradition,” said Tim Master, senior director of spirits for Frederick Wildman and Sons, said about the way the monks craft Chartreuse. “It starts with picking herbs by moonlight until dawn and macerating them in the morning dew.”
The herbs? Only two monks, Dom Beinot and Brother Jean-Jacques, know the super-secret recipe. Lemon balm, angelica, juniper, rosemary, saffron and fennel are oft guessed. Each has a strong association with relaxing and toning the digestive apparatus, and once that’s humming life can be good.
But the monks use Chartreuse as the tonic its precursor was created to be. Master observed its use for digestive afflictions, bee stings and more.
“During a visit to the monastery I got a splinter in my hand when I picked up a picnic bench,” Master recalled. “Dom Beinot reached into his robe, pulled out a spray bottle containing Chartreuse and spritzed my finger. In essence when you have a recipe of 130 different herbs, you’ve got gold.”
Italy has its own charismatic digestif comprised of unknown ingredients. Fernet Branca, made with a mystery list of a few dozen botanicals to “settle the stomach,” the website states, has reached cult status in San Francisco and — ready for this? — Argentina. About a third of the liqueur sold in the U.S. is sipped in San Francisco, where it initially sold in Italian pharmacies to aid digestion, and over 75% of global production gets consumed in Argentina.
The family that has produced Fernet Branca for the past 175 years only admits to using mint, ginger, rhubarb and saffron. All of these herbs can settle the stomach, slay microbes and make you feel genuinely good. But the liqueur’s trademark bitterness hints of gentian. The herb belongs to the Gentianeae tribe, a few of which reside in Arizona’s highest country.
Gentian is a traditional herb of choice used to get the digestion in gear. As the bitter herb hits the tongue, the salivary glands, which shake hands with the pancreas, react by making the mouth water. The salivary gush contains enzymes to which the pancreas reacts in kind. As the digestive juices and gastric acids start to flow, the liver springs into action. This begins the flow of bile, which digests fats, and readies the gallbladder to release it.
Italy produces another captivating digestif that isn’t made of secret substances and doesn’t take the illuminati to concoct. Rather, it’s a folksy spirit anyone can make and it’s called nocino. Its main ingredient, green walnuts, is found all over the world, including deciduous canyons in northern Arizona. Right now they’d be ready for the harvest, when the nuts are soft enough to slice.
Italians traditionally break open their homebrewed bottles of nocino in late fall, which has given the liqueur an association with holiday feasts. Rather befitting when you look at the medicinal properties of the green walnut, which center smack-dab in the intestines.
Green walnuts contain hydrojuglone that when oxidized becomes juglone, a weapon of microbial mass destruction. Juglone provides natural protection for the tree from predator insects and microbes. It also waylays several species of plants that might try to encroach under a tree’s canopy by messing with the plants’ respiration and photosynthesis.
For us humans, the unripe walnut is an evidence-based antioxidant and antimicrobial with a strong tradition of soothing spasms. Research has discovered juglone inhibits three key enzymes from Helicobacter pylori, which can cause gastritis, ulcers and cancer. Green walnut hulls also contain phenolic acids, which can have a beneficial effect on glucose regulation, the heart and bone density. The American Cancer Society has concluded one of green walnut’s antioxidants, ellagic acid, “prevents the binding of carcinogens to DNA and strengthens connective tissue.”
If you plan to make nocino, the internet is full of recipes. But wear gloves. When cut, the juglone in the green walnut hulls leaves a brown stain that does not readily wash off with soap and water.
Nocino takes two to six months to make. The longer the mixture rests, the more rounded out the flavor. And maybe take a tip from the monks who make Chartreuse: Pick those walnuts during the night and process them in the morning dew. You might end up with one heavenly digestif.
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