The Lowly Local Black Walnut

It's official: Black Walnut Whiskey is here!

In the Piedmont of North Carolina, the fruit of the black walnut tree is considered waste.  The tree is prolific and enjoys a prodigious drop of nuts.  So much so that we rake them up into piles to burn them.  We bag them and carry them to the curb for the Town to carry away.  At the Plant we pay people to get them out of the yard so that no one in the bridal party will roll their ankle by stepping on a black walnut. We used to take tractor buckets full to our composting system.

Waste of course, if a uniquely human invention.  It’s not found in nature.  Much easier to find in capitalism.  If something has a cost associated with its removal, it’s a waste.  If it can be sold for a tenth of a penny, it becomes a valuable commodity.

Foragers frequently sing the praises of the black dye that surrounds the black walnut’s inner shell.  It’s rich in tannins, has a pungent aroma and will stain your fingers for a long, long time.

I’ve dyed things with black walnut.  Meh.  It’s not spectacular.  Just kind of dark brown.  It’s lots of work, and lots of people do it once.

When I was the tasting room operator at Fair Game Beverage, I was given some black walnut ink by Eva.  She was trying her hand at homesteading at the time, and she used to drop her CSA off at Fair Game on Tuesday nights. Homesteaders always take a swing at black walnut.  I filled up a fountain pen and showed it off to customers.  That was fun, but the ink tended to foul the cartridges, and fade from deep brown to light brown very quickly.  Didn’t really hold up.  Yawn.

Every now and then I would encounter black walnut in a baked good—its turpentine flavor largely buried in the cookie, or cake. I once experienced it in a beautiful sauce.  In general, we don’t eat the lowly local black walnut.

A few years ago, I decided to give black walnut another try.  This time with spiritous alcohol.  Black walnut bitters are commonplace in the craft cocktail scene, but bitters are an exceedingly low volume product.  They get sold by the eyedropper full.

I collected some black walnuts from a tree in the yard and did what I always do:  spread them on the gravel driveway to drive over them again and again.  This removes the outer green casing and exposes an inner shell that is ensconced in black “goo.”

I gathered the nuts wearing neoprene gloves to protect my hands from staining and tossed them into a five-gallon plastic pail.  Soak.  Rinse.  Repeat.  To speed up the process, some folks apply drywall paddles on electric drills.  I used a scrub brush on individual soaked nuts to get down to a clean inner shell that is free of the goo that provides astringent tannin flavor.

Once I had a bucket of “cleaned” nuts, I cracked them in a table vise, and threw the cracked shells, meat, and all into a glass carafe.  Then I buried the mixture with five year old malt whiskey.

Overnight the whiskey turned black, and remarkably smoothened.  We were all stunned.  We decanted the liquids and immersed the crushed nuts again.  This time it took two weeks to turn black and taste like walnut.  We decanted and did it again.  The interval of time got longer and longer, until finally we had extracted all the goodness from the fruit.

We blended the batches together, and Fair Game Wild Foraged Black Walnut Whiskey was born.

Sadly, when we submitted our formula to the Taxation and Trade Bureau (TTB), the division of Alcohol Tobacco and Firearms that controls our labels (and our life), it was rejected.  They were concerned that the product might make someone sick, and they needed a letter from the Food and Drug Administration (FDA) saying the product was safe.

Got it.  The product will make you sick.  It’s whiskey.  Drink it too fast, or drink too much, it will make you sick.  I guarantee it.  And what makes you sick is not the black walnut.

Off I went to the FDA to make the argument that we can eat black walnuts, and we can put them in whiskey, and the consumer will be fine.  They agreed.  I got their letter over to TTB, and eventually—after two years, our “Wild Foraged Black Walnut Whiskey” was approved for legal sale.  We don’t make a lot of it—but it tends to sell out quickly.

We are pleased to release our first legal batch on the One Year Anniversary Gala of the Tree Museum.

Tastings at the Tree Museum Gala, 2025

Once we had proof of concept we started paying for crushed shelled black walnut fruit.  Our first purchase was from Adam at Burgeoning Farm.  Adam had built a foraging network that spanned North Carolina and Virginia.  He had a wonderful black walnut pate that he was retailing out of The Left Bank Butchery in neighboring Saxapahaw.  When the chantarelles we on, Adam and his crew were selling chantarelles to restaurants throughout the region. He was backed up with crushed black walnuts, shell in, when we came along wanting to buy.

Enter Daniel from NC Black Walnuts.  I met him in the yard at the Plant during our second Chestnut Carnival.  I thought, “Who is the guy that brings walnuts to the Chestnut Carnival?”

Despite the success of our black walnut whiskey, I approached his pop-up tent cautiously.  I don’t like black walnuts.  They taste like turpentine.

Daniel was liberating walnut fruit from cracked shells using a wire cutter.  By hand.  He had vacuum packed fruit, and immaculate washed walnuts in shell.  To me, he looked like he might be crazy.  I approached the booth, and explained that I did not like black walnut flavor.  He shrugged.  “Probably the nuts you’ve eaten haven’t cured,” he said.

What?  It turns out the turpentine essence that I find off putting recedes with time.  “They also get better when you toast them,” Daniel said.

I bought a vacuum sealed bag.  I toasted them in butter and salt in a cast iron skillet. I was stunned. Black walnut is the food of the gods.

Black walnut syrup?! Demented like a fox...

A year goes by and Daniel announces that he is tapping black walnut trees to make syrup from the sap.  Again:  what?  The guy is demented.  The piedmont of North Carolina is not Vermont.  We do not tap trees to turn sap into syrup.  That’s a cultural custom from where I come from in Ontario, Canada. 

The first time Daniel’s black walnut syrup touched my lips, I was astonished.  He had three gallons, at $160.00 a gallon and I bought it all. Later her came back to say that the appropriate price would be more like $320.00 a gallon.  I agreed and bought all his next year’s crop.

We now have black walnut syrup.  And crushed cleaned fruit.  And we have black walnut whiskey. 

I think there is a good chance that Fair Game Beverage is embarking on a journey into black walnut soda or seltzer.  I’d be interested in hearing about what Plant members think about that. Maybe for a focus group for starters.

Which makes me wonder.  Our journey into chestnuts led to chestnut flour, chestnut macaroons, chestnut pasta, chestnut fried shrimp and chestnut empanadas.  I wonder if the lowly local black walnut might be following suit…