Back before the American renaissance of amaro and digestifs made the after-dinner drinks de rigueur, Samantha Kincaid and Jon Nodler would finish a meal at their favorite restaurant with a little glass of house-made nocino. Years later, using walnuts they handpicked from a nearby farm, the celebrated chefs made their own big batch of the liqueur, which they poured, complimentary, for guests in the months after opening their own restaurant: Cadence, in Philadelphia.

“We chose nocino because the ingredients are locally available, unlike citrus cello, for example, and because we had a connection to the beverage from back when we were just growing our passion for the restaurant industry,” explains Nodler.