Maraschino Liqueur
A clear, herbal Italian liqueur distilled from Marasca cherries. Bone-dry, slightly bitter, deeply aromatic. Bears no resemblance to the bright-red Maraschino cherries sold in supermarkets. Luxardo is the canonical brand.
Maraschino liqueur is one of the great cocktail ingredients and one of the most commonly misunderstood. The name suggests a sweet cherry-flavored syrup; the product is actually a clear, herbal, bone-dry liqueur distilled from Marasca cherries (a small, tart variety native to Croatia and Italy). It carries a deep, complex aromatic—part cherry pit, part almond, part wild herbs—and a finish that’s more bitter than sweet.
It bears no relationship to the bright-red, sugar-cured maraschino cherries sold in American supermarkets, which are a separate product entirely (those are actually candied cherries dyed red; the maraschino name was appropriated from the original Croatian liqueur).
Luxardo Maraschino is the canonical brand. It’s the original product, made by the Luxardo family of Padua, Italy, with continuous production since 1821 (the family fled Zara during World War II and rebuilt the distillery in Italy). Most serious cocktail recipes that specify maraschino liqueur mean Luxardo.
Cocktails that use it
- Hemingway Daiquiri—the no-sugar Daiquiri variant. Maraschino does the sweetening work.
- Mary Pickford—Eddie Woelke’s 1922 Prohibition-era Havana classic.
- Singapore Sling—a quarter-ounce in the canonical Raffles recipe.
- The Aviation, the Last Word, the Brooklyn, and a long list of pre-Prohibition classics outside the exotic-cocktail canon.
The bottle is shaped like a hand-grenade and wrapped in straw; it’s instantly recognizable on any well-stocked bar back-bar. A bottle keeps essentially forever; the alcohol content (~32% ABV) preserves it indefinitely once opened.