Luxardo: My Cherry Amour

My Cherry Amour

All hail the iconic Luxardo Maraschino Cherry, a classic component of the bartenders’ art.

The Ruben-esque, gleaming red, bittersweet fruit has furnished a whole host of cocktails – both classic and kitsch such as the Singapore Sling, the Manhattan and, in some cases, an Old Fashioned.

Steeped in viscous syrup, but containing absolutely no preservatives or thickening agents, the Luxardo Maraschino Cherry are brined in salt, pitted and sweetened using a method that’s been shrouded in secrecy for centuries.

Unlike sweet and saccharine cocktail cherries, Luxardo’s ooze indulgence. Gloriously oleaginous on the tongue, the redolent little red orbs burst with rich cherry followed by a swoon of almondy marzipan – leaving a texture on the tongue that can be cut, rapier-like, by the spirit of choice.

They begin life on heavily safeguarded marasca cherry trees which grow, in huge volumes, amid the grounds of the distillery in northern Italy. However, the Mascara cherry family tree comes from the Croatian city of Zara, the former capital of Dalmatia (now Croatia) where the Luxardo family first began distilling two hundred years ago.

Before the distillery was founded, Maria Canevari, the wife of Girolamo Luxardo, began making a cherry liqueur for friends using the local maroon cherries – and it was her creation that inspired Girolamo to begin distilling in 1821.

It wasn’t until 1905, however, that Luxardo began cultivating and selling The Original Maraschino Cherries, steeped in their own cherry juice, and sales of the glowing red garnish soared amid the global 1920s cocktail craze.

But then World War II came along, destroying both the distillery and the cherry orchards. Having fled to Northern Italy, Giorgio Luxardo collaborated with a Florentine botanist to replant the Marasca tree in Italian soil – using cuttings taken from the trees several years earlier.

Today, there are now more than 20,000 trees providing 1,200 tonnes of cherries annually and these Luxardo cherries remain unchallenged as the bartender’s cherry of choice.