Maraschino Liqueur
A clear, almond-edged cherry liqueur distilled from marasca cherries and their crushed pits, originally made in Zadar on the Dalmatian coast. The Luxardo family lost their distillery and most of their family in World War II and rebuilt in Italy in 1947. Three generations of cocktail bartenders later, it is the secret weapon in the Aviation, the Last Word, and the Hemingway Daiquiri.
What it is
Maraschino liqueur is a distilled, not infused, cherry liqueur. The base is the marasca cherry, a small, sour, dark cherry native to the Dalmatian coast of what is now Croatia. The traditional process: crush the cherries together with their pits, ferment, distill, then macerate the distillate with more cherries and pits before sweetening and aging. The pits are critical. They give the liqueur its almond-pit, slightly bitter, slightly nutty character that distinguishes it from any other cherry product on the bar.
Standard Luxardo Maraschino is 32 percent ABV. The flavor is dry-leaning, with a heavy almond-and-cherry-pit aroma, a touch of cherry sweetness, and a long bitter finish. It is not the bright candy flavor people expect from the word maraschino, which is mostly an artifact of the Americanized cocktail cherry industry that took over the name in the twentieth century.
Where it shows up
Three drinks define the modern Maraschino canon. The Aviation uses gin, lemon, Maraschino, and Crème de Violette. Hugo Ensslin, 1917. The Last Word uses gin, green Chartreuse, Maraschino, and lime in equal parts. Detroit Athletic Club, prohibition era, rediscovered by Murray Stenson at the Zig Zag Café in Seattle in the early 2000s. The Hemingway Daiquiri, also called the Papa Doble, uses light rum, lime, grapefruit, and Maraschino, no sugar, allegedly because Hemingway claimed sugar bothered his diabetes.
Beyond those, Maraschino shows up across the pre-Prohibition canon. The Brooklyn cocktail. The Martinez. The Improved Whiskey Cocktail. The Tuxedo No. 2. Many old-school punches. Anywhere a recipe wants a touch of dry cherry-pit aromatic without a lot of sweetness.
The Last Word in particular is the modern poster child for what cocktail rediscovery looks like. Murray Stenson, working at the Zig Zag Café in Seattle in the early 2000s, found the recipe in Ted Saucier's 1951 Bottoms Up, a book most bartenders had ignored. He started serving it. Ten years later it was on cocktail menus from Manhattan to Melbourne, the unofficial mascot of the equal-parts cocktail movement, and it had pushed Luxardo Maraschino sales up significantly enough that the Luxardo family publicly thanked him.
The historical arc
Maraschino as a category dates back at least to the 1500s, when Dominican monks in Zadar were producing a cherry-distillate medicine called Rosolio Maraschino. The commercial liqueur tradition takes off in the 1700s. In 1821, Girolamo Luxardo founded the Luxardo distillery in Zadar, then part of the Austrian Empire. The bottle and the wicker-wrapped flask shape became internationally recognized in the late 1800s.
By the early 1900s Luxardo Maraschino was a fixture in American bars, and Ensslin and his contemporaries built drinks on it. Other Dalmatian distilleries, notably Drioli and Vlahov, were in the same market.
World War II destroyed the Luxardo distillery in Zadar. The city was bombed in 1943 and 1944, the Luxardo family lost most of its members, and the Yugoslav government nationalized what was left. Giorgio Luxardo, the only adult survivor of the immediate family, escaped to Italy with cuttings from the original marasca cherry trees. He replanted in the Veneto, in Torreglia near Padua, and rebuilt the distillery in 1947. The current Luxardo Maraschino comes from those replanted trees and that 1947 distillery.
The continuity of the brand and the recipe is remarkable. The flavor today is reportedly very close to the pre-war Zadar product, because the process and the cherries are the same. The Luxardo family still owns and runs the distillery six generations in.
The cocktail-cherry confusion
The word maraschino in the United States carries a second, unrelated meaning: the bright-red, sugar-syrup-soaked cherry on top of a sundae. That product, the maraschino cherry as ice-cream-shop garnish, was an American invention that paralleled Prohibition. With the original Italian Maraschino liqueur unavailable for soaking the genuine marasca cherry, US producers in the 1920s started making cherries soaked in brine, sulfur dioxide, sugar, and food-grade Red 40 dye. The result became the cocktail cherry the American public knew, and the Italian liqueur sat almost forgotten alongside it.
The proper Luxardo Maraschino cherry, the one packed in syrup and sold in dark glass jars, is also a different product but related. It is genuine marasca cherries soaked in Maraschino liqueur and syrup. It is one of the great garnishes in cocktail culture and bears no resemblance to the dyed sundae cherry that shares the name.
Modern brands
- Luxardo Maraschino Originale (Italy, 32%). The standard. The bottle is in the wicker-wrapped flask shape it has used for over a century. Buy this.
- Maraska Maraschino (Croatia, 32%). The other claimant to the Zadar tradition, made in Zadar by a different distillery that also dates back to before WWII. Lighter than Luxardo, slightly sweeter, less almond.
- Lazzaroni Maraschino (Italy, 32%). From the family that makes the famous amaretti cookies. Slightly more pastry-toned than Luxardo, with a softer pit note.
Modern substitutions
Honest answer: there is no substitute. Cherry brandy, like Cherry Heering, is a different category entirely, sweeter and red-fruited rather than pit-driven. Kirschwasser is a clear cherry brandy with no sugar and the pit note but none of the sweetness, useful in some applications but not a one-for-one swap.
For the Aviation, Last Word, or Hemingway Daiquiri, just use Luxardo. The bottle is widely available and not expensive.
Where to buy
Luxardo is in almost every US liquor store. About thirty-two dollars for 750ml. Online from Total Wine, Drizly, Caskers, and Astor Wines. Maraska is harder to find in the US but available from K&L and other importers. Lazzaroni is rarer.
At a glance
| Category | Distilled cherry-pit liqueur |
|---|---|
| Origin | Zadar, Dalmatia, by the 1500s |
| Founded (Luxardo) | 1821 |
| Rebuilt | Italy, 1947, after WWII destroyed Zadar |
| ABV | 32 percent |
| Signature drinks | Aviation, Last Word, Hemingway Daiquiri |
Cocktails to try
- Aviation · gin, lemon, Maraschino, Crème de Violette. Ensslin, 1917.
- Last Word · equal parts gin, green Chartreuse, Maraschino, lime. Pre-Prohibition Detroit.
- Hemingway Daiquiri · light rum, lime, grapefruit, Maraschino, no sugar.
The Luxardo bottle on the back bar is the surviving thread of a category that lost a world war and came back from cherry tree cuttings.
The Lost Cocktail Codex transcribes the original Aviation, the Last Word, the Brooklyn, and 47 other pre-Prohibition recipes hand-copied from five manuscripts. Drop your email below.