Luxardo “The Original” Maraschino Cherries
I still haven’t managed to rip the lid off my fourth jar of cherries (no joke), but at least today I’ll get to the third: Luxardo “The Original” Maraschino Cherries.
Luxardo’s cherries are immediately distinguishable from other cocktail cherries because (a) they are very, very dark in color, a deep bloody red verging on brown (b) they are packed in a rather thick syrup (c) the packaging is demonstratively European in origin.
The cherries are quite firm and tend to be very much in tact, if stemless. They have a rich smell that is reminescent, a bit, of cough syrup. This isn’t exactly unpleasant, but there’s a kind of saturation to the scent that is nearly cloying. The taste is equally intense, carrying a heavy sweetness, a very deep cherry flavor, and a slight taste of alcohol (which may or may not be actually present — the jar doesn’t list ingredients).
Luxardo’s cherries are unique in that they are made from the maraschino cherry’s namesake fruit, the marasca cherry. In this way, they are certainly more traditional than other cocktail cherries currently on the market.
However, I would like to make a perhaps unpopular point, which is that these cherries, finely made as they are, are likely inappropriate for a lot of modern drinks. I’m sure they’d do well in anything pre-1900 in origin. And, they’d probably hold up in things devised a couple decades after that, likely through the prohibition era. But, for example, I would probably never throw one of these into that mid-century favorite the gimlet or in any kind of Trader Vic’s-style tiki drink. The flavor is too heavy and would distract from, rather than augment the flavor of these types of drinks. Further, given the ’50s love of neon-colored processed things, I doubt Luxardo’s cherries had much market share in the period.
So, in summary, Luxardo makes a very fine maraschino cherry, but I reserve them for drinks that are either very strong, very historic, or both.
