Hey, listen. We need to talk. If you grew up in a high fructose American household like mine, there’s a really good chance that you think the bottle in my hand is what maraschino cherries look like.
Well, I have news for you, and it shocked me too. Those little magenta sugar bombs floating in corn syrup are not true maraschino cherries. In fact, these cloyingly sweet diabetes balls don’t even contain any maraschino, and they’re definitely not authentic Marasca cherries. Rather, these radioactive miniature clown noses that we find in American grocery stores are usually just domestically-produced cherries that have been brined, dyed, and suspended in corn syrup, a practice that arose at the dawn of the 20th Century because (A) the genuine article were just too pricy, and (B) the temperance movement had made the use of alcohol in food products taboo. While I can’t speak to their use in cooking, please, please, please do not garnish a cocktail with these artificially-flavored frankencherries. The saccharine sweetness will throw off other flavors, and you’ll miss out on the rich aromas that accompany a true maraschino cherry. Thankfully, with the increasingly bad reputation of high fructose corn syrup and the rise of foodie culture, real maraschino cherries are becoming widely available once again, but what exactly are they?

Maraschino is a historic Italian liqueur made from distilled Marasca cherries. Maraschino (which, for the record, is pronounced “maer-uh-SKEE-noh,” not “maer-uh-SHEE-noh”) presents a distinct cherry aroma with sour and almost smoky overtones. The liqueur is not even overly sweet, so it complements the original cherries beautifully. True maraschino cherries are Marasca cherries that have been sugared and preserved in a mixture of maraschino liqueur and cherry juice. Unlike American maraschino cherries, which derive their flavor from fructose and almond extract, this flavor is genuine cherry through and through. Maraschino cherries provide a rich aroma as garnish, but they’re still sweet if you choose to eat them. You can even use the juice like a flavored syrup without it overpowering other cocktail ingredients.

Of course, I’d be remiss if I didn’t give you a recipe for these cherries, so let’s utilize them as garnish for a traditional Manhattan:

Manhattan
– 2 oz rye or bourbon whiskey
– 1 oz sweet vermouth
– 2-3 dashes of Angostura bitters
Stir all ingredients and strain into a chilled cocktail glass and garnish with one or two maraschino cherries on a cocktail skewer.
When making the drink for others, I will often go a little lighter on the vermouth (maybe 3/4 of an ounce) since it’s one component of the classic cocktail resurgence that many of my friends are less enthusiastic about.

Okay, one last minor thing:
Perhaps my favorite part of true maraschino cherries is that they don’t need to be refrigerated since the alcohol is a natural preservative. With my fridge and my bar being in separate rooms of the house, using these cherries means one fewer trip into the kitchen when I’m mixing cocktails for company.

So the next time you go out to buy maraschino cherries, leave the fluorescent mini-dodgeballs on the shelf and look around for the real deal. They’re well worth the extra couple of bucks.