🥃 Maraschino

If you have only met "maraschino" as a red cocktail cherry, the real thing is a colourless liqueur whose flavour comes mainly from marasca cherry distillate. In the EU it has its own category: at least 24% ABV and 250 g of sugar per litre, and colouring is forbidden. Its home is Zadar in Croatia, where it has been made for the market since the 18th century. ¹⁵

What the law says. Category 37 of Regulation (EU) 2019/787 describes maraschino, also called marrasquino or maraskino, as a colourless liqueur flavoured mainly by a distillate of marasca cherries or by the product of macerating cherries or their parts in alcohol of agricultural origin or in marasca distillate. The minimum sugar content is 250 g per litre, expressed as invert sugar, and the minimum strength is 24% ABV, well above the general 15% for liqueurs. Maraschino may not be coloured. ¹ The same minimums apply on the market of Great Britain. ³

The marasca cherry. Marasca is a sour cherry of the Dalmatian coast: the Zadar State Archives note that it grows mainly on the coast of central Dalmatia and that the people who grew it very probably made drinks and liqueurs from it long before the first factories. ⁵ Luxardo writes that until about the 1700s almost all marasca production was concentrated around Almissa (Omiš), south of Split, and that demand grew fast in the 19th century, when distilleries became the main buyers of the fruit. ⁸

Zadar's first distillers. According to the archive inventory, organised production for the market can be dated only from the first half of the 18th century, when Carceniga, Mola and Rota stood out in Zadar; Giuseppe Carceniga improved the method by learning from the botanist Bartolomeo Ferrari of Bergamo. Francesco Drioli, born in Izola in Istria in 1738, began making maraschino on his own account in 1759, and the sale of his shop on 23 March 1768 is taken as the founding date of his factory. ⁵

A liqueur for royal courts. At first the Drioli factory made only maraschino: other liqueurs appear in its books only after 1780, and a price list of 1808 shows 17 more. The archive says the firm supplied, directly or through agents, most European courts, including Vienna, Paris, London, Berlin, Naples and Munich, and later sold widely in the United States. At the beginning of the 19th century 15 liqueur distilleries worked in Zadar, and only Drioli lasted. ⁵

Luxardo and the imperial privilege. Girolamo Luxardo came to Zara, the Italian name of Zadar, in 1817 as consular representative of the Kingdom of Sardinia; his wife Maria Canevari took up perfecting "rosolio maraschino", a liqueur long made in Dalmatia, often in convents. In 1821 Girolamo founded a distillery, and after eight years of refinement he received an exclusive privilege from the Emperor of Austria. In 1913 the third generation built a new distillery, which the company calls one of the largest in Austria-Hungary. ⁶

War and new beginnings. Bombing in 1943–44 almost completely destroyed the Luxardo distillery and much of the city. ⁶ The Drioli factory stopped work at the end of October 1944; in 1945–46 its property was confiscated, and much of its equipment went to the former Luxardo factory, which carried on under the new name Maraska. ⁵ The surviving Luxardo family left for Italy and in 1947 rebuilt the distillery in Torreglia, beneath the Euganean Hills, where it grows its own marasca variety. ⁷⁸ "Zadarski maraschino" was registered as a geographical indication of Croatia on 24 April 2012. ²

How it is made. Luxardo describes its method: marasca cherries picked in early summer are infused in alcohol in larch-wood vats, together with some leaves and branches, for up to three years. The liquid and the solids are then distilled in copper pot stills, only the heart of the distillate is kept and matured in ash-wood vats, and finally a syrup of water and sugar brings it to 32% ABV. The result is crystal clear, and the bottle is still wrapped in straw by hand, like early Zara bottles protected for transport. ⁹

Why it matters to you. Real maraschino is clear: colouring is forbidden, so a red drink is not maraschino liqueur, and preserved cocktail cherries with this name are not a spirit drink. On the label look for the category name and at least 24% ABV; "Zadarski maraschino" guarantees origin from Zadar. ¹² It is a strong and very sweet drink, with at least 250 g of sugar per litre. ¹ WHO stresses that there is no safe level of alcohol consumption. ⁴