Cocktails with Maraschino cherry
A maraschino cherry is a preserved, sweetened cherry used to garnish drinks. It comes in two very different forms: the traditional marasca cherry steeped in maraschino liqueur, and the modern bright-red cherry bleached and dyed for the jar.
Taste profile
The modern dyed cherry is simply sweet and syrupy, with a candied note and a hint of artificial almond. The traditional marasca is darker and far more interesting — properly sweet-tart, with real cherry and a nutty, almond finish.
How it's used
It's a garnish, dropped onto or into a finished drink rather than measured into it — the classic crown for a Manhattan, Old Fashioned or whiskey sour. A splash of the syrup can go in too, for a little extra sweetness and colour. A good marasca lifts a drink; a neon one is mostly decoration.
Substitutes for Maraschino cherry
As a garnish, another cherry or red fruit keeps the look, and a spoon of syrup covers the sweetness. But nothing cheap reproduces a real marasca's cherry-almond depth and dark colour — for that, a liqueur-soaked cherry is the only substitute.
Often confused with
Liqueur-preserved (Luxardo-style) cocktail cherry
The traditional cocktail cherry is a marasca (sour) cherry kept in dark maraschino or cherry syrup. It holds real cherry-and-almond flavour, a dark colour, and often some alcohol — unlike the modern maraschino cherry, a bleached, dyed, re-sweetened sweet cherry that's non-alcoholic.
