Whether suspended above a maraschino-infused Last Word cocktail or tucked inside rings of caramelised pineapple, the maraschino cherry is a key element of all sorts of retro desserts. A fascinating new museum which tells the story of the LUXARDO brand has just opened there and welcomes visitors. Either way, Torreglia, which is about 40 miles west of Venice, remains the headquarters of LUXARDO today. Stories differ as to how he was able to found the orchard -– some say he escaped with a cherry sapling, and others that he contacted an acquaintance who was a botanist, who happened to have a sample of the marasca cherry tree. He escaped to Italy where he was able to re-establish a marasca cherry tree orchard in Torreglia. Giorgio Luxardo was the sole survivor of the fourth generation of the Luxardo family. Many Italians were forcibly exiled by occupying Yugoslavian forces after the war, and at least two members of the Luxardo family were killed. Allied bombings levelled the distillery among many other buildings in Zadar whilst the city was occupied by German forces. The LUXARDO distillery’s fame and fortune steadily increased for a hundred years, until by the early twentieth century the family had built one of the largest distilleries in Europe.īut fortunes changed during World War II. After Girolamo Luxardo opened a distillery in Zadar to sell maraschino liqueur commercially, it quickly became recognized for its quality both within the city and around the world. In 1821 they set up a distillery to sell the liqueur commercially, and this is the recipe for maraschino still used by LUXARDO today.ĭespite now being widely produced in Italy, as mentioned above the story of maraschino cherries actually starts in Croatia, where marasca cherries and maraschino liqueur originally come from. Maria Canevari and her husband, LUXARDO’s founder, Girolamo Luxardo, moved to Zadar in the early 1800s and began making the local drink at home. Maraschino liqueur has an even longer history than the cherry, having been enjoyed in Croatia for centuries. The maraschino cherry also shares its name with another product – maraschino liqueur. They give their own uniquely cultivated species of marasca cherry saplings to local Italian farmers and then buy the cherries back from farmers at market rates. LUXARDO, whose maraschino cherries are often cited by bartenders as being the best in the world, grow all of their cherries locally. Marasca cherries are a small, deep red cherry originally from Croatia, but now grown in several countries, including Italy, where LUXARDO are based. The word comes from marasca, the name of the cherry used to make maraschinos. How a fresh cherry becomes a maraschino cherry is, for most people, something of a mystery.
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