What Is Cherry Liqueur? Luxardo Sangue Morlacco vs Maraschino

Search for cherry liqueur and you get three completely different drinks under one name - a sweet dark red one, a clear dry one, and a homemade one your grandmother called vishniak. They are not interchangeable, and swapping one for another will ruin a cocktail. Here is how to tell them apart.

The short answer

There are two families. Sweet cherry liqueurs are macerated or fermented cherry steeped into a spirit and sweetened - red, rich, drinkable on their own. Maraschino is distilled from cherries, which is why it comes out clear, and it is dry and nutty rather than sweet.

Both are made from cherries. That is where the resemblance stops.

Why maraschino is clear

This is the single thing that confuses everybody, so it is worth its own paragraph.

Colour in a liqueur comes from the fruit skin sitting in the liquid. Distillation leaves the colour behind - only the aromatics carry over into the vapour. So a liqueur distilled from cherries, stones and all, comes out water-clear and tastes of cherry stone and almond rather than cherry flesh. That is maraschino.

Nothing to do with the neon red maraschino cherries in a jar, which took the name and dropped everything else about it.

The three bottles, and what each is for

Luxardo Sangue Morlacco (750ml) at $31.99 is the sweet dark one, and the bottle most people mean when they type "Luxardo cherry liqueur". Luxardo cherry juice rested in oak for nine months for a natural cherry-wine fermentation, then fortified and sweetened. Deep dark cherry and dried plum on the nose with a whisper of almond and vanilla oak; rich and softly sweet on the palate, sour-cherry compote over a warm spirit backbone; a long finish of chocolate cherry and bitter almond. The poet Gabriele D'Annunzio renamed it in 1919, and Luxardo has made it since 1821. Neat over ice, over vanilla ice cream, splashed into hot black coffee, or as the secret weapon in a Manhattan. KLBD.

Luxardo Maraschino (750ml) at $36.99 is the clear dry one - the straw-wrapped green bottle every serious bar keeps. Marasca cherry, almond and a floral note; dry and complex with a nutty cherry-stone character and a long dry almond finish. 32%. It is the backbone of a Last Word and an Aviation. Do not free-pour it. A quarter ounce changes a whole drink; an ounce wrecks one.

Spokusa Cherry Temptation (700ml) at $16.99 is the Ukrainian one, in the vishnivka tradition - sour cherry macerated into grain spirit and sweetened. Vivid sour-cherry aroma with a whisper of hibiscus and dried plum, sweet and cherry-forward, finishing on dried fruit and gentle almond. Gold at the 2024 London Spirits Competition. This is the bottle that used to appear at every simcha in Brooklyn: chilled in a shot glass after cholent, or over ice with seltzer.

So which one do I want?

Work backwards from what you are doing with it.

• Drinking it on its own, cold, after a meal - Spokusa at $16.99, or Sangue Morlacco if you want the oak and the depth.
• Making a Last Word, an Aviation or a Hemingway daiquiri - maraschino, and nothing else will do it.
• Deepening a Manhattan or an Old Fashioned - a small pour of Sangue Morlacco.
• Over ice cream, or into coffee - either of the sweet two.
• A l'chaim at a simcha - Spokusa. It is what the bottle was built for.

Vishniak, and why the word keeps coming up

Vishniak - vishnivka, vishnyak, spelled a dozen ways - is the Eastern European sour-cherry cordial that families used to make at home: cherries, sugar and spirit in a jar on a windowsill for a few months. It is the ancestor of every sweet cherry liqueur on this list, and for a lot of our customers it is simply the name of the category.

If that is the taste you are chasing, Spokusa is the closest bottle to it on the shelf, and Sangue Morlacco is the grown-up version with oak behind it.

Cherry liqueur is not cherry brandy

Two more names worth untangling, because they show up in the same searches.

Kirsch is a clear, unsweetened cherry eau de vie - distilled, bone dry, no sugar at all. Not a liqueur. It is a baking and fondue spirit more than a sipping one.

Cherry brandy is used loosely and usually means a sweetened cherry liqueur on a brandy base, which puts it near Sangue Morlacco rather than near kirsch. Sangue Morlacco sits neatly in between: bartenders reach for it when kirsch is too dry and the standard sweet cherry brands are too sugary.

One thing that is not a cherry at all

Luxardo's name is on a lot of bottles, and not all of them are cherry. Luxardo Aperitivo Italiano (750ml) at $29.99 is the bitter orange apéritif in the Aperol mould - the spritz bottle, not the cherry bottle. Worth knowing before you order the wrong one. We covered that whole category in what is an aperitivo.

Where cherry sits on the wider liqueur shelf

If you are building out a home bar rather than solving one drink, the neighbours are worth a look. Leroux Crème de Cassis at $14.99 is the blackcurrant equivalent and makes a Kir. Amaretto gives you the almond note without the fruit, and coffee liqueur covers the after-dinner slot from the other direction.

The full shelf is at our kosher liqueur collection - ninety bottles deep, and we ship anywhere in the country.