Hey y’all! As you may have seen the other day, I went on a do-it-yourself binge while all the cool people were hanging in New Orleans apparently experiencing overly-sweet Sazeracs and losing bottles of Falernum by the case. Besides Falernum and Grenadine, I also cooked up a batch of Maraschino cherries using the recipe from The Art of Bar by Hollinger and Schwartz. And before we get started here, allow me to give a hats-off to Robert Heugel at EXPLORE THE POUR who beat me to the punch on this post and whose post has a wonderful background piece on how the “neon nemesis”³³we’ve all come to know and, hopefully despise, came into favor because of and during Prohibition. However, in full disclosure, and much to my chagrin, my wife has a soft sentimental spot for the candied abomination so-called ‘maraschino cherry’ as I suspect do so many other people³³. I went about this as I go about most things, with equal parts fervor and impatience. This served me well up until the point I realized the process actually required heating the mixture and that the stove performed this function FAR better if I actually turned the gas on. Such is the life of a Triple Aquarius… Gwen, can you help a brother out with doing something about that?

The original recipe calls for 6 lbs. of cherries and upon arriving at the store I quickly realized I would need to take out a second mortgage on the house as that would cost approximately buhleventy qwillion dollars here in Tulsa, OK, even while they’re in season and no matter how much better they are than the craptastic red squishy jujube of doom I can’t go spending $35+ on the ordeal, especially when they can go bad after a month or so. Thus, 2 lbs. of cherries it was. Now, you remember about the stove thing, right? Well, having to third all of the proportions of this recipe was an exercise in concentration, referring to conversion tables, and consulting strange rituals of the ancient Nephilim. But, after the toil, nail-biting, and abaci destruction, here it is:

Cocktailnerd’s Homemade Maraschino Cherries³³

Step 1:

• 1/4 cup sugar
• 1 1/2 oz fresh lemon juice
• 1/3 cup water
• 1 cinnamon stick

Combine sugar, water, lemon juice, and cinnamon stick in a large saucepan (no, seriously, like really big…especially if you’re using 6 lbs of cherries… the one you got there? Not big enough…). Bring to a boil and reduce the heat to medium-low.

Step 2:

• 2 lbs washed cherries ³³

Add the cherries and simmer for 5 minutes. Occassionally gently turn and stir the cherries as they soften and release their ruddy goodness.

Step 3:

• 6 oz maraschino liqueur (Stock’s will do ya just fine here)
• 1 oz Hennessy cognac
• 1/2-1 oz orgeat syrup

Reduce heat to low, stir in the maraschino liqueur and cognac and let stew for 2-3 minutes. Remove from heat, add 1/2-1 oz orgeat syrup store in jar(s), and refrigerate.

First of all, these are divine. They aren’t as sweet as your store-bought super-dyed preservative-laden counterparts but the flavor is rich, more complex, and certainly more pleasing. Most people I’ve offered these to have stated that while they like these cherries on their own accord, they expect drinks to be garnished with a bright red abomination. And, sadly, for John Q. Public I think this is mostly the case. Increasing the orgeat might get the flavor profile closer to the more “traditional” maraschino cherry, but you’re selling your soul into a slippery slope of cocktail ingratiation and then, why bother? I left them on the heat in Step 3 (a deviation from The Art of Bar recipe) because I liked the idea of there being more active exchange of flavors between the cherries as they lost juice and the added liqueur. That seems to have worked out nicely.

If I had it to do over again I would pit the cherries and leave out the Hennessy. The pits make my wife crazy every time I serve a cherry to someone in a drink because she has phobias about broken teeth and choking, but aside from that, I don’t think it adds a whole lot to the flavor and are more trouble than they’re worth (to my wife’s immense credit, after my incessant sighing about her ‘CHERRY PITS – WATCH OUT!!’ freakouts she bought me a cherry pitter). As for the Hennessy, and related to the orgeat bit above, it changes the flavor profile enough to make them just slightly more like a brandied cherry, and for my purposes, that’s not what I’m looking for. I love that it gives that extra layer of complexity and just provides a hint of dry edge to them, but, in the end, I think I would leave it out of a maraschino cherry recipe and use it in brandied cherries alone.

On a final note, I tossed in a few Rainier cherries we had sitting around and they’re there in the right side of the bowl in the picture and I was right, they’re completely wrong for this application; go as dark as possible without getting into inhumanly tart territory when making these.3

1. copyright 2007, Robert Heugel333
2. this sentence structure brought to you by Seagram’s Lime Twisted Gin – the only thing available at a decent price here in the netherlands of CO to make a gin & tonic with any hint of lime (without buying limes) and which is truly, unforgivably, shitty.333
3. adapted from ‘frankie’s brandied cherries’ in ‘The Art of Bar’ p. 76333
4. I used simple black cherries – Rainier cherries seemed like they might be overly sweet and plum-ish in flavor333

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