A consul’s distillery on the Dalmatian coast, rebuilt below the Euganean Hills.

Luxardo traces its start to 1821 and the Dalmatian port of Zara, today Zadar in Croatia. The company says Girolamo Luxardo, a Ligurian, had moved there with his family in 1817 as consular representative of the Kingdom of Sardinia, and that his wife, Maria Canevari, took a particular interest in perfecting rosolio maraschino, the cherry liqueur of the region. Girolamo founded his distillery in 1821 to make it. Italian Wikipedia adds that he had begun as a rope merchant and coral trader, and that in 1829 he obtained from Emperor Francis I of Austria an exclusive privilege to produce the cherry liqueur; the company itself speaks of a “Privilege” granted after eight years of research.

Luxardo was not the first maraschino maker in the city. English Wikipedia credits Francesco Drioli with industrial-scale production in Zara from 1759, and lists Luxardo (1821) and Romano Vlahov (1861) among the houses that followed. After the founder, the business passed in 1865 to his son Nicolò, Difford’s Guide reports. In 1913 the third generation, Michelangelo Luxardo, built a new distillery on the harbour, which the company calls “probably the largest” in the Austro-Hungarian Empire; the building still stands.

The twentieth century moved the company twice. Zara became part of the Kingdom of Italy in 1918. In 1943 and 1944, the company says, repeated Anglo-American bombing raids almost completely destroyed the distillery and much of the city, and at the end of the war Zara passed to Yugoslavia; the company was nationalised and the surviving family left for Italy. In 1947, the company says, Giorgio Luxardo, with the young fifth-generation Nicolò III, rebuilt the distillery at Torreglia, a village beneath the Euganean Hills near Padua, where it remains.

A green bottle in hand-plaited straw, and a cherry of its own.

The best-known Luxardo object is the bottle of Maraschino Originale: tall, green, with a red cap, and wrapped in straw that is still hand-plaited at the company, Luxardo says, in the manner of early Zara bottles, where the straw protected the glass in transport. Fortune reported in October 2019 that the company had used the straw-wrapped bottle for nearly two hundred years. English Wikipedia notes that a straw cover, a Venetian way of protecting bottles on long sea voyages, was used on Zara maraschino from the early nineteenth century.

Behind the bottle is the fruit. Luxardo says its Marasca cherries are infused in larch-wood vats with leaves and branches for up to three years, distilled in copper pot stills, and matured in ash-wood vats before syrup is added. The company describes its own variety, “Marasca Luxardo,” as first selected by Giorgio Luxardo with Professor Morettini of the University of Florence, and grown in orchards in the Euganean Hills area; Fortune reported that Luxardo holds the naming rights to the variety.

The same fruit gives the company its second famous product, the Original Maraschino Cherries, Marasca cherries preserved in their own syrup, which Fortune dates to the early twentieth century. The range now runs well beyond maraschino: English Wikipedia lists the cherry liqueur Sangue Morlacco, sambuca, amaretto, grappa and fernet, as well as syrups and jams for bakers, and the company also sells a sour cherry gin.

The family remains in charge. The company says the sixth generation led a major investment in the Torreglia plant in the early 1980s, and that with the arrival of the seventh generation, three generations now work together. Fortune quoted Matteo Luxardo, then export director, describing the family history as “part legend, like any family story.”

The liqueur travelled early. English Wikipedia, citing Total Croatia News, says Luxardo maraschino was being drunk in New Orleans by 1839, and Fortune reported that bottles had reached California by 1845. Competition recognition has continued in the modern era: English Wikipedia, citing the European Business Journal, says Luxardo’s Amaretto di Saschira was named best liqueur in show at the New York World Wine and Spirits Competition in 2011, and Fortune reported a gold medal for Maraschino Originale at the International Spirits Challenge in 2019.

Design and documentation.

The seven brands in this group are all Italian spirits and liqueur names: Nonino, Nardini, Luxardo, Pallini, Braulio, Amaro Lucano and Meletti. Spirits and liqueur houses in general sit at many different points in the trade, from family firms that still carry a founder’s name to labels that now belong to much larger drinks groups, and a single bottle can be sold everywhere from a village bar to a cocktail list abroad.

A spirits or liqueur brand’s identity is usually carried less by what is in the bottle than by a label, a name and the place it promises, because the company behind the name may have changed hands, moved its production or grown far beyond the town where it started. That makes the questions behind each name worth asking plainly: who started it, who owns it now, and where its spirits or liqueurs are actually made and bottled.

Each guide separates what independent sources record from what the company says about itself — its founding story, its owners over time, where its spirits or liqueurs are made and how its labels have changed — and marks plainly what rests only on the company’s own word.

Two hundred years, two cities and one cherry.

The company now presents its history to visitors directly. The Luxardo Museum opened in 2023 inside the Torreglia complex, its website says, covering the family, the making of Maraschino Originale and Sangue Morlacco, the effects of the two world wars, the departure from Zara and the rebirth in Torreglia. Fortune reported in 2019 that the company was planning a museum for its bicentenary in 2021.

The name needs a little care. The former Luxardo premises in Zadar are now used by Maraska, a separate Croatian liqueur company formed after the war from the city’s confiscated distilleries, English Wikipedia says; it is not part of Luxardo. Luxardo’s own site is luxardo.it.

For a design guide, Luxardo shows how a single fruit, a green bottle and a coat of hand-plaited straw can carry a family name across two centuries, two countries and a complete rebuilding. Compare Cherry Heering, the Copenhagen cherry liqueur, and Disaronno, the Saronno amaretto. For this guide we use marasca red, bottle green and plaited straw with a high-contrast serif, an unofficial interpretation; no product or logo is reproduced.

Keep Luxardo’s identity on hand — save it to a board in the Made Good inspiration library.