Fancy Free

Luxardo is the default and Maraska the other easy find, both from the Adriatic and both distilled from whole Marasca cherries with the pits in. They are close enough that either does the job. What you cannot use is the syrup from a jar of cocktail cherries, which shares a name and nothing else.

Maraschino divides people, and that funky, almost floral note is the liqueur being itself rather than a fault. Fifteen ml is a generous pour. Take it down to 8 ml, add a bar spoon of simple syrup to replace the missing sugar, and the cherry stays without running the show.

Rye works and gives you a sharper drink. Bourbon's corn sweetness rounds off maraschino's edges, so with rye the liqueur stands further forward and the whole thing reads drier. Go that way and the orange bitters matter more than ever, since they are the bridge between the two.

Plenty of people do. Maraschino dissolves on contact so there is nothing to work in. The difference is temperature and dilution: served up it arrives colder and more concentrated, while over a big cube it opens out as the ice goes. Neither is wrong, they just drink differently.

It isn't, because maraschino is far drier than it smells. The liqueur reads as cherry stone and almond rather than jam, and 15 ml of it against 60 of bourbon lands closer to an Old Fashioned than to a sour. The bitters do the rest of the correcting.

A classic Fancy Free calls for 60 ml (2 oz) Bourbon, 15 ml (0.5 oz) Maraschino liqueur, 2 dashes Angostura Angostura bitters, 2 dashes orange bitters Orange bitters. That single-serve spec scales cleanly — the recipe above converts it to oz and multiplies it for 2–4 drinks.

A standard Fancy Free is roughly 42% ABV once mixed (before ice melt softens it further). That makes it spirit-forward — closer to a Martini than to a beer, so sip it slowly.