Early in my cocktail career I had heard of the somewhat elusive “real” maraschino cherry, preferably from an Italian company called Luxardo. This was back in the early days of e-commerce, when mother-of-all-retailers Amazon sold books and little else. “How different could a candied cherry be in the grand scheme of things?” I’d wondered at the time.

On a quest for stocking stuffers, my wife ordered a bottle of the real deal, finding Luxardo Maraschino Cherries on Amazon. If you’re used to the unearthly red color of the average grocery store maraschino, as I was, you’ll be surprised by the deep red of the Luxardo cherry. I popped one into my mouth as a test run before risking the spoilage of a good Manhattan, and was initially surprised by the initially sour cherry taste, that’s followed by a slow and mellow sweetness rather than the candy-like rush of the cherry-on-crack that marks the grocery variety.

I’ve often wondered if I’ve gone over the decadence deep-end, extolling the virtues of $24 jars of cherries while much of the world suffers all manner of horrors. I also wonder if somewhere among the cognoscente, someone is scoffing at my newfound love for a “rookie’s” cherry, as he gently nibbles on an even finer and more expensive specimen.

Sociological impacts aside, this is a damn fine cherry.