Toschi Amarena cherries 1kg

Vignola, 1945. The Cherry Capital of Italy.

Drive an hour north of Bologna, into the low green hills between Modena and the Apennines, and you're in cherry country. This is Vignola — same soil, same fog, same slow river valleys that give the world balsamic vinegar. It also gives us the ciliegia, the sour black cherry that Italians have been putting up in syrup since long before anyone thought to sell it in a jar.

The Toschi family started bottling those cherries in 1945. Eighty years later they're still doing it the same way, in the same town, from the same tin: the red-and-white pinstripe with the little T on the lid. Every Italian pastry chef and nonna in the country knows this tin. Now it's on your counter.

What's actually in the can

Whole sour black cherries — glossy, deep-garnet, stems long gone — suspended in a syrup so thick it clings to the spoon and stains your cutting board. The cherries themselves are firm, meaty, sour on the front and sweet on the finish. The syrup is the secret weapon: cherry juice reduced with sugar and glucose until it's almost a coulis. Don't pour it down the drain. It's half the product.

The Luxardo Conversation

If you're a cocktail person you already know Luxardo Maraschino cherries — the 400-gram jar, the twenty-something-dollar price tag, the reverence. They're excellent. We stock them in spirit. But Amarena and Maraschino are cousins, not twins, and it's worth being honest about what you're getting:

• Luxardo are marasca cherries steeped in maraschino liqueur syrup. Darker, boozier, denser, drier finish. A little goes a long way.
• Toschi Amarena are sour black cherries in cherry syrup — no liqueur, just fruit and sugar. Brighter, more tart, wetter, more cherry. And the syrup is a cocktail ingredient in its own right.

Neither is better. They're different tools. But here's the math a bartender should hear: 1 kg of Toschi for $29.99, versus 400 g of Luxardo for $22–30 at retail. Two-and-a-half times the volume for the same money. If you're garnishing a bar program, running a supper club, or just making Old Fashioneds every Friday, that's not a small difference.

And there's a case where Toschi is the right answer, not the value one: when you want the syrup to do work in the glass. A teaspoon of Amarena syrup in a Manhattan sweetens it, colors it, and perfumes it in a way that dry Luxardo can't. That's the move. That's why your Italian grandmother would reach for this tin.

Beyond the Bar

The other half of the audience for this cherry is the dessert cook, because Amarena is what Italians actually put on things. Spoon it over vanilla gelato — the cold cream, the warm syrup, done. Layer it into panna cotta. Fold it into ricotta cheesecake batter. Build a proper zuppa inglese with sponge, custard, and Amarena in ruby stripes. Drop a spoonful onto plain Greek yogurt with a slick of good olive oil and flaky salt and call it breakfast for a week. Stud a pan of brown-butter blondies with them before baking. Every one of these is a five-minute upgrade from a tin.

Storage note that matters. Once you open the tin, transfer everything — cherries and syrup — into a clean glass jar. Refrigerate. It'll keep for months and the cherries will actually get better as they sit in their own syrup.

Spice does the garnishing.

Product Details

• Net Weight: 1 kg / 35.27 oz (2 lb 3.27 oz)
• Drained Weight: 500g / 17.64 oz
• Total Weight with Packaging: 2.45 lb
• Servings per Container: ~33 (2 tbsp / 30g)
• Nutrition (per 30g): 90 cal · 0g fat · 0mg sodium · 21g carb · 16g total sugars (14g added) · 0g protein
• Ingredients: Sugar, water, sour black cherries, glucose syrup, sour cherry juice, fruit juice (for color), citric acid, natural flavors
• Certifications: ✅ Gluten-Free · Vegan · Non-GMO
• Origin: Vignola / Modena, Emilia-Romagna, Italy
• Producer: Toschi Vignola S.r.l. — family-run since 1945
• Shelf Life: 36 months unopened
• Storage: Store unopened in a cool, dry pantry. Once opened, transfer cherries and syrup to a clean glass jar and refrigerate — keeps 3+ months chilled.

Chef Dunand's Recipe: The Amarena Old Fashioned

Serves 1 · 3 minutes · The Luxardo move, done the Italian way

There is no shortage of Old Fashioned recipes in the world. This is not a reinvention. It's a small, deliberate swap that changes the drink: instead of muddling a sugar cube or pouring in simple syrup, you use the Amarena syrup itself as the sweetener. The cherry ends up in the glass as garnish, but the syrup is the ingredient. This is what separates a bar Old Fashioned from an Italian household Old Fashioned, and once you taste it you don't go back.

Ingredients

• 2 oz bourbon (Buffalo Trace, Woodford, or Weller) or rye (Rittenhouse, Sazerac) — see Chef's Note
• 1 tsp Toschi Amarena syrup (straight from the tin — this is the whole point)
• 2 dashes Angostura bitters
• 1 dash orange bitters (optional but recommended)
• 1 wide strip fresh orange peel
• 2 Toschi Amarena cherries
• 1 large clear ice cube (2" square if you have the mold; a big single rock otherwise)

Method

1. In a mixing glass with regular ice, combine the bourbon, Amarena syrup, and both bitters. Stir 20–30 seconds with a bar spoon until well-chilled and slightly diluted — you want the syrup fully integrated, no streaks.
2. Place the large ice cube in a chilled rocks glass. Strain the drink over.
3. Hold the orange peel over the glass, colored-side down, and give it a firm squeeze to express the oils across the surface. Rub the peel around the rim, then drop it in.
4. Drop in two Amarena cherries — one for eating, one for the finish. Let a few drops of syrup off the spoon fall in with them; the ruby trail through the amber whiskey is the entire visual case for this drink.
5. Serve immediately. No stirring at the table — let the drinker do it.

Chef's Note — Bourbon vs. Rye

Bourbon plays sweeter and rounder against the sour cherry; it's the crowd-pleaser and what I pour on a Friday. Rye is drier and spicier, and it lets the Amarena's tartness sit more forward — this is the version cocktail nerds prefer. Try both. If you're using a sugar cube or demerara instead of the syrup, you've missed the assignment: the syrup is the sweetener. That's the whole recipe.

Storage

The tin, once opened, goes into a glass jar in the fridge. The syrup keeps as long as the cherries do — 3+ months chilled — and every Old Fashioned tastes exactly the same as the first one.