I like cherries and I like alcohol. I love cherries in alcohol. Ever since I had the house-made cherries at a bar a few months ago, I’ve been entertaining the thought of making my own. How hard could it be, right?

In the BF’s copy of The Art of the Bar, there’s a simple recipe for brandied cherries. Brandy, cherries, some spices, and a bit of lemon. Easy peasy.

Unfortunately, the recipe was for six pounds of cherries and we only had a bit less than one pound. We cut the proportions of the recipe to fit our needs, but something must have gone wrong during the math because there was a lot less liquid than cherries. The liquid barely came up to the halfway mark on the jar filled with cherries.

Nevertheless, I put the jars in a water-bath to activate the suction-sealing mason jar tops. It was my first time water-bathing anything, so it was a little exciting. I still don’t trust these cherries to keep for a long time out of refrigeration but it was still interesting to see that the water-bath did indeed form a vacuum inside the bottle.

A day later, I broke the seal on one of our two jars to taste the cherries. Sweet, boozy, and fantastic! It was a great little treat at the bottom of my Martinez.

Next time I do this, I’ll definitely put more boozy liquid into the jar because it’d be good once it soaks up some cherry flavor.