Girolamo Luxardo

Girolamo Luxardo S.p.A is an Italian liqueur factory. Founded in Zara, Dalmatia (now Zadar), it moved to Torreglia near Padua after 1945.

The company's current products include a variety of liqueurs and similar products (Maraschino, Sangue Morlacco, Sambuca, Amaretto, Grappa, Passione Nera, Slivovitz etc.) as well as other baking related products, such as liqueur concentrates, fruit syrups, and jams. Luxardo products are sold in about 70 countries worldwide. The distillery employs approximately 45 people, as well as roughly 100 salespeople throughout Italy. The 6,800-square-metre (73,000 sq ft) distillery is capable of producing 6,000 bottles per hour. In 2010, it produced a pre-tax profit of €16 million. The company owns 22,000 Marasca cherry trees in what is the largest cherry orchard in the European Union.

The firm was founded in 1821 by Girolamo Luxardo in the city of Zara, which is now known as Zadar. Luxardo had moved to Zara with his family in 1817, as the consular representative of the Kingdom of Sardinia. His wife (Maria Canevari) produced liqueurs at home, specializing in "rosolio maraschino", a liquor from Dalmatia, and Luxardo founded the distillery to produce Liquore Maraschino. Girolamo Luxardo died in 1865 at age 81, and his son Nicolò took over the business.

In 1913 a new distillery was built by Michaelangelo Luxardo, who was of the third generation of Luxardos. The distillery was one of the largest in the Austro-Hungarian Empire. The building still stands today.

Zara was incorporated into the Kingdom of Italy at the end of World War I. The distillery was almost completely destroyed by Allied bombings during the Second World War. In 1944, at the end of German occupation, the city was seized by Josip Broz Tito's troops, then ceded to Yugoslavia at the end of the war. Almost all the Italian citizens, and among them most of the Luxardo family were forced to flee (exodus from Istria and Dalmatia), and some of them were murdered, like Nicolò Luxardo, his wife Bianca Ronzoni and his younger brother Pietro. The business was temporarily refounded in Venice by Giorgio Luxardo, before Giorgio moved to Torreglia, near Padova, in the Veneto region of Italy, where he built a new distillery and continued the family's and firm's activities. The sixth generation of the family is still active in the operations of the company, including: Piero Luxardo, Franco Luxardo, Guido Luxardo, Matteo Luxardo, Filippo Luxardo and Giorgio Luxardo.

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