According to Noah Rothbaum the best cocktail cherry garnish comes from a company called Luxardo. He looked into the company’s history:

• Luxardo’s cherries actually date back to a farm in Croatia in the 1880s.
• They were used in cocktails then too, but in the 1900s olives replaced cherries as the cocktail garnish of choice.
• But Luxardo continued to churn out its cherries until World War II. Allied forces bombed the farm in 1943 and legend has it that the family scion escaped with nothing but a cook book and a cherry sapling.
• He went to a part of Italy with acidic volcanic soil and planted the sapling there.
• Not only was it good soil for cherries but it was far from cities ensuring that in any future wars the farm wouldn’t be bombed.
• Fast forward to 2004 when Luxardo sent four jars of its candied cherries to a master New York bar tender.
• The rest is history. Luxardo cherries became the iconic cocktail garnish, inspiring bars across New York to adopt them.

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Source: The Daily Beast