sloe gin is an extremely popular British infusion of blackthorn berries in gin sweetened with sugar. It is traditionally served around the Christmas and New Year holidays. Prepared by numerous rural households since the nineteenth century, sloe gins (along with damson plum gin) were made as a standard harvest-time activity. Mentions of sloe gin in the media make their appearance during the 1830s in publications such as the Cheltenham Chronicle. By the end of the nineteenth century, that sloe gin was commercially produced in England is evidenced by legal cases in which trademarks and patents were contested in court cases decided by the House of Lords’ Privy Council. By the beginning of the twentieth century, it was being exported to the United States, where it enjoyed a brief vogue as a cocktail ingredient.
After a decline in popularity during the twentieth century and decades of absence from drinks menus (except for a slight mid-twentieth-century rise as a key ingredient in the popular Sloe Gin Fizz), sloe gin has found a resurgence of interest as a digestive. It is currently produced by British commercial gin rectifiers Gordon’s, Plymouth, Sipsmith, Hayman’s, and others, including several American micro-distillers (Brooklyn’s Greenhook distillery makes theirs with the beach plums that grow in the dunes behind Long Island beaches). Within Britain itself, sloe gin continues to be a beverage made from traditional recipes that are handed down within generations of rural families. Wintertime competitions are held in countryside pubs and fairs to determine whose recipe is the best within a given area.
gin.“Boord and Son v. Huddart.” Law Times, February 29, 1904, 718–721.
Spencer, Edward. Cakes and Ale. London: Grant Richards, 1897.
By: Anistatia R. Miller and Jared M. Brown