For many years we have made sloe gin, from ripe sloe berries picked after the first frost of winter, and we still do, but we can’t produce enough for demand - therefore we have to supplement our home preoccupation, with sloe and damson gin-vodka made by others...

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•       Please see our best range of Sloe & Damson Gin-Vodka at Sybarite Cellars.

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                          SLOE & DAMSON GIN-VODKA

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Please see a couple of Shoot Elevenses recipes below...

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Conservation - Charity Donation

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Conservation research and communities that implement sustainable wildlife management is a very important part of what we represent.

 

Sybarite Sporting, together with sister companies, Sybarite Safaris and Sybarite Cellars donate the sales profit of the following, to The Country Food Trust and the Big Life Foundation.

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•       Sloe & Damson Gin-Vodka

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•       Elephant Gin

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•       Tusker Lager

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History

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The England and Wales Enclosure Acts of the 17th century, in many ways was responsible for the first history of sloe gin. The Enclosure Acts transformed open common land into individual farmsteads and properties, whereby hedgerows were laid to form a natural fencing.

 

Blackthorn, amongst other hedging plant varieties, was and still is used today to establish hedgerows due to its dense, spiny branches. The consequences of these new hedgerows were new, bumper crops of sloe berries.

 

Sloes on their own are notoriously tart and astringent, and country living folk soon learned that the best way to take advantage of these berries, as with so many things in life, was to add alcohol.

 

It was in the later stages of the 19th century, when more established distilleries began to produce their own sloe gin, when sloe gin’s revival began. But it was the beginning of the 20th century when cocktail bartenders began to take notice - 1920s was Waldorf-Astoria in New York City use sloe gin in the Charlie Chaplin cocktail, and 1960s was the famous sloe gin cocktail The Sloe Gin Fizz popularised.

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Shoot Day Elevenses

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SloeGasm / King’s Damson (Sloe Damson Royale)

 

Ingredients:

45 ml    Sloe or Damson Gin-Vodka

120 ml  Champagne: "always champagne!"

             • Perrier Jouët Grand Brut N.V.

30 ml    Freshly squeezed lemon juice

 

How to make:

Shake sloe gin, sugar syrup and lemon juice

without ice, and fine strain into chilled glass.

Top with champagne - add egg white to enhance

foam (we prefer without egg white foam)

 

Serve in:

Highball glass

 

Garnish:

Lemon slice

 

Comment:

This citrusy berry cocktail can be on the dry/tart

side of balance, choose the right brand of sloe gin /

damson vodka and champagne according to taste...

- we suggest a Sloe Gin that's slightly higher in

sugar content.

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