How to improve your sloe gin
By far the best sloe gin I have tasted was during a talk I gave at the country’s largest branch of the WI. The maker had not added sugar and had left the berries infusing for 18 months. It was tart, complex and the colour of a good Claret. I admit is was perhaps not to everyone’s taste, but I found it breathtaking.
Often sloe gin can be made too sweet and cloying, it can be like drinking cough syrup. It does help to have some sugar to draw out the flavours of the sloe when infusing but I’d tone it down to at least half of any recipe and see how you get on, you can always add more later. To further break with convention and risk a sack of mail, I wouldn’t bother using gin either — the flavour is often masked by the sugar and berries. Vodka is fine but filter if first, through a water filter and at least five times. This ensures the sloes don’t have to compete with the harsher elements of cheaper vodkas and allows some of the more subtle flavours to come through.
A final tiny extra trick that I often use is to add a few drops of vanilla extract into each bottle. This adds a flavour compound that we associate with whiskey and barrel aged wines and immediately makes us think the drink is perhaps a little more sophisticated. Often without being able to put our finger on as to why.
