Eleanor Whitaker
The blackthorn: know it before you pick it
Sloes are the fruit of the blackthorn (Prunus spinosa), the dark, thorny shrub that lines field boundaries, old lanes and woodland edges across the British Isles. It is the first thing to flower in spring — a froth of white blossom on bare black twigs — and by autumn those same twigs carry small, round, blue-black fruits about the size of a marble. Find a good hedge and you will not forget where it is.
Identification is straightforward once you know what to look for. Sloes carry a powdery grey-blue bloom, like a dusty plum, and the skin is taut and hard. Bite one and you will understand at once why nobody eats them raw: the astringency dries your mouth and lingers. The flesh should be pale green, with a single stone inside. Hawthorn berries, by contrast, are bright red, soft and full of pips — excellent for jelly, no use at all in gin.
Timing: the first frost, and the trick if it never comes
Traditional advice says wait for the first frost, because freezing splits the skins and softens the fruit, letting the juice mingle with the spirit more quickly. In a mild autumn that frost can be well into November, and by then the birds will have taken much of the crop. Pick from late September onwards, once the sloes are fully coloured and give slightly under your thumb. If there has been no frost, spread them in a single layer in freezer bags and freeze for forty-eight hours. A domestic freezer does exactly what a hard frost does, and you can tip the fruit into the jar straight from frozen.
Picking well: thorns, permissions and the wildlife share
Blackthorn earns its name. Those thorns will go through a thin glove and rake a forearm, so dress for the job.
- Wear thick gauntlets, a long-sleeved coat and sturdy boots. Take a bucket with a handle so both hands stay free.
- A walking stick with a crook will draw a high branch within reach. Never climb a gate or fence to get at fruit.
- Leave at least half the berries on the bush. Fieldfares, redwings and thrushes travel miles for them in winter, and a stripped hedge is a hungry one.
- Ask first. A hedge belongs to a landowner even where a footpath runs beside it. Pick where you have permission, and stay on the path where the right of way is the path.
- Avoid hedges along busy roads, where spray and exhaust are worth steering clear of, and remember you have to carry home whatever you pick.
Pricking, freezing and building the jar
The point of pricking each sloe is to break the skin so the gin can reach the juice. There is no shortcut worth taking with a food processor: whizzing the fruit shreds the stones and the finished drink turns bitter.
Freezing does much of the work for you. Bag the washed sloes, freeze overnight, and the skins split as they thaw. Even so, many makers still give each one two or three nicks with a clean darning needle, working while the fruit is still firm from the freezer, sitting down with the radio on and a bowl in your lap.
You need very little kit: a large jar with a tight-fitting lid, the fruit, sugar and a decent but unremarkable gin. Cheap gin tastes of its shortcomings after three months steeping, so use one you would happily drink.
- Sloes: 450g
- Caster sugar: 225g to begin with
- Gin: 1 litre
Half the weight of sugar to sloes is a sensible starting point. Some recipes use equal weights and the result can be syrupy; you can always add sugar later, but you cannot take it out. Sterilise the jar with hot soapy water, rinse well and dry it in a cool oven. Half-fill with fruit, pour in the sugar, top up with the remaining sloes and then the gin, seal and shake gently to start the sugar dissolving.
Shaking, storing and knowing when it is ready
Keep the jar somewhere cool and dark — a pantry, a cupboard under the stairs, a garage shelf — and shake it every day for the first week, every week for the next month, then now and again after that. The sugar will settle, so the shaking matters more than it sounds.
Taste at six weeks and again at three months. Most sloe gin is at its best between three and four months, so fruit picked in October will be round, jewel-coloured and warming by midwinter, with a faint almond note from the stones. If it tastes thin or cloying at three months, leave it be. It will only improve.
Decanting, bottling and using up the sloes
Line a funnel with a double layer of muslin or a clean jelly bag and strain the gin into sterilised bottles. It will look cloudy at first, which is perfectly normal — it settles clear in the bottle, or you can strain it a second time. Label each bottle with the date. Sloe gin keeps for years in a cool, dark place and makes a fine Christmas gift if you can bear to part with it.
The spent sloes are worth more than you might think. Spread them on a tray, pick out the stones, and fold the pulp into melted dark chocolate for sloe truffles, or simmer them with an equal weight of sugar and a little water and strain for a sharp, deep-red jelly to serve with roast game or cold ham. Nothing need go to waste, which is very much the spirit of hedgerow living.
