Look at those lovely berries. Ripe and bursting with flavour, if only there were more of them.
On the 24th October 2006 I arrived home with my briefcase and my jacket pockets bulging
It’s been slowly fermenting for the last four months, since we headed out into the meadow to pick sloe berries from the blackthorn trees. Each one is a small olive-like fruit with a dusty purple-black skin. Inside they are a delicate pink, and each one has a tiny stone in the middle.
To make sloe gin you need to gather enough to fill half of whichever bottle you want to make it in, and add the same weight of sugar. Pierce each of your sloe berries with a pin, going straight through the middle if you can manage to miss the stone, or coming in from each side if you can’t. This breaks open the skin and lets the gin and the berry juices mix.
You should pick your sloes in the autumn, so there will be none in the hedgerows now, but if you can wait until after the first frosts then the skins will already have been broken, and so piercing may not be necessary. When you’ve got all that in the bottle you pour in your gin, stopper it up and leave it to brew for at least three months. Give it a shake once a week or so to mix in all the sugar and don’t open it until it’s all fully dissolved into the liquid. We finally opened ours this weekend, and drank the first two glasses as undiluted shots. The colour is a fantastic deep red, and any sloes that come out with the liquid - which can be eaten if you want, although we chose not to - float on the top like cocktail olives.
A bonus of the fermenting process is that you can use a cheaper gin than you might otherwise like to drink. We used a supermarket’s own-brand spirit, and you’d never taste the difference between this and a more expensive label when infused with the sloes.
Prunus spinosa Blackthorn or Sloe is a species of Prunus native to Europe, western Asia, and locally in northwest Africa.[1][2]
It is a deciduous large shrub or small
tree growing to 5 m tall, with blackish bark and dense, stiff, spiny branches. The leaves are oval, 2–4.5 cm long and 1.2–2 cm broad, with a serrated margin. The flowersare 1.5 cm diameter, with five slightly creamy-white petals; they are produced shortly before the leaves in early spring, and are hermaphroditic and insect-pollinated. The fruit, called a "sloe" (slae, in the Scots language) is a drupe 10–12 mm diameter, black with a pale purple-blue waxy bloom, ripening in autumn in October or November when they are most ripe - usually after the first frosts. They are thin-fleshed, with a very strongly astringent flavour when fresh.[1]
The fruit is similar to a small damson or plum, suitable for preserves, but rather tart and astringent for eating, unless deeply frozen, as is practiced in eastern Europe. In rural Britain so-called sloe gin is made from them, though this is not a true gin but an infusion of vodka, gin, or neutral spirits with the fruit to produce a liqueur.[4][5] In a diary entry dated 22 August, 1938, George Orwell pasted a newspaper clipping of a Sloe Gin recipe.[6] In Navarra, Spain, patxaran is a popular liqueur made with sloes. Sloes can also be made into jam and, if preserved invinegar, are similar in taste to Japanese umeboshi.
It is extensively planted for hedging and for cover for game birds. The small thorns of the plant are relatively common causes of minor wounds in livestock, and these wounds often fester until the thorn is expelled or removed.
Straight blackthorn stems have traditionally been made into walking sticks and clubs (known in Ireland for example as a shillelagh).
The species is locally naturalised in New Zealand and eastern North America.[2]
A "sloe-thorn worm" used as fishing bait is mentioned in the 15th century work, The Treatyse of Fishing with an Angle, by Juliana Berners. The expression "sloe-eyed" for a person with dark eyes comes from the fruit, and is first attested in
Although Hawthorn is better known and certainly the most commonly used shrub in hedgerow planting, the Blackthorn (Prunus spinosa) is also often seen but perhaps not recognised. Sometimes known as mother of the woods it is a beautiful and characteristic feature of the British landscape. The Blackthorn is widespread and common in woods and along field verges. It is quick to seed and grow, forming hedges and thickets. The shrub, which can grow to 4 metres, has blackish bark and branches spreading in all directions, each twiglet ending in a thorn. Botanists distinguish only one variety, although some Blackthorn shrubs show evidence of hybridisation with bullace or other wild plums. Being the first common shrub to flower each year Blackthorn is easy to identify, its flowers are a welcome first sign of spring. It flowers on bare branches in March, the usual snap of cold weather in early spring prevents the shrub's leaves from unfolding from the bud - the result is a magnificent ebony-ivory contrast. The five-petalled flowers are largely solitary but occasionally appear in pairs, their scented blossom provides an early source of nectar for insects just emerging from hibernation. Following the flowering period the 25 to 40 millimetre, finely toothed, oval leaves emerge smattering emerald foliage in its dense, strong branches. These spines form a thorough protection to the nests of our feathered friends on the farm. From around mid-September to late October the Blackthorn's magnificent globular fruit, the sloe, ripens. The fruit has at first an alluring blue to purple bloom not unlike that of the blueberry, however this eventually changes to near black. The sloe ranges in size from 10 to 15 millimetres and although it is often referred to as a berry, it is in fact a true drupe; it contains a hard stone which encases a soft seed.
This bluish-black fruit is visible to birds and some of the larger fruit-eating birds gather sloes, later depositing the stone in droppings assisting in the dipersal of the species. The Blackthorn belongs to the rose family, which includes Crab Apple, Hawthorn, Rowan, Whitebeam and Wild Cherry; each of them having white or pinkish blossom. Occasionally it flowers prolifically in a cold spell, known as a Blackthorn winter. Although tough, the wood from the Blackthorn is of insufficient girth to be esteemed for its timber, however it is said to be fo suitable size and abundance to be adapted for a farmer's walking stick. Over the centuries there have been many mentions of the sloe, Hans Christian Andersen makes reference to the 'sloe bush' in his fairy tale, "What One Can Invent", although strangely, Shakespeare makes no mention of the fruit despite much evidence that numerous varieties of plum were already in our English country gardens. In fact, archaeological findings from 9th & 10th century Viking foodstuffs (Yorkshire) would suggest that sloes were a part of our forefathers' diet. Legend also has it that a Blackthorn stick was the weapon of choice especially in Ireland. Here in England it is seen as a sign of good luck and on New Year's Day crowns made from the plant were baked in the oven and carried to the nearest cornfield. After being burnt in the field, the ashes were scattered over the ridges of the first sown wheat, to bring success to the crop.
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