Gin Cocktails
Singapore Sling Cocktail
Singapore Sling Cocktail Ingredients
2 oz. Plymouth Gin
0.5 oz. Pierre Ferrand Dry Curaçao
0.5 oz. Cherry Heering
0.5 oz. Bénédictine D.O.M.
0.5 oz. Fresh lime juice
0.5 oz. Fresh pineapple juice
Soda
Garnish
Brandied cherry
Fresh mint
Tropical fruit
Singapore Sling Cocktail Preparation
Fill a Louis bag with ice and crush with a mallet. Combine all ingredients in a Hurricane or tall footed glass or tiki mug and add crushed ice. Swizzle, add more crushed ice, and swizzle again. Top with soda, then top with crushed ice. Garnish with a combination of mint and pineapple leaves, lime wedges and pineapple wedges, and brandied cherries.
Singapore Sling Cocktail Story
Mixed drinks classified as ‘slings’ in the late 1800s were easily assembled and highly adaptable creations, enjoyed as rich flips in cold climates and refreshing highballs in the tropics. Gin Slings were the refresher of choice throughout colonial Southeast Asia, but once Singapore Slings were served at the storied Raffles Hotel in Singapore, the drink would become a timeless icon of the Asian Pacific. The hotel credits Chinese bartender and renaissance man Ngiam Tong Boon with creating the drink in 1915. While gin slings reportedly had a pinkish appearance as early as 1903, likely due to the addition of cherry brandy, a key component of the Singapore Sling, Ngiam elevated the rustic sling into a sophisticated modern cocktail by mixing in bitters. The drink’s popularity endured into the 1920s, when a young traveler named Ernest Raymond Beaumont Gantt had a taste long before he appropriated the recipe into his Don the Beachcomber tiki empire.