Other Spirits: Sloe Gin
Sloe Gin Fizz Cocktail
Sloe Gin Fizz Cocktail Ingredients
1 oz. Plymouth Sloe Gin
1 oz. Plymouth Gin
0.75 oz. Simple syrup
0.75 oz. Fresh lemon juice
1 Egg white
Soda
Garnish
none
Sloe Gin Fizz Cocktail Preparation
Separate the egg whites from the yolk and place the whites in a shaker. Add the remaining ingredients except soda. Combine tins without ice and shake hard for fifteen seconds. Add ice and shake very hard. Fine strain into a Collins glass. Allow the meringue from the egg to rise to the top and set in a thick layer. Top with soda.
Sloe Gin Fizz Cocktail Story
A peculiar victim of lost ingredients, the Sloe Gin Fizz never enjoyed much of a golden age like many other once-forgotten classic cocktails. Sloe gin itself is a delicately fruity liqueur made by infusing gin with sloe drupes, a tart, wild blackberry found all over England. The fizz’s first print mention, in 1941, stresses the need for a quality sloe gin to mix with lemon juice, sugar, and club soda. American bartenders, however, had developed a penchant for subpar substitutions: just as they wantonly swapped sticky-sweet apricot liqueur in recipes calling for unobtainable apricot brandy, they served Sloe Gin Fizzes with a domestically-produced liqueur that was nothing like the real thing.The same bastardized sloe gin puzzlingly played a starring role in the so-called dark ages of the cocktail - the 1980s, the era of oversized martini glasses and obscenely named shots. To the benefit of anybody hoping to experience what a proper Sloe Gin Fizz should taste like, quality sloe gin has undergone a resurgence in production, while alternative sloe berry-like liqueurs produced outside of England are only beginning to gain the attention the deserve.