This East London-based distillery was the winner of our sloe gin taste test. Using ingredients foraged from in and around East London and Essex, we loved its sweetness and smooth texture. Flavours of citrus peel, burnt sugar, liquorice and dark berries all shone through, too, and the finish on this gin is long, while the aftertaste is warm and smooth. We love sloe gin, and it's most certainly an underrated drink. Rich berry red in colour and sweet to taste, sloe gin is the perfect winter warming tipple when the weather starts to turn a little nippier. Take your pre-frozen sloes, or fresh ones that you’ve poked a bunch of holes in, and tip them into a 2 litre Kilner jar (or divide between two smaller ones). When it’s time to decant, use a very fine sieve over a bowl (or line a normal sieve with a muslin cloth) and pour the mixture out. Then divide it into clean, dry bottles and label. Although it’s ready to drink now, it’ll still change over time, so try not to drink it all at once! You’d be forgiven for thinking that ‘shooting Gins’ are for doing shots in bars, but actually, they were favoured by the British aristocracy for sipping from a hip flask in the countryside when shooting birds and game.

Asda Groceries

Colder weather and dark evenings call for a warming drink, and while Gin is traditionally thought of as a refreshing summer drink on hot days, there’s no need to step away from the Gin bottle entirely. The Sacred Distillery, based in Highgate in London, produces both excellent quality classic Gin, as well as some slightly unusual ones (Christmas Pudding Gin, anyone?). For a long time, though, Sloe Gin didn’t have the best reputation. At the height of the 18th century was the ‘Gin Craze’; a time where consumption of Gin grew rapidly in Britain, and particularly in London, when it’s said that the average Brit was drinking 14 gallons of the stuff each year. You’d be forgiven for thinking that Master Distiller Mark Marmont had left out the berries when creating this, as it’s a completely clear liquid. But you’d be wrong! 58 Distilled Sloe Gin is just that - distilled!Fast forward to today, and Sloe Gin is having a revival. No longer considered only something your granny liked, the big Gin producers have put lots of care and attention into creating Sloe Gins that are deliciously sweet, tart and balanced. Made with gin and sloe drupes, a small fruit that has a sharp, sour taste, you can drink sloe gin neat, as a hot toddy, with ice and ginger ale, or even in a shot of Prosecco. Sloes grow in hedgerows - historically used to divide land in England - and are abundant in the British countryside, making Sloe Gin production easy. Consider how nuts about Gin the English are… it was an obvious pairing and a match made in heaven. Technically, it’s not really a Gin, it’s a Liqueur. That’s because there are stringent rules about what can and can’t be classified as Gin (if you wanna geek-out about different types of Gin, have a read of this).

Gordon’s London Dry Gin

So the sloes go into the still along with the rest of the botanicals when creating the Gin, rather than infusing them afterwards.If that all seems like too much hassle, or you can’t find any sloes where you are, we recommend you cheat and buy it! The good thing about making your own Sloe Gin at home, is that the hard part is done for you. There’s no distillation involved. As this is a Gin-based Liqueur, start with the base. In what is our biggest gin test to date, our expert panel put sloe gin to the test. Tasting them completely blind, each sample was tested neat, and then again, diluted with a small amount of water. This was to ensure the flavour was not impaired by any mixer.

Sloe Gin - Tesco Groceries Sloe Gin - Tesco Groceries

Warming and spicy, this sloe gin is pleasant with a medium-sweet taste. The sloe berry sweetness and juniper gin flavours could be more married but the overall taste was satisfying. An enjoyable gin, testers liked the prominent fruity, berry flavours, describing this sloe gin as “warming and syrupy.” Light in acidity, and with a decent linger of taste and warmth. Sloes are native to Europe and have long been used by the British to create ‘shooting Gins’ (as they used to be known). Looking for a sloe gin? Look no further as DrinkSupermarket has a range of sloe gins from names such as Monkey 47, Gordon's and Sipsmith. Make like the British aristocracy and sip it neat, or try it chilled over ice to cut through some of the syrupyness.

This gin reminded some of our testers of cherry bakewell, with many enjoying its fresh forest fruit qualities. The heat of the alcohol was a bit too prominent for some, however, but overall it was found to have an enjoyable, smooth texture. Add the Gin, the sugar, seal the jar, and shake well. Once a day for the next seven days, give the jar a good shake. Leave it in a cool dark place for two months. The quality of the Gin was poor - made with turpentine and all sorts - so adding sloes to it masked the flavour, but was dubbed ‘the poor man’s Port’.