Island Life Magazine Ltd December 2013/January 2014 | Page 47

COUNTRY LIFE

coffee
break
article

Sam Biles in the country
Sam's
countryside
tip!

...

Beware the dangers
of barbed wire

W

ire fences are not for climbing over.
It ruins the tension of the wire and
shortens their life as well as being
dangerous to you especially if you
slip while climbing over barbed wire! Use gates
wherever possible and if you climb a gate, climb
it at the hinge end where it is better supported
and not the hasp end which is not!
Follow the Countryside Code:
http://www.naturalengland.org.uk/ourwork/
enjoying/countrysidecode/default.aspx

Look out for delicious Christmas
drinks made from wild fruits

T

here is a long tradition on the
Island of making fruit gins or
vodkas ideal for Christmas
parties. The recipes are simple
and are a mix of fruit, sugar and your
spirit of choice. The ingredients are
combined and sealed in a jar or bottle to
steep before being strained and decanted.
Perhaps the most common of these is
Sloe Gin which makes good use of this
beautiful but hard and bitter fruit of the
blackthorn. People work to their own
recipes often handed down through
families. Some will not pick the fruit
until it has had a softening frost on it,
others pierce the skin of each berry with a
needle to help release the juice.
Putting sloes on trays in a freezer both
softens them and splits them, saving a
lot of work. Opinion is divided as to how
long the sloes must steep in the liquor
– too long can impart a bitter woody
taste and to short may not bring enough

flavour out to infuse into the spirit. Several
months must be the minimum but some
decant last year’s gin to free up the vessels
for this year’s after 12 months. People
have different tastes and the amount of
sugar added can be varied to suit.
The fruit gin can be made in bottles or
demi-johns. One excellent vessel because
of its wide neck is the large plastic
mineral water bottle available from larger
supermarkets. This allows room for the
fruit to be put in and being plastic is light
enough to be shaken to get the process
of infusion going. A simple recipe for
this sized bottle would be to fill it about
one-third to half-full of washed and
frozen sloes and between 500g and 1Kg of
sugar (according to taste) before topping
up with gin allowing some air at the top.
Shaking dissolves the sugar and bruises
the sloes; then leave in a dark cupboard
for at least four months. Decant back into
the gin bottles – and enjoy!

The basic
principles
of the above
recipe can
be varied to
many fruits
though soft
fruits such as
blackberries, raspberries and strawberries
collapse and therefore you get a cloudier
and less-attractive liquid which needs
more filtration and care. Harder fruit
such as sloes, damsons and quince are
excellent. Gin and vodka are the best
spirits being fairly neutral – brandies
and whiskeys can work but more care is
needed due to their distinctive flavours
which may not match every fruit. Quince
vodka has a beautiful honeyed golden
colour and a rich, aromatic flavour that
makes it truly exquisite – it seems to
benefit from a longer ageing process
improving after a year with the fruit.
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