🥃 Singapore Sling

Singapore Sling is a long pink cocktail of gin, cherry brandy, orange and herbal liqueurs and fruit juices. It is associated with the Long Bar of the Raffles hotel in Singapore. It is a bright, fruity, slightly spicy drink with a tropical image, served over ice with a piece of pineapple.

Ingredients. The current Raffles recipe, according to public information, contains gin, cherry brandy, Cointreau and Bénédictine, as well as pineapple and lime juices, grenadine and bitters. Recipes in other bars differ. Difford's Guide separately gives a modern version by Dale DeGroff, which does not match the original.

Author. According to the guide, the drink was created between 1899 and 1915 by Ngiam Tong Boon, a bartender at the Long Bar. The hotel gives 1915 as the year, but Difford's Guide questions this date. The sling as a type of drink (spirit, sugar, water) is older than Raffles, so Singapore only gave it a new variant. A small glass is not suitable here: a tall glass is needed to hold the ice and juices.

History. The Oxford Companion calls the Singapore Sling the best-known British sling. There was also a name Straits Sling, linked to the colonial Straits Settlements. Difford's Guide believes the original recipe from the 1910s has been lost. So today each bar interprets the drink in its own way, and the recipes can differ greatly in sweetness.

Why this matters to you. The fruity taste and bright colour distract from the amount of alcohol: there are three alcoholic ingredients here. The WHO reminds us that there is no safe level of alcohol consumption.