Eggcorn Forum

I’ve just tentatively sampled a little sloe gin, which this year I’ve made for the first time. Patience is required in its preparation, which is probably why I’ve never made it before, but it has been worth the wait. It occurred to me, lifting the glass to my screaming lips, that it is as much a slow as a sloe gin. It’s eggcornish possibilities are too blatant to dwell upon but, looking at the keyboard, there is also much scope for finger-slip. These examples, I hope, skip that likelihood.

Before I ever encountered sloe gin, I thought it was “slow gin” and thus was gin made by some slow-distillation process. After learning that it was “sloe gin”, named after the sloe berry, I still had no idea what to expect. The sloe berry is the brutally sour and highly astringent fruit of the prickly blackthorn bush …

(I said the recipe was easy; I didn’t say it was quick. Some experts recommend leaving the fruit and gin to steep for as long as six months. Maybe that’s why some people think the liqueur is called “slow gin.”)

I have been on a quest for a truly great sloe gin fizz since first learning of them, only a little over a year ago. Although at the time I thought it was slow gin fizz. I guess that shows my unworldliness in matters alcoholic.

Slow Gin? No! S-L-O-E Gin. Sloes are little berries, that grow wild in hedgerows all over England and the reason you might have never heard of them up until now, is that they’re not widely cultivated because they have an off-taste