Blackthorn hedges are easy to miss for eleven months of the year, a tangle of dark, thorny wood that mostly just sits there. Then September comes and every hedge along every footpath in the country is suddenly hung with small, dusty blue-black fruit, and everyone remembers blackthorn exists.

Sloes are the fruit of the blackthorn, and they are, in their raw state, genuinely unpleasant. Bitter, mouth-puckeringly capable of turning your moth into a cat's bum and nothing like a plum despite being a close relative of one. Nobody eats a sloe straight off the branch more than once. What they're actually for is steeping, in gin, mostly, though not only, and that's where the whole plant redeems itself completely.

The catch is timing. Do it too early and the gin turns out thin and overly bitter. Wait for the traditional signal, the first proper frost, and you might be waiting until November (these days).

Why frost, or a freezer, actually works

The bitterness in a raw sloe comes largely from tannins sitting in rigid plant cell walls. Frost damages those cell walls, ice crystals forming inside the fruit physically rupture them, which softens the flesh and lets the sugars and juice out far more readily once the sloe is steeped in alcohol. A raw, unfrosted sloe steeped in gin gives you a thinner, harsher result, all bitterness and little of the deep, rich flavour sloe gin is known for.

Which is why almost every forager, cook, and gin enthusiast in the country does the same thing: picks the sloes whenever they look ripe, then bags them and puts them in the freezer overnight. A domestic freezer gets colder than most early UK frosts ever do, so it does the job more reliably and considerably faster. It's not cheating exactly because hey, it's the 21st century.

A hedge with a genuinely dark reputation

Blackthorn has never had an easy reputation. Its wood is famously the material of the Irish shillelagh, a walking stick that doubled as a weapon, and in older British folklore the tree was associated with witches, ill omens, and bad luck, largely thanks to its vicious thorns and its habit of flowering starkly white on bare black wood before a single leaf appears.

None of which stopped anyone eating what it produces. The fruit's reputation has always been kinder than the tree's, sloe gin has been a genuine British tradition for centuries, most households with a hedge nearby making a bottle or two every autumn without much ceremony about it.

How to actually go and get some

A hedge that spends eleven months being ignored, and one being the whole point of the walk.

What to actually make

The classic is sloe gin itself, and it's genuinely hard to beat on its own. Once you've got a bottle steeping, or an older batch finally ready, here's what to actually do with it beyond drinking it neat. It can be simply mixed into Champagne or Prosecco. I can't remember the name of the cocktail. Mostly because I don't remember much of the evening I tried it.

Classic Sloe Gin

Makes roughly 1 litre

Ingredients

• 500g sloes, frozen overnight (or genuinely frost-bitten)
• 250g granulated sugar
• 1 litre gin

1. Prick each sloe a few times with a fork, or freeze and thaw them, either splits the skin enough to let the juice out.
2. Layer sloes and sugar into a sterilised large bottle or jar, then top up with the gin.
3. Seal and shake gently. Store somewhere dark and give it a shake every few days for the first fortnight.
4. Leave for at least 3 months. Longer genuinely improves it, some leave a batch a full year.
5. Strain through muslin before drinking. The leftover boozy sloes are worth keeping, dip them in dark chocolate.

Vodka works as a straight swap if you want a cleaner, less junipery result.

Sloe Gin Fizz

Serves 1

Ingredients

• 50ml sloe gin
• 20ml fresh lemon juice
• 10ml sugar syrup
• Soda water, to top
• Ice

1. Shake the sloe gin, lemon juice and sugar syrup hard with ice for about 10 seconds.
2. Strain into a tall glass filled with fresh ice.
3. Top with soda water and give it one gentle stir.
4. Garnish with a lemon twist if you have one to hand.

Sharper and more refreshing than sloe gin neat, good for using up an older batch that's turned a bit syrupy.

Autumn Sloe Spritz

Serves 1

Ingredients

• 40ml sloe gin
• Ginger beer, to top
• A few thin apple slices
• Ice

1. Fill a large wine glass or tumbler with ice.
2. Pour in the sloe gin.
3. Top slowly with ginger beer, the spice works well against the sloe's sweetness.
4. Drop in the apple slices and give it one gentle stir.

Low-effort, genuinely good for a bonfire evening, and easy to make non-alcoholic by using an alcohol-free gin alternative. It is, bloody tasty.

Sloe Gin Sour

Serves 1

Ingredients

• 50ml sloe gin
• 25ml fresh lemon juice
• 15ml sugar syrup
• 1 egg white (optional)
• Ice

1. If using egg white, shake all ingredients together without ice first for about 15 seconds, this builds the froth.
2. Add ice and shake hard again for another 10-15 seconds.
3. Strain into a chilled glass, no ice.
4. A couple of dashes of bitters on top of the foam finishes it properly, if you have them.

Leave the egg white out entirely if you'd rather, it'll just be a little less textured on top.

Things that don't come up much

A hedge worth stopping for

This isn't a rare event, blackthorn hedges are everywhere, along footpaths, field boundaries, roadside verges the length of the country. It's just easy to walk past one for eleven months a year without noticing it's even there. September is the one month it's impossible to miss.

Take a bag on your next walk. Freeze what you get. Mix with gin. Give it three months. Open at Christmas. That's the whole process.