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SLOE SLOE QUICK QUICK SLOE
02/10/2025
Sloes are abundant this year and can be found in many hedgerows and shrubby greenspaces, but be quick before the season ends[1]. This fruit, a small but sour plum, is produced by the deciduous shrub blackthorn Prunus spinosa. The “spinosa” epithet in the scientific name rightly describes the spines on the bushes which make picking the fruit an activity requiring care. Patience is worthwhile, though, because of all the uses sloes have. They are ripe and ready for picking when dark blue and a bit squashy between your fingers. The berry crop varies from year to year, but this year’s, as with many fruits, is a bumper one.
Probably the most famous employment of sloes is for that Christmas celebratory tipple, sloe gin. For this, you should either wait until after the first frost before picking, or pick when ripe and freeze them before you start to make the gin, so that you don’t have to prick them. Recipes for sloe gin are easy to find on line, for example on the BBC’s Countryfile site at https://tinyurl.com/2nufajvb. Remember you have to buy the gin, though!
There are lots of other things you can do with sloes, but, although not poisonous (they belong to the Rosaceae, a family containing very few species with toxins) they are very sour in their natural state. Here are a few worthwhile uses (again with recipes easy to find on the web):
- Sloe vodka (as for sloe gin) or sloe whisky
- Sloe wine or port
- Sloe syrup
- Sloe jelly
- Sloe plum cheese
- Sloe chocolate.
I had not come across sloe chocolate and this requires ripe, pricked or previously frozen sloes to be spread in a layer in a tray, sprinkled with ground cinnamon and grated orange peel, then covered evenly with melted dark chocolate. The tray is then put in the freezer to set hard. Sounds delicious – I must try this!
Betts Ecology have sloes on many of our sites and we encourage blackthorn in our hedgerows. Again, please read our foraging guide (see footnote) if you are going sloe picking. Cheers!
[1] If you are intending to pick sloes on any of our managed sites, do please read our foraging policy carefully first. You can find it at https://bettsecology.co.uk/policies.
