Glasto-Sloe Wedding


For this Spring wedding at the Great Lodge in Essex, we were set a particular challenge.

The best man, a rural veterinarian had seven litres of home-made sloe gin which was ours to do with as we pleased.

The wedding was loosely gin and Glastonbury themed - think tables named after particular distilleries, flowers in empty gin bottles and a seating plan that was a miniature replica of Worthy Farm in peak festival flow.

It was enough to make you a little nostalgic for the English summers of your imagined childhood...

Anyway, we stuck to a homespun, hedgerow theme for the cocktail hour serve - a sloe gin fizz - which was a massive success, and even had the mother of the bride (a known gin connoisseur) texting us for the recipe after the big day.

Alongside this, which was batched up and served on the lawn in the early evening sunshine, we also provided a bottle of our home aged Lady Grey gin and a small fix for the groom's hipflask which married sloe gin with Irish whisky as a small nod to his heritage.

Sloe Gin Fizz

30ml sloe gin
30ml dry gin
20ml fresh lemon juice
10ml sugar syrup (1:1)
soda water

Shake first four ingredients with cubed ice. Strain into a chilled highball glass and top with soda water.

Blackthorn Flask

30ml sloe gin
20ml Irish whisky (we used Jameson Black Barrel)
20ml sweet vermouth (we used Cocchidi Torino)
barspoon of violet liqueur
2 dashes Bittermens Burlesque cocktail bitters

Combine all ingredients in a hip flask. Sneak surruptitiously to the groom when it looks like fortitude is required.

Barrel Aged Lady Grey Gin

Fox & Beagle house gin aged for six weeks in a barrel that had previously held our Lady Grey Manhattan.

Planning a wedding?

Contact us now to chat about crafty cocktail plans to get your guests talking.