By Alasdair Crosby
As I drew near the blackberry bushes, another person walking along the path towards me, seeing the square, empty soft scoop ice cream container in my hand, said: ‘You should have brought a wheel barrow. The bushes are full of them.’
This was early August, and the killer drought had not yet affected the size of the blackberries. But at that time, she was right. Lots and lots and lots of fat, black, juicy blackberries. How can something that is free taste so good? I filled up my ice cream container in no time at all. My hands are very Lady Macbeth-like – but who cares? On my way back to the car I pass some other walkers who realise what I have been doing. I show them my haul.
‘What are you going to do with them?’ they ask in friendly curiosity. ‘Blackberry crumble? Blackberry cake?’
‘Certainly not,’ I answer, ‘forget about crumble and cake. This is going to be Blackberry Vodka.’
They seem surprised – but interested in what they suddenly realise might be a good idea.
Blackberries are a very healthy fruit – I hope that doesn’t put you off. Here are some delicious, unhealthy and useful things to do with blackberries and sloes. And just in case writing about making vodka might draw the attention of the police, they might care to note that I am not making hooch at home – the base spirit is bought from the shops. But the fruit marinades in it for about three months, and then – in time for Christmas – there are lots of delightful drinks to enjoy.
The blackberries that I have been collecting this past week will be transmuted – an apotheosis – not just into Blackberry Vodka, but also into Blackberry Brandy, Blackberry Whisky, Blackberry Rum and Crème de Mûre – that constituent of a Kir: a shot of it can be poured into the bottom of a glass and then topped up with a sparkling wine.
Sloes, of course, are famous as the base of Sloe Gin, but Sloe Calvados is a good drink as well. Then there is the Basque liqueur, Patxaran, made with Anisette. I have already seen the first sloes hanging on the bushes – every year the season seems to begin earlier. Climate change? There is some compensation in an earlier sloe season.
Shortly, the little dark blue berries will be strung out along a bush’s branches like notes on a stave of sheet music of a rural symphony. In due course, once you have decanted the liquid off the berries, you can reuse the by now colourless berries by adding red wine, some sugar, and a spot of brandy – and then, after a month or so, guess what? Sloe Port!
The only drawback is pricking each sloe with a needle so as to encourage the juice to be released: ‘Sloe, sloe, prick prick sloe’, as Edmundo Ross didn’t quite say. It is helpful to do this if there is something interesting to listen to on the radio at the same time.
Hawthorn gin was a slight disappointment – a lot of hard work dealing with the tiny haws and no great flavour in the end result. (Hawthorn ketchup was more than disappointing; the end result looked like vomit. When I served it up at the dinner table, my son immediately reached for the Heinz tomato ketchup and we threw the untasted revolting-looking hawthorn ketchup away). But there is always some disappointment in life to offset against other undoubted successes.
So much for my hunter-gathering activities. I was interested the other day to look round someone’s ‘edible garden’. I feel I have the edge on him with a ‘drinkable garden’. Gooseberry gin is a very good tipple, either with tonic, or neat as a digestif after dinner. In a previous summer, when I was also making rhubarb gin and crab apple brandy, and sage liqueur and crème de cassis and apple brandy and kümmel and limoncello … and… and… and…, I seemed to be going down to the local shop every day to buy the cheapest bottle of spirit and a large bag of sugar… goodness knows what the shop assistant thought of my diet.
I will not give exact recipes for any of these – they can all be found on the Internet. Also, I’m not anxious to receive stern missives from lawyers on the subject of copyright infringement. Basically, for any of these concoctions you need a bottle of spirit and sugar – and a certain amount of will power not to broach the Kilner jars too soon.
There is one, recipe, however, that was given to me by a French friend, with whom I have long lost touch. I am ungallant enough to remember the recipe but not her name. Here it is: it is called ‘Quarante Quatre’ (Forty-four):
44 deep cuts in an orange
44 coffee beans
44 sugar lumps
1 litre of calvados
Put everything in a Kilner jar or large bowl and leave for 44 days, shaking occasionally.
As a way of relaxing at weekends and enjoying the countryside, foraging for the constituents of an after-dinner drink takes some beating. Only if you are doing so in combination with walking the dog does one get the problem of the dog getting really bored with this unexpected impediment to the walk.
Anyway, may I, at this early stage in August, beat the shops with their annual early autumn display of Christmas stock and winter wonderland gift grottos and be the first to offer readers a merry and a very festive Christmas – and also a health and safety warning: once you have had a glass or two of these concoctions, it would not be wise to take a walk along a cliff path.
This article first appeared in the Jersey Evening Post, and is reproduced by kind permission
