Long Bar, Raffles Hotel, Singapore, 1915.
| 1½ oz · 45 ml | GIN | 40 % |
| ½ oz · 15 ml | CHERRY HEERING | 24 % |
| ¼ oz · 8 ml | BENEDICTINE | 40 % |
| ¼ oz · 8 ml | ORANGE CURACAO | 40 % |
| ½ oz · 15 ml | LIME JUICE | |
| 4 oz · 120 ml | PINEAPPLE JUICE | |
| 1 barspoon | GRENADINE | |
| 1 dash | ANGOSTURA BITTERS | 44 % |
| 1 oz · 30 ml | SODA WATER |
1 oz taken as 30 ml in the metric column.
1 oz taken as 30 ml in the metric column.
| Pre-batch | 7.2 oz mixed with ice, 0.93 oz of it pure alcohol |
|---|---|
| Melt | Shaken: +20 % of the pre-batch, +1.44 oz of water |
| Topped | Poured after the melt, kept whole: soda water 1 oz, no alcohol |
| Served | 7.2 + 1.44 + 1 = 9.64 oz in the glass, 0.93 oz of it alcohol |
| Strength | 0.93 ÷ 9.64 = 9.7 % ABV as served |
| Ethanol | 0.93 oz × 29.57 ml × 0.789 g/ml = 22 g · about 152 kcal from the alcohol alone |
FROM GIN
The pine note in juniper berries, and the reason gin tastes like a forest. Co-distilled with the spirit during production. Found in actual pine trees, rosemary, basil, and a good London Dry. The "Christmas tree" smell of gin and the smell of a forest floor share a single molecule.
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FROM BENEDICTINE + BITTERS
The bitter from gentian root, used across Campari, Aperol, sweet vermouth, Angostura, and most amari. Bitter compounds activate TAS2R taste receptors that evolved to detect plant alkaloids. The same machinery that makes broccoli taste bad to children also makes a Negroni taste like an adult ordered it.
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FROM PINEAPPLE · the grape candy note
The grape-candy / Welch's-grape-juice aroma. Concord grapes carry it in concentrations no European wine grape (Vitis vinifera) approaches; American Vitis labrusca grapes, native to the northeastern US, hold methyl anthranilate as a signature. The "foxy" note in North American grape juice and artificial grape candy both come from the same molecule. Also used as the standard bird repellent on commercial fruit crops; birds find it intolerable.
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Gin, Cherry Heering, Benedictine, orange curaçao, lime, pineapple, grenadine, Angostura and soda. Nine ingredients: tiki complexity applied to a Southeast Asian bar format. The notes are Cherry Heering's benzaldehyde, Benedictine's 27 botanicals, Angostura's bark and alpha-pinene from the gin.
Ngiam Tong Boon is credited with inventing the Singapore Sling at the Long Bar of the Raffles Hotel around 1915. In the hotel's telling, it was created for women: the colonial-era social rule was that ladies could only drink fruit juice in public, so Ngiam disguised a serious cocktail beneath the pink fruit-juice color. The original recipe was lost; Raffles Hotel's modern version was reconstructed from Ngiam's nephew's memory in the 1970s. The Long Bar still serves it, with monkey nuts strewn across the floor (deliberately; it's the bar's signature).
