Cocktail & Other Recipes By Spirit Gin Cocktails

Smuggler’s Cove Straits Sling

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Updated 11/29/22
Smuggler's Cove Straits Sling cocktail in a collins glass with a lemon slice garnish and a black straw

Smuggler's Cove 

The Smuggler’s Cove Straits Sling comes from Martin Cate, bartender and owner of Smuggler’s Cove, the award-winning Tiki bar in San Francisco. The bar is known for stocking one of the country’s most impressive rum selections, but this drink skips rum entirely, instead calling on gin as its base spirit.

Gin isn’t a common ingredient in Tiki and tropical drinks, but it does make an appearance on occasion—most notably in cocktails like the Singapore Sling and the Suffering Bastard. Gin’s botanicals play nicely with a variety of citrus and other fruit juices, as well as orgeat and liqueurs, which all feature heavily in Tiki drinks. In this cocktail, gin props up Heering cherry liqueur, Benedictine (a French liqueur made from 27 herbs and spices), lemon juice, demerara syrup and two kinds of bitters. Club soda rounds the flavors out and provides effervescence with each sip.

Smuggler’s Cove Straits Sling shares several ingredients with the Singapore Sling, which also includes Herring cherry liqueur and Benedictine in addition to gin. Those similarities diverge in the juice and sweetener departments, though. The Singapore version calls for pineapple and lime juices, plus Grand Marnier, a richly flavored orange liqueur. The Smuggler’s Cove cocktail sticks to lemon juice and uses demarara syrup for sweetener, yielding a drink that’s a little sweet, a little tart and a lot delicious.

Ingredients

  • 1 1/2 ounces Plymouth gin

  • 1/2 ounce Heering cherry liqueur

  • 1/4 ounce Benedictine

  • 3/4 ounce lemon juice, freshly squeezed

  • 1/2 ounce demerara syrup

  • 1 dash Angostura bitters

  • 1 dash orange bitters

  • 2 ounces club soda, chilled

  • Garnish: lemon slice

Steps

  1. Add the gin, cherry liqueur, Benedictine, lemon juice, demerara syrup, Angostura bitters and orange bitters into a mixing glass with ice, and stir until well-chilled.

  2. Strain into a Collins glass filled with fresh ice.

  3. Top with the club soda.

  4. Garnish with a lemon slice.