Singapore Sling
The rose-colored long drink of the Long Bar
Somewhere between a planter's veranda and a hotel bar with peanut shells underfoot, a tall glass went pink. Gin for the backbone, cherry for the blush, a thread of herbal liqueur borrowed from a monastery, and enough pineapple and lime to make the whole thing drink like a holiday. The Singapore Sling is a traveler's drink: it carries a century of argument about what belongs in it, and it still arrives at the table looking like the answer.
A tall, fruit-forward gin sling from Singapore's Raffles Hotel: gin, cherry liqueur, Benedictine, orange liqueur, pineapple, lime, grenadine and bitters, shaken and served over ice.
Ingredients
- 1.5 oz / 45 ml London dry gin
- 0.5 oz / 15 ml Cherry liqueur (Cherry Heering style)
- 0.25 oz / 7.5 ml Benedictine
- 0.25 oz / 7.5 ml Orange liqueur (Cointreau or dry curacao)
- 2 oz / 60 ml Pineapple juice, fresh or not-from-concentrate
- 0.5 oz / 15 ml Lime juice, fresh
- 0.25 oz / 7.5 ml Grenadine (pomegranate)
- 1 dash Angostura aromatic bitters
- optional short top, about 1 oz / 30 ml Soda wateroptional
- Technique
- Shaken
- Glass
- Sling
- Ice
- Cubed
- Prep
- 5 min · Intermediate
- Garnish
- Pineapple wedge and a brandied cherry on a pick; a lime wheel is a fine addition.
- Approximate strength
- about 14% ABV in the glass (Estimate. Ethanol from 45 ml gin at 40%, 15 ml cherry liqueur at 24%, 7.5 ml Benedictine at 40% and 7.5 ml orange liqueur at 40% is about 27.6 ml; pre-dilution volume about 158 ml; assumed 25% dilution from hard shaking gives roughly 198 ml and 13 to 14% ABV before any soda. A soda top lowers it to about 12%.)
- Allergens
- Sulfites
Method
Fill a sling or highball glass with cubed ice and set it aside to chill while you build the drink.
Frost the tall glass first; the story needs a cool room to walk into.
Measure the gin, cherry liqueur, Benedictine, orange liqueur, pineapple juice, lime juice, grenadine and bitters into a shaker tin.
Eight small pours, each one a different latitude.
Fill the shaker two-thirds with cubed ice, seal, and shake hard for 10 to 12 seconds until the outside of the tin is frosted and painful to hold.12s
Shake until the tin bites back; pineapple wants to be woken roughly.
Double strain through a fine mesh strainer into the ice-filled glass so the pineapple fibers stay behind and a smooth foam settles on top.
Fine strain, and watch the pink settle under its own small cloud.
If using soda, add about 1 oz (30 ml) on top and give one gentle lift with a barspoon; do not stir hard or the foam collapses.
One lift of the spoon, no more. The sparkle is a guest, not the host.
Garnish with a pineapple wedge and a brandied or maraschino cherry on a pick resting on the rim. Serve with a straw.
Fruit on the rim, like a flag planted somewhere warm.
Flavor notes
Pineapple and cherry on the nose, then juniper and a soft honeyed herbal note from the Benedictine. Medium-sweet with a clean lime finish; the bitters keep the fruit from turning candied. Less sweet than most tourist versions.
Variations
- 1922 Vermeire Straits Sling: 2 oz gin, 0.5 oz Benedictine, 0.5 oz dry cherry brandy, juice of half a lemon, 2 dashes orange bitters, 2 dashes Angostura, soda.
- 1890s-style Wondrich Reconstruction: 1 oz gin, 1 oz cherry brandy, 1 oz Benedictine optional, 1 oz lime, 3 dashes Angostura, soda.
Substitutions
- Cherry Heering: Luxardo Sangue Morlacco or another dark cherry liqueur · Keep the color and the stewed-cherry depth; kirsch (clear cherry eau-de-vie) makes the 1948 Embury-style drink, drier and paler.
- Benedictine: Yellow Chartreuse or Drambuie · Both carry honeyed herbal weight; use the same 0.25 oz.
- Cointreau: Dry orange curacao or triple sec · Pierre Ferrand dry curacao reads closer to what a 1920s bar would have poured.
- Grenadine: Homemade pomegranate syrup (equal parts pomegranate juice and sugar) · Avoid red-dyed corn syrup grenadine; it sweetens without the tart edge.
- Pineapple juice: Omit, raise lime to 0.75 oz (22 ml) and top with 2 oz (60 ml) soda · This is the 1922 Straits Sling shape and makes a drier, more spirit-led sling.
Without alcohol
Shake 2 oz (60 ml) pineapple juice, 0.5 oz (15 ml) lime juice, 0.25 oz (7.5 ml) grenadine, 0.25 oz (7.5 ml) tart cherry juice and 0.5 oz (15 ml) of a juniper-forward zero-proof gin alternative with ice, strain over fresh ice and top with 2 oz (60 ml) soda. Raffles itself serves a Singapore Sling Zero built on the same idea.
Batching
For 8 drinks combine 12 oz (360 ml) gin, 4 oz (120 ml) cherry liqueur, 2 oz (60 ml) Benedictine, 2 oz (60 ml) orange liqueur, 2 oz (60 ml) grenadine and 8 dashes bitters; keep refrigerated up to a week. On the day add 16 oz (480 ml) pineapple juice and 4 oz (120 ml) fresh lime juice, stir, and shake each 7 oz (210 ml) portion with ice to order so every glass gets its foam. Do not pre-dilute: pineapple juice separates and the foam only comes from shaking.
Origin and sources
Gin slings were being drunk in Singapore by 1897, and a pink sling is recorded in a Singapore newspaper in 1903. Raffles Hotel credits the drink to Ngiam Tong Boon, a Hainanese bartender who worked at the Long Bar from about 1899 and died in 1915. The earliest printed recipe is Robert Vermeire's 1922 Straits Sling (gin, Benedictine, dry cherry brandy, lemon, two bitters, soda); the name Singapore Sling settles in by the early 1930s. Pineapple juice and grenadine do not appear in any pre-war printed recipe. The modern Raffles formula rests on a 1936 bar chit and the hotel's 1970s revival, so the version most of the world knows is a hotel reconstruction, not a surviving 1915 document.
Contested: Three things are contested. Date: the hotel says 1915; newspaper evidence puts slings in Singapore from 1897, so the drink may predate Raffles' claim or evolve from an existing style. Cherry brandy: Vermeire wrote dry cherry brandy, David Embury (1948) wrote kirschwasser, Raffles says Cherry Heering, and David Wondrich argues for a cognac-based Bols or Heering on the basis of period liquor advertisements and descriptions of the drink as rosy. Pineapple and grenadine: the hotel says they were Ngiam's, confirmed by his nephew; skeptics date them to the 1970s relaunch. This record presents the modern Long Bar family of recipes as the headline spec and gives the 1922 and 1890s-style versions as documented variations.
- Singapore Sling (encyclopedia entry), Difford's Guide · secondary source, retrieved 2026-10-11
- Long Bar, Raffles Singapore, Raffles Hotels & Resorts · primary source, retrieved 2026-10-11
- Contested classics: four recipes and some Singapore Sling history, Australian Bartender (2017-05-10) · secondary source, retrieved 2026-10-11
Fact check: verified · Credit: The Fabled Pour editorial team