I usually found I’d had enough of stabbing by the time I’d finished picking them… 
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In France, you can buy a spirit alcohol for cooking purposes / DIY drink preparation…not sure whether it is grape or grain spirit, probably grain (or potato) as I guess it is cheaper to make industrially.
don’t be a spoil-sport… 
we can dream, can’t we… 
… actually, you’ve a valid point… the other bottles have been delicious… so these last ones probably can’t be better… but certainly not worse… hurrah.
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moving on from just sloe gin
this is delicious… and some drunken plums are always to be found stored in my cupboard. Nowadays I use the roughest eau de vie instead of armagnac …
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Alcool pour fruits available in any supermarket, not for cooking per se. What we call alcool neutre so it has no detectable taste, made of whatever is to hand, often sugar beet, grape must etc. It’s just ethyl alcohol and water so it is up to you to tart it up however you like. It is probably less likely to have a terrible effect than very rough god knows what tramp brandy etc.
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That is worth knowing, thank you @vero. I keep seeing it in the supermarkets but haven’t dared try it up until now 
We have sloes in the garden, unfortunately, as they become a blackthorn forest given any chance at all so we are trying to get rid of them (at the same time as culling the brambles…)
Hugh Fearnley-Whittingstall’s fruit book had a recipe for a creme de cassis variant using vodka and I have to say that this is considerably more flavourful than the commercial varieties, so perhaps I’ll follow some of the excellent examples from the rest of you and try doing other fruit. Thank you for starting this thread @Ancient_Mariner
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Probably because its made with love and not a cost accountant. 
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We would strip the branches, get the whole crop indoors… then the whole family would help … delicately sticking each fruit several times with a toothpick…
No blood was shed, although the air was blue on occasions if someone got a bit slap-happy… 
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Gloves?
good heavens… a toothpick and a sloe… not exactly Zorro activity… trouble was, chatting whilst sticking… can slacken concentration… and bursting out laughing was the major cause for grief…
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We also make beer from a kit, mince pork/beef and make sausages, pickle olives from a friend’s tree, make many types of bread, forage for sweet chestnuts, hazelnuts and walnuts, grow most of our salad and herbs, have several fruit trees and keep chickens.
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happy memories… chatting over the phone to my brother in Kent… sudden loud noise… no problem he said… just something exploding…
His place still smelt like a brewery, when we visited a couple of weeks later…
have not made sloe gin - due to sparseness of sloes in our part of Scotland.
OTH we had an ample supply of brambles
500 - 800 gr brambles
200 gr sugar
2 fresh bay leaves
1 ltr vodka or gin
add all together in a large container/jar
shake at least once a week for about 2 month
filter through a cheesecloth/coffee filter
drink resulting liquid mixed with tonic or prosecco
eat fruit over ice cream
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Thank you Bettina! Very good to have suitable recipes for both the rampant pests in my garden
you are welcome - the recipe/ratio also works for rhubarb and raspberries
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Excellent - thank you! Since planting the rather prolific autumn-“fruiting” rhubarb, I am a bit overrun with that too
Sounds delicious !
Cieux
is this a trick question…
les ciels bleus… blue skies…
I think it is our old friend predictive text interfering and that Tory meant sloes not skies. Ciel has two plurals, which is a fun grammar thing 
like words that change gender as they go from singular to plural etc.
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