Monkey 47 Schwarzwald Sloe Gin

About Monkey 47

After serving honorably in World War II, Commander Montgomery “Monty” Collins of the Royal Air Force was discharged in 1951 and moved to the Northern Black Forest where he opened a country guest home nicknamed “The Wild Monkey.” The Black Forest area is notorious for producing some of the world’s finest fruit liqueurs, and so Collins eventually began experimenting with distillation. In time, he perfected the recipe for his very own gin, which became the signature spirit served at The Wild Monkey until the 1970s.

“When I heard about a special gin that contains classical spices and also ingredients from the Black Forest such as spruce shoots and lingonberries, I left my job and began doing research with the aim of bringing this gin back to life,” says Alexander Stein, who resurrected Collins’ gin. After two years of research and development, Stein, together with master distiller Christoph Keller, settled on a recipe that called for 47 unique ingredients. The ingredients include acacia, acorus, calamus, almond, angelica, bitter orange, blackberry, cardamom, cassia, chamomile, cinnamon, citron verbena, cloves, coriander, cranberries, cubeb, dog rose, elderflower, ginger, grains of paradise, hawthorn berries, hibiscus abelmoshus, hibiscus syriacus, honeysuckle, jasmine, kaffir lime, lavender, lemon, lemon balm, lemongrass, licorice, lingonberries, mondara didyma, nutmeg, orris, pimento, pomelo, rosehip, sage, sloe, and spruce.