Singapore Sling

A refreshing gin-based classic with cherry and herbal notes from its birthplace in colonial Singapore

The Singapore Sling was created at the Long Bar of the Raffles Hotel in Singapore, traditionally attributed to bartender Ngiam Tong Boon between approximately 1910 and 1915. The Raffles Hotel, opened in 1887 by the Armenian Sarkies brothers and named for Sir Stamford Raffles — the British colonial administrator who founded modern Singapore in 1819 — was the social center of colonial Singapore and the most prestigious hotel in Southeast Asia. The Long Bar, a ground-floor dining and drinking space characterized by its long bar counter and peanut-shell-strewn floor, served British colonial administrators, merchants, military officers, and international travelers throughout the colonial period. The original Singapore Sling recipe was not preserved in writing, and successive generations of Raffles bartenders prepared the drink from memory, with the formula drifting over time. The hotel reconstructed an official recipe in the 1970s using historical accounts and a recipe card discovered in the hotel's records — a formula based on gin, Cherry Heering, Bénédictine, Cointreau, grenadine, pineapple juice, lime juice, and Angostura bitters that has been the Raffles standard since. Somerset Maugham and Rudyard Kipling were among the writers who drank at Raffles and referenced its atmosphere in their work. The Sling format itself descended from the 18th-century spirit-water-sugar-spice preparation that Jerry Thomas documented in its American form.