Sorted Food creates gin liqueur with Sloemotion

Sorted Food, the UK-based social media movement focused on home cooking, has partnered with Sloemotion Distillery to launch a gin liqueur.

The Strawberry Gin Liqueur with Vanilla and Black Pepper is the first drink released by Sorted Food, which has a following of almost 2.6 million on YouTube and 292,000 on Instagram.

It comes after Sorted Food featured Yorkshire’s Sloemotion Distillery in a video on its YouTube channel and commended its environmentally friendly ethos, including its support of local rewilding and biodiversity projects.

To create the liqueur, the teams used strawberries that were grown in Yorkshire by farmer and food entrepreneur Annabel Makin-Jones. They diverted surplus fruit from

Annabel’s farm (which supports her business, Annabel’s Deliciously British) and combined them with Sloemotion’s Hedgerow Gin.

The distillery uses a temperature-efficient still to distil its gin, which uses around 80 per cent less energy than a traditional copper pot still. It also forages local botanicals including elderflower, wildflower hay, nettle leaf, crab apple and rosehip.

Ben Ebbrell, Sorted Food co-founder, said: “At Sorted Food we’ve spent many years shining a light on how food and drink is produced, as well as helping our community to reduce their food waste. Discovering the Sloemotion Distillery was a revelation, and after many attempts at my own homemade gin, I am thrilled to be joining forces to create the first drink that our community will be able to enjoy too. Not only has it helped save much of last year’s strawberry crop from going to waste, but it’s the perfect drink to enjoy during an awesome summer of celebrations for the UK.”

Founded in 2002, Sloemotion Distillery was itself the result of a glut of ingredients. A local farming initiative to improve wildlife habitats resulted in an abundance of sloes, which the distillery’s co-founder Joff Curtoys, a trained ecologist, saw as an opportunity.

Of the new gin liqueur, Joff said: “We were delighted to be asked by the guys at Sorted Food to create this exceptional and quintessentially British summer product. It smacks of sun-drenched garden parties and pitchers full of deliciously fruity cocktails. We particularly love that, like us, Sorted Food recognises the issues that face the environment; our two businesses teaming up helps get the message out there with a product that has sustainability at its heart.”

A limited run of the gin is available to buy from sloemotiondistillery.com.