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The Red Death is a sweet cocktail that blends a number of fruity flavors together: berry, orange, pineapple, peach and blackberry. The result is pretty delicious.

The Ingredients

This is a drink that features Southern Comfort, the fruit-infused whiskey liqueur you may know from other drinks like the Alabama Slammer.

Along with that, it blends blackberry brandy, sloe gin, orange juice and pineapple juice.

The Taste

It’s fruity and sweet, but also fascinating and complex. That’s because the fruit flavors it blends together aren’t such a common combination.

The blackberry adds a deep, dark note. The peach from the Southern Comfort gives the whole drink a much-needed mellow note, blending all the other flavors together.

The sloe gin adds a very sweet berry flavor, which contrasts with the citrus in a wonderful way. Sloe gin is intense, but it’s great when it’s blended with other complementary flavors.

Picking Good Sloe Gin

If you’ve had sloe gin before and found it cloyingly sweet and gross, you just need a better bottle. That’s not always so easy to find in the US. Really good sloe gin should taste like like slightly tart berries with notes of juniper or spices.

Look for:

Sipsmith Sloe Gin: Made with hand-picked sloe berries, this sloe gin has a rich and fruity flavor profile. It balances sweetness with notes of cherry, plum, and almond, which makes it far more interesting than a syrupy sweet bottle.

Monkey 47 Sloe Gin: This premium gin brand from Germany makes their Sloe Gin with 47 botanicals and macerated with wild sloe berries. It’s nicely complex, with a blend of fruitiness, herbal undertones, and a hint of bitterness.

Hayman’s Sloe Gin: This one is wild English sloe berries infused into London Dry Gin. The result is a smooth and full-bodied gin with a vibrant ruby color. It offers an excellent balance of sweet and tart flavors.

Plymouth Sloe Gin: Plymouth is a well-respected gin brand with a rich history that dates back to the 18th century. Their Sloe Gin is made by steeping sloe berries in Plymouth Gin, which gives it a deep and complex flavor of ripe red fruits, almonds, and subtle botanical notes.

Occasions for Serving

This is an easy enough drink to make, despite it having so many ingredients. It’s easy to make in advance for guests, big-batch style.

It goes over well at parties because most people love it. If you’ve got any guests who refuse to drink a fruity cocktail for love nor money, it’s their loss. Toss ’em a beer.

Because of the name, I recommend this one for Halloween parties. It’s almost blood red, the name includes the word “death”, and it’s absolutely delicious.

This drink is also wonderful for enjoying after dinner, as a dessert drink. It’s sweet enough to replace a light dessert, with a nice dose of alcohol.

This is a great drink to savor and enjoy. Try one the next time you’ve got time to sit a while and sip along. It’s great for unwinding.

I actually recommend it for an evening when you’re reading a book or watching TV. It’s a nice little treat for when you’re just staying in and chilling out.

Food Pairings

This isn’t the easiest cocktail to pair with food because it has such a complex flavor. It’s great with salty snacks – pretzels, nuts, parmesan crisps. It’s also good with straightforward dishes like lemon pepper chicken or fish.

But probably the best way to enjoy it is all by itself, in the evening or even as a nightcap.

Red Death Cocktail Recipe

Name: Red Death Cocktail Recipe
Prep time: 5 min
Total time: 5 min
Yield: 1
Cuisine: American
Ingredients: 1 ounce Southern Comfort; 1 ounce vodka; 1/2 ounce sloe gin; 1/2 ounce triple sec; 1/2 ounce blackberry brandy; 2 ounce orange juice; 1 ounce pineapple juice