A Curious Tale: Who Invented the Singapore Sling September 15, 2012 - Liquid Love - Tagged: albert yam , anniversary , bars , bartenders , cocktail , cocktails , drinks , family , geek , history , invented , ngiam dee saun , ngiam tong boon , origins , raffles hotel , singapore , singapore sling , who , wondrich - 21 comments Raffles Hotel, Singapore, is celebrating its 125th anniversary this month. (This despite the fact that the hotel didn’t open until 1 December 1887.) And, perhaps predictably, they’re celebrating with an anniversary cocktail, the 1887, based on the iconic Singapore Sling, with added champers, reduced pinkness and ye traditional oh-so-secret recipe. So, who invented the Singapore Sling? Now, if you believe the good folk at Raffles, their head bartender, Ngiam Tong Boon, invented the Singapore Sling in 1915. It was subsequently enjoyed by celebrities from Noel Coward to Somerset Maugham. And today the Singapore Sling is a tourist icon.

The Long Bar at Raffles Hotel is a routine stop on coach tours of the city, where folk crunch across a carpet of peanut shells to imbibe pink, sweet drinks churned out from premixes behind the bar. And at around US$25 per drink, with over a thousand sliding across the bar every day, the Singapore Sling is worth, at a conservative estimate, nigh on $10 million a year to the hotel. But it doesn’t stop there. The tourist end of the entertainment ghetto of Clarke Quay boasts a Singapore Sling Boutique devoted to premix versions of the cocktail (in fact, you can even buy Singapore Sling chocolates, which are every bit as tooth-hurty as the name would suggest). And upscale bars around the city will typically have at least one take on the Singapore Sling on the menu. The ones at Orgo are made with fresh fruits, while the Post Bar at the Fullerton Hotel offers variants including flavourings such as vanilla. But how much does the Singapore Sling really have to do with Raffles? Who invented the Singapore Sling? And how much does the drink that Raffles serves have to do with that invention?

Let’s start with the Raffles version, a recipe presented on cards in the bar, and work back. According to them, Ngiam Tong Boon, their head bartender, invented the Singapore Sling in 1915, and this is his recipe: 30 ml (1 oz) gin 15 ml (1/2 oz) cherry brandy 120 ml (4 oz) pineapple juice 15 ml (1/2 oz) lime juice 7.5 ml (1/4 oz) Cointreau 7.5 ml (1/4 oz) DOM Benedictine 10 ml (1/3 oz) grenadine A dash of Angostura bitters Garnish with a slice of pineapple and cherry. This is, surely, Ngiam Tong Boon’s original recipe, right? The one he invented, locked up in a chest and kept closely guarded, as with all the best secret recipe stories? Well, umm, no.

It’s based on a recipe scrawled on the back of a till receipt by a *customer* in 1936 who asked how the drink was made (at a time, intriguingly, when a Singapore Sling fizzy pop was circulating in the US). 1936 was three years after Raffles hotel went under new management, eighteen years after Boon died, and under six years before Japanese troops invaded Singapore, occupied Raffles and turned it into the Syonan Ryokan (Light of the South). Preservation of cocktail recipes was not a priority for either the Japanese or the Allies who used the building as a POW transit camp after the war. Let’s track back a little. As it happens, there are quite a few published recipes for the Singapore Sling. A Sling is one of the earliest types of cocktail, and typically appears as a mix of citrus, sugar, spirit and water, later soda water. So your entry level Gin Sling would be: lemon, sugar, gin and soda water, over ice. Look! No pineapple juice!

And, if you take a look at other cocktails with fruit juice from around this time, such as the Bronx (1906), (recipe via Diffordsguide ), you’ll find juice is a highlight rather than an all-embracing dilutant. 1½ shot Bombay Original London dry gin ¾ shot Martini Extra dry vermouth ¾ shot Martini Rosso sweet vermouth 1 shot Freshly squeezed orange juice The Bronx, here, has three shots of booze to one shot of juice, and that’s not an atypical ratio by any means. Now, the first recipes that appear for the Singapore Sling in old cocktail books – Robert Vermeire (1922), Harry Craddock (1930), Charles H. Baker (1939) and Trader Vic (1948) – all feature gin, cherry brandy and soda. The good ones include lemon, most include Bénédictine, and not one has even a drop of pineapple juice. So it looks a bit as though the original Singapore Sling is, essentially, a gin sling with a hit of cherry brandy, a pink, fizzy, transparent drink.

Not one source mentions who invented it, so let’s track back a bit further. The cocktail historian David Wondrich has spent time scouring the newspapers of Singapore (you can read about this here ). Wondrich reports that the earliest reference to a sling is from 1897, and that, by 1903, the sling was pink (i.e., most likely, contained cherry brandy). He finds a 1913 take on the recipe which works out roughly as follows: 1 shot Gin Soda water Ice This doesn’t only closely match the recipe from Vermeire’s 1922 cocktail book, but fits Coward’s account of drinking “gin slings” at Raffles. Because a fizzy long drink with gin in it is, fundamentally, a sling, where as something with four whole ounces of pineapple juice ain’t. And, obviously, 1913 is two full years before Ngiam Tong Boon invented his cocktail, according to Raffles. So… Where does Ngiam Tong Boon come into this? If not him, who invented the Singapore Sling? And, further, how the hell did four ounces of gloopy pineapple end up in the drink? Well.

Ngiam Tong Boon’s name makes its first significant appearance in US newspapers during the 1970s, long after his death. At this time, a manager of Raffles, named Roberto Pregarz, had the smarts to revitalise his tired hotel into an international icon. And one part of his global PR push was to reawaken the Singapore Sling, an effectively forgotten drink, and tie it to his hotel. You don’t get much more 70s, when it comes to cocktails, than the Singapore Sling. Just take a look at it. It’s pink! It has an umbrella! It’s tropical! It’s like the afterbirth of Tiki drinks. So, did Pregarz just make it up? Well, one might think so. At the time, a nephew of Ngiam Tong Boon, Ngiam Dee Saun, was wheeled out to explain to the waiting press that his uncle had indeed invented the Singapore Sling, and this was indeed his recipe (more here ).

This Ngiam, too, worked for Raffles, and some of the more credulous press reports at the time claim that every member of the Raffles bar staff was related to the late, great Ngiam Tong Boon. But… In 2010, Singapore’s Straits Times newspaper took yet another Singapore bartender, descended from Ngiam Tong Boon, Albert Yam, round the houses to check out the local cocktail. Yam was not on the Raffles payroll and said of the drink: “This is not the Singapore Sling. This is not the cocktail my relatives had taught me to make. The recipe that was handed down to me is a refreshing cocktail with fruity notes of pineapple and lime juice, with hints of gin and angostura bitters. It is sweet, never saccharine sweet.” Couple this with the fact that Boon’s only other creation to have survived, the Million Dollar Cocktail, also including a hint, or “notes” of pineapple, and it seems likely that Boon’s own creation did include pineapple. Most likely a little pineapple, not a lot (there’s half a shot of pineapple to three shots of booze in Diffordsguides’ recipe for the Million Dollar Cocktail).

Because a little pineapple goes a very, very long way. Unless, of course, you don’t like the taste of alcohol, you’re raised on Tiki drinks, or you have a very sweet palate. In which case the hot pink, eminently slurpable things knocked out from behind the bar at the Long Bar will continue, unfortunately, to hit the spot. So, is the Raffles version the true Singapore Sling? Well, given almost every bar in Singapore includes pineapple in its Singapore Sling, it would be reasonable to say that, whoever invented the drink, Raffles has won this one. But smarter bars in Singapore now also serve the earlier “original” Singapore Sling, most often under the name “Straits Sling”. And, if you’re after something long, pink, but rather more refreshing than the pineapple slop, this is, I reckon, the way to go. As to who invented the earliest Singapore Sling? That, I’m afraid, remains lost in the mists of time. About the author Ngiam Tong Boon - Email Words by: Theodora Sutcliffe Life is, broadly speaking, far too short to spend time engaging with internet comments.

But when someone responds to an article you've written with (to précis), “I'm his grandson and you've got it all wrong”, the minimally decent thing to do is drop the chap an email and set up a Skype chat. And so began my odyssey into the Ngiam family, the Ngiam boys and the Singapore Sling . Because, whatever you think of the drink – particularly in the permutations now sold at Raffles – the Singapore Sling 's place in cocktail history is assured. The Singapore Sling is the most famous cocktail from an entire continent - Asia. It is one of very few cocktails that stand as the signature drink of a country. And Ngiam Tong Boon is undoubtedly the first famous Asian bartender. Further, it's not that often that one stumbles across living, close descendants of pre-Prohibition bartenders, after all. Ngiam Tong Boon and his wife Being American, Robert Yen Ngiam puts his family name at the end: in Chinese, the family name comes first, as in Ngiam Tong Boon. I speak to him at an hour that's reasonably social for me in Bali, but suggestive of insomnia on the east coast of the US.

Robert seems to be at that at stage in life where people confront their own mortality and wish they'd learned more about their loved ones before they passed away. He is coming up for 60. His father, Tee Yen Ngiam, passed away in 2012, officially aged 94, although Robert says he lied about his age, and took a couple of years off when he entered the US. Robert's father, he tells me, followed in Ngiam Tong Boon's footsteps, starting as a sailor then working as a bartender in New York where, at Ming's Chinese Restaurant at 23rd and Park Avenue South, he perfected the family recipe – which Robert is unwilling to share. More disconcertingly, Robert's father never met his own father. Damn. Yep, according to Robert, his grandfather, Ngiam Tong Boon, died on Hainan Island, China, ten days before the birth of his second son. And, further, he was allergic to alcohol – it made him turn red and got him drunk quickly, a trait Robert says he and his father inherited. Some of Robert's timings are obviously confused, he's never been to Singapore and he doesn't speak Chinese.

But he tells me his grandfather ran away from Hainan and (shades of Jerry Thomas!) worked on a French ship, before landing at Raffles, working his way up to bar captain, inventing the Singapore Sling , and acquiring a rubber plantation in what is now Malaysia. And then his grandmother was murdered in a “home invasion”. Oh, and he has a cousin in Singapore, whose English name is Arthur, who knows more. Whatever the veracity of this family lore, it's an exciting story. I'm curious: not least as to how a Chinese migrant bartender in colonial Singapore landed up owning an entire rubber plantation. And, further, I'm going to Singapore, so I email Arthur and request we meet. In the Long Bar at Raffles, obviously. Because.... where else? Long Bar, Singapore Arthur Ngiam has spent his life being busy, working for multinationals, setting up a successful engineering firm, studying at Cambridge and raising three bright and beautiful daughters. Now he's retired, with time on his hands, and – as you might be when your grandfather's drink is on cocktail menus around the world – keen to look into and share his family history.

At lunchtime, he's the only Singaporean guest in the Long Bar, where fans circle lazily as though to express contempt of the assembled tourists, and the ghost of Somerset Maugham spins gently in his grave. The Long Bar his grandfather worked in, downstairs, was a very different place: a focal hub for the great, the good and the white in turn-of-the-century Singapore. Arthur orders a pale pink, foam y Singapore Sling . I opt for the much more balanced Million Dollar Cocktail, another Ngiam Tong Boon creation. We crunch on unshelled peanuts from a hessian sack. I make the initial mistake of asking Arthur about Albert Yam, who did an interview with Singapore's Straits Times stating that the Sling served at Raffles was nothing like his ancestor's drink. “Albert apologised to me for that article,” Arthur says. “He only did it to get a job at Sentosa Resort, and he's not a descendant of Ngiam Tong Boon.” A few sips into his Sling, Arthur apologises for turning red. Arthur explains Ngiam Tong Boon's life to me in terms of the three key Chinese values: respect for ancestors, respect for elders and work ethic.

“My grandfather was a thrifty and a canny man, but also very generous,” Arthur says. “He ran a lodging house at his home on 19 Middle Road, to house new immigrants from China – with a coffee shop downstairs to provide employment. And when family members came over, he'd get them jobs at the coffee shop or the Long Bar – bottle washer, waiter, whatever.” Amazingly, Ngiam Tong Boon didn't charge for lodging. “When people arrived from Hainan, often all they had was rice biscuits: they'd spent all their money on the passage. He'd put them up and help them find work,” Arthur says. “When I was a kid there were still people who appreciated what my grandfather had done for their husbands or their family members. I remember meeting them.” Both grandsons are definite that Ngiam Tong Boon made the most of his position at Raffles. “English, Scottish, Welsh and Irish planters would come to Singapore on R&R from their plantations in Malaya,” Arthur says, using the colonial name for what is now Malaysia. “The British elites recommended he invest in a rubber plantation. He knew the chairmen of all the big companies, and they'd give him special treatment.

They found him an honest and a good man, so they gave him advice, and he got a 10-acre rubber plantation.” Many Hainanese immigrants worked in food and beverage, so as bar captain at the city's best hotel, Ngiam Tong Boon was hugely influential. “Some immigrants would spend all their money on alcohol, or gambling, or women,” Arthur says. “My grandfather would talk with them, and soon he'd have them sending money home.” Long Bar, Singapore Even though he followed in his footsteps and worked at Raffles after his death, Arthur's father barely knew his father. What Arthur tells me comes from his grandmother, by way of his mother, to whom he, as the youngest son, was very close. “My grandmother was very traditional Hainanese,” Arthur says. “It was an arranged marriage. She didn't want to come to Singapore, refused to leave China even when things got hard. She worked, basically, as a subsistence farmer, on the family farm.” So Ngiam Tong Boon's wife stayed at home, more than 2,000km away, to raise the family.

Her husband returned when he could, and often enough to conceive two sons - but in an era before commercial aviation, what's now a three-and-a-half-hour flight took weeks, and letters could take months. Inconveniently for the cocktail historian, Arthur isn't sure of his father's date of birth, let alone his grandfather's. “There aren't any records from Qing dynasty China,” he explains. According to Arthur, his father died in 1996, aged 88, and celebrated his birthday using the Chinese lunar calendar, so was most likely born in 1908. And HIS father, Ngiam Tong Boon, died when Arthur's father was six or seven, ten days before his second son was born – most likely in 1915. “My grandfather had come back to Hainan for a visit,” he says. “He didn't know he was sick: he just got sick when he was there.” Even today there is both malaria and dengue on Hainan. Long Bar, Singapore Now, given Raffles historically claimed that Ngiam Tong Boon invented the Singapore Sling in 1915, this chronology is problematic.

Since 1915 seems to have been the year he died, Ngiam Tong Boon would have to have invented a cocktail, made it famous enough to survive with his name attached, travelled thousands of kilometres to Hainan and died all in the same year. Mind you, Raffles also claimed that Ngiam Tong Boon kept his secret recipe in a safe, where it was fortuitously discovered. According to Arthur, Ngiam Tong Boon did indeed have a safe at his home in 19 Middle Road (the original building has now been demolished). And, according to his mother, there was a recipe that he kept inside the safe. But when the family acquired the safe, it was open and empty, the only contents a piece of red paper with Ngiam Tong Boon's name written in Chinese script. “Nobody knows who he left the key with,” says Arthur. “But when the family received it, it was empty. Nobody knew where the recipe was. There could have been gold in the safe, too.

We just don't know.” Now, it's extremely clear that Ngiam Tong Boon didn't invent the gin sling, a cocktail so old that the term “sling” features in the first definition of the word “cocktail”. Gin slings were well enough known in Singapore to feature in a parody poem in the local Straits Times by 1895: they could be topped with either water or soda, and were as common as the “stengah” (Scotch and soda). Further, a pink sling seems to first appear in Singapore newspapers in 1903. So if, as it seems, it's that pinkness that came to distinguish the Singapore Gin Sling from the common or garden Gin Sling, Ngiam Tong Boon would have to have invented it long before 1915 – there are recipes for slings with cherry brandy and Bénédictine D.O.M. from 1913. Which means either that generations of Ngiams, including Ngiams who worked at Raffles with Ngiam Tong Boon, wrongly believed that Ngiam Tong Boon created the Singapore Sling . Or that he created it rather earlier than 1915.

But first, let's backtrack a little. According to Arthur, Ngiam Tong Boon grew up on Hainan island, then primitive even by the standards of imperial China: foreigners were not allowed in the port until 1858. In his village, the main occupation was subsistence farming of rice, working barefoot in the paddy fields. In his early teens, on the night before Chinese New Year, he went into the family kitchen and tried to swipe something to eat from the roast. The meat fell into the stove, and was covered in ash, destroying the family's New Year meal. “He was afraid his stepmother would kill him,” says Arthur. So, as a Western child might if they'd inadvertently destroyed the Christmas turkey and would rather not wait for a beating from their stepmother, he ran away. And in this Cinderella story Ngiam Tong Boon went to sea, the only way for a young boy with zero assets to get off Hainan island, and landed up in Vietnam, probably already part of French colonial Indochina, where he began his career as a waiter and worked his way up to bartender. It's most likely there that he met a French chef, with whom he moved to Singapore.

Where did he work? Who knows? The Hôtel Continental opened in Saigon (now Ho Chi Minh City) in 1880; the Hanoi Hotel was established in Hanoi by 1896. But wherever he started, and wherever he finished, by the time he left for Singapore Ngiam Tong Boon spoke French and English as well as Hainanese, and was equipped to tend bar in Asia's best hotels. Raffles Hotel In Singapore, Ngiam Tong Boon worked first at the Adelphi, a grand hotel which opened in 1863 and was once the settlement's finest. Then he moved to Raffles, which, once it expanded in 1899, introducing both electric lights and electric fans, became Singapore's best hotel. According to Raffles, he was already working there at the turn of the century, a date that seems plausible. Early Raffles advertising proclaims its French chefs, and it wouldn't be unusual for hoteliers who had invested in a massive expansion to poach staff from other hotels – possibly both a star French chef and a star Chinese bartender.

And, at some point, during a career that took him from dirt-poor Chinese migrant to bar captain, plantation owner, investor and, most likely, cocktail creator, Ngiam Tong Boon decided he had done well enough to return to Hainan and make an arranged marriage. Could part of his success have included creating the Singapore Sling ? It's possible. Ngiam Tong Boon I look again at the undated portrait of Ngiam Tong Boon, neat, dapper and solemn, standing by a teak table, pet dog at his heels. Retouched into agelessness, but for the receding hair, he's the picture of the successful, Westernised, colonial businessman. Whatever way you look at the picture, it was a while since this balding, dignified chap was a teenage runaway, or working on the farm barefoot in a straw hat and cotton pants, and if you believe the family, he had already been a bartender for a while. Who was the photo taken for, I wonder? Why the loyal pet dog in the background?

Was it for the family, back in Hainan, some time in the early 1900s, to show his parents-in-law that this was a serious man, a good provider, a husband worth keeping? Or a keepsake for his wife and children far away? “When he was dying, he told my grandmother that he had enough for her to be comfortable for the rest of her life,” says Arthur. “But his brother, who was running the rubber plantation and the minimart for him, was an opium smoker and a womaniser, and got cheated out of the plantation. He ended up working in Raffles.” Arthur never met his grandmother, though the photo he has shows a strikingly beautiful young woman. She stayed on Hainan, working on her farm, until the borders closed and Red China became a no-go zone. At some point, he thinks during the 1950s, local Communists decided her farm made her an enemy of the people, a landlord and exploiter, and murdered the old lady. Arthur, with phenomenal hospitality, invites me to join 30-odd Ngiam family members, including a nephew who worked at Raffles, for dinner at his home the next night.

Cocktail history, like food history, is never simple. Drinks don't spring, Athena-style, from the head of a bartender, who instantly records the precise proportions of the recipe for posterity and never changes it. Hell, try pinning even a living bar icon down on when they created a drink and exactly what they put in it, and they'll be vague. Memory is fickle, and drinks evolve. When cocktails are used as marketing tools, as Raffles has used the Singapore Sling , the picture becomes even more complex. Further, during World War II, Raffles was used as accommodation for senior Japanese officers, then afterwards as a transit camp, activities not conducive to preservation of archives. Still... when Roberto Pregarz, an Italian former sailor and marketing genius, took over the operation of Raffles in 1967, not long after Singapore became independent, one of his very first moves was to promote the Singapore Sling . After he put up a sign in the bar proclaiming it the home of the Singapore Sling , volumes soared. Arthur thinks that Pregarz turned to the Ngiam family, including his father, and backtracked through history to try and find a date for the Singapore Sling story.

And, I believe, since 1915, by Ngiam family chronology, was the latest date that Ngiam Tong Boon could have invented the Sling, Pregarz picked that. In the absence of the internet, or cocktail historians, who was going to care? In Arthur's grassy front garden, in a green and prosperous suburb where substantial houses line sleepy avenues and the elderly walk dogs in the park, a helper is kneading dough for prata, the glorious Malay-Indian bread Malaysians call roti canai; curries dominate one table; Chinese food a second. It's Singapore in a nutshell: part Chinese, part Indian, just the tiniest hint of Malay. I'm surrounded by Ngiams, the youngest just eight months old and over from Oxford where her father teaches maths at the university, the oldest pushing 90 and happiest speaking Hainanese. And I can't help having a slight sentimental flashback, to Ngiam Tong Boon, squirrelling away wealth for his wife, the unborn son he never met and the young son he rarely saw, and doing his duty for the ancestors and these descendants.

Much of Singapore was fishing villages when he arrived, with some grand colonial buildings, neat streets of shophouses, markets and a port: an island that's home to over 4,000,000 people now held barely 200,000. And here they are, his family, flourishing, his direct descendants living in England, Chile and America, and Singapore a financial boomtown, dense with skyscrapers. Still... I'm here to talk to Arthur's nephew, Jim, who is, since Arthur is twenty years younger than his father, roughly Arthur's age. Jim worked at Raffles from 1978 to 1981, as he recalls. He'd started work as a sailor, but then he got married, so needed a job in Singapore, and, as a Ngiam, the obvious place to go was the Long Bar. Jim has brought me a present, a cocktail mat from Raffles which the family believe dates from soon after Roberto Pregarz took over as GM. It reads: “Raffles Hotel Barman Ngiam Tong Boon in 1915 at the LONG BAR and is made with BEEFEATER GIN.

CHERRYSTOCK, TRIPLE SEC. D.O.M. ORANGE, LIME, PINEAPPLE, ANGOSTURA” Even that recipe changed over Jim's tenure, a lot. “Arthur's father said it was nonsense,” he tells me. “It was always Gordon's, not Beefeater, but we think Pregarz was a friend of the Beefeater man.” This intrigues me, since Arthur's father started working at Raffles in the 1920s, along with men who had worked with his father. “What about the lime and orange?” I ask. “Oh, that changed. Pineapple grows here, but oranges were imported from California, so they added more pineapple to cut down on expense.” “And what's Cherrystock?” I ask. “ Heering ,” Jim says definitively. Presumably the recipe means Stock cherry brandy , which may well have been another Pregarz innovation. “What about the proportions?” I ask. Jim indicates quantities with his fingers, which was how recipes were taught in his day. “A 'peck' of gin – is that the word?” he says, indicating an inch or so's slug.

“And the cherry?” “Less,” he says, indicating half that amount. I'm not really hoping to get to the bottom of the Singapore Sling recipe at this distance in time, but I am intrigued by a laminated article from a 1978 Australian Women's Weekly that Jim has also brought to the family gathering. This records the proportions of the Singapore Gin Sling as: two parts gin, one part cherry brandy , drops of Cointreau and Bénédictine, and one part orange, pineapple and lime juice. “So it was a strong drink?” I ask. A cousin of Arthur's I've been chatting to, who asks me not to use her name, chimes in. “Yes, it really was! I asked my father to show me how to make it, but he wouldn't – he didn't want us working in bars. But I tried it, and when I drank a couple of sips I'd feel like I wanted to go to sleep.” All agree that premixes and the new, weak recipe came in during the 1980s, with new management. “They used the old recipe until all the old Ngiam uncles passed away,” she says.

“All the Ngiam relatives, the Ngiam boys, made it the old way.” How many Ngiam boys were there, I ask, envisaging wave after wave of young men embarking on that long journey from Hainan, hearts set on the bright lights of Singapore. “Maybe 20 or 30?” she says. “Most of them were first-generation immigrants. All our uncles were not very educated. They only spoke broken English.” And was it a strong drink? I ask her to ask her 86-year-old mother. A flood of Hainanese. Yes, it was strong. This doesn't sound far from Albert Yam's complaint that the Singapore Sling , as served today, is weak, unbalanced and fruity, and a far cry from Ngiam Tong Boon's recipe as taught by the Ngiam boys. But Albert doesn't speak much English, and, sadly, I don't have time to track him down. Nor does the recipe sound far, in style, from the drink Chew Ah Mit, a bartender at the Selangor Club, recalled from the start of his career in 1908: gin, cherry brandy , liqueur , D.O.M. and lemon.

Is it possible that the drink Ngiam Tong Boon created was a citrussy pink gin affair? Or, even, that he created two versions? The first a souped-up Gin Sling, with cherry brandy , D.O.M. and triple sec, some time around 1903? And a second, replacing the soda with citrus juices and a hint of pineapple, some time later? Cocktailians debate whether the Singapore Sling originated directly from the Gin Sling, or as a mutation via the Straits Sling. As I listen, I can't help noticing that, amid the flood of Chinese dialect, the words “Gin Sling” stand out. “What did they call the drink?” I ask. “Singapore Sling, or Gin Sling?” “Gin Sling,” she says. “It's two short words, which is easier for Chinese. Although people outside Singapore, I think they'd order the Singapore Sling .” The words “Straits Sling”, with their cluster of difficult consonants – an 'S', a 'T', and, oh my gosh, that most challenging of sounds, the English 'R' – would have been nigh-on impossible for a Chinese speaker to manage.

Though, of course, it wouldn't have stopped guests calling it that. Arthur clarifies. “The original was the Gin Sling, but that became the Singapore Sling .” “In the old days, Raffles was right on the beach,” his cousin says. “So sailors would come by, and they'd come on shore, and drink Gin Slings, and then they'd go somewhere else and order them, and that's how the name Singapore Sling spread.” The Ngiams have been beyond hospitable, but I'm basically gatecrashing a family party to introduce Arthur's newest grandchild, and I'd rather not intrude further. One thing is really bugging me, though. It's the idea that Ngiam Tong Boon didn't drink alcohol. It seems quite clear from the mini-empire he built up from nothing – his shares, his coffee shop, his rubber plantation – that he wouldn't have wasted cash on buying alcohol, but surely he must have drunk it? Like many Singaporean Chinese, his descendants are very moderate drinkers, sipping water, juice and sweet teh tarik (pulled tea), with only the occasional Tiger beer – sadly, there are no ingredients in the house to mix up a Singapore Sling .

I ask the family. “I never heard that,” says Arthur's cousin. “He must have drunk alcohol,” says Arthur. “Otherwise, how could he have invented the drink?” “One thing I did hear, though,” the cousin says. “That he invented the drink in Vietnam.” “I've never heard that,” says Arthur. And with that, I head into town, leaving them planning more research in family history. Later, I call Arthur to run through a draft of this article: there are an awful lot of Ngiams, and a lot of dates, and oral family histories aren't the most concrete of tales. “Is there anything you've heard about your grandfather that you haven't told me?” I ask. “Yes,” says Arthur. “My mother told me a very interesting story that she learned from my grandmother. My grandfather died in China in 1915, while my grand-uncle was in Malaysia looking after the plantation.

And he told my grandmother that one of his rubber-tappers who was a labourer on the plantation called him to come and see him very early in the morning.” According to Arthur, the rubber-tapper then dumped two pails of valuable latex on the ground, and exclaimed in Hainanese, a language he, as a Hokkien-speaker, did not know, “I am Ngiam Tong Boon. I died seven days ago.” The grand-uncle, understandably disturbed by this, wrote a letter to Hainan, asking how his brother was. A few months later he received the reply that Ngiam Tong Boon had died. “Asians, be we Indian or Chinese, we know that there is an energy – it's how fortune tellers make money – and there's some way that the person's energy survives,” says Arthur. “My mother told me that my grandfather was a very strong, determined man, that his energy was strong.” And, clearly, whatever happened after he died, while he lived Ngiam Tong Boon's energy was very strong indeed.

First name(s): Cocktails and colonials | Dr D in Oz Dr D in Oz ~ An expat Brit in South Australia Search: cocktails , Long Bar , Ngiam Tong Boon , Raffles Hotel , recipes , Singapore , Singapore Sling , travel Singapore Slings at Raffles Hotel In the days when social etiquette prevented women from consuming alcohol in public, Raffles Hotel barman Ngiam Tong Boon invented a cocktail disguised as a fruit punch: the Singapore Sling. Having a Sling at Raffles has become a rite of passage for tourists and visitors to Singapore. Although owned by a faceless multinational conglomerate (like everything else), the legendary Raffles Hotel, located at 1 Beach Road, has maintained its colonial exterior, standing resolutely against the ultra-modernity and sprawling malls of downtown Singapore. The Long Bar, which in its heyday hosted the likes of Hemingway, Kipling, Somerset Maugham and Hitchcock, has been restored to its colonial grandeur. The cocktail too has undergone restoration, now being offered in its classic form, in addition to modern adaptations containing, for example, Champagne (as shown above). Here’s a recipe, said to be the original.

30 ml gin 15 ml cherry liqueur (cherry brandy) 5 ml cointreau Ngiam Tong Boon | Chopstix & the City Chopstix & the City Food, fashion and life in Hong Kong and Asia at large. Posts tagged ‘Ngiam Tong Boon’ Aug 30 Cin Cin to the Singapore Sling Singapore Sling at The Long Bar, Raffles, Singapore In the same year that Singapore is commemorating its 50th anniversary of independence, the city-state’s national drink is also toasting a significant birthday. 2015 marks 100 years of the Singapore Sling, the cocktail created by a Chinese bartender. Or it does according to one theory. Singapore institution Raffles Hotel is celebrating the centenary of the pink concoction, claiming it was created at the hotel in 1915 by barman Ngiam Tong Boon, originally from Hainan. Peter Heering the maker of Heering Cherry Liqueur – a vital ingredient of the Singapore Sling – is also commemorating the cocktail’s 100th this year. The story has been repeated in articles and books around the world and become cocktail folklore but not everyone agrees.

About: Singapore Sling About: Singapore Sling An Entity of Type : Cocktail107911677 , from Named Graph : , within Data Space : dbpedia.org The Singapore Sling is a gin based cocktail. This long drink was developed sometime before 1915 by Ngiam Tong Boon, a Hainanese bartender working at the Long Bar in Raffles Hotel, Singapore. It was initially called the gin sling, - a sling was originally an American drink composed of spirit and water, sweetened and flavored. Property abstract The Singapore Sling is a gin based cocktail. This long drink was developed sometime before 1915 by Ngiam Tong Boon, a Hainanese bartender working at the Long Bar in Raffles Hotel, Singapore. It was initially called the gin sling, - a sling was originally an American drink composed of spirit and water, sweetened and flavored. (en) Singapore Sling ist ein fruchtig-aromatischer Cocktail aus Gin, Kirschlikör, Bénédictine und weiteren Zutaten. Trotz des Namens handelt es sich bei der heute üblichen Version streng genommen nicht um einen Sling, sondern eher um einen Punch.

Der Longdrink dient als Signature Drink (Aushängeschild) des Raffles Hotel in Singapur. Sein Vorläufer bzw. die ursprüngliche Version eines Singapore Sling ist heute als Straits Sling bekannt. (de) Le Singapour sling est un cocktail de type fancy drink. (fr) Il Singapore sling è un cocktail ufficiale International Bartenders Association. Venne creato nel 1915 da Ngiam Tong Boon, barman dell'hotel Raffles di Singapore. (it) シンガポール・スリング（Singapore Sling）は、ジンベースのカクテル。 (ja) Singapore Sling is een cocktail op basis van gin, kersenlikeur en limoen. De cocktail is in de jaren tien voor het eerst gemaakt door barman Ngiam Tong Boon van het Raffles Hotel in Singapore. Het recept is ergens in de jaren dertig verloren gegaan, maar bartenders van na de Tweede Wereldoorlog hebben op basis van herinneringen en oude notities, het recept opnieuw uitgevonden.

Tegenwoordig is het een gewoonte voor wie op bezoek gaat in Singapore, een Singapore Sling te drinken. De cocktail wordt geschonken aan de Long bar in het Raffles hotel. Er zijn ook enkele films gemaakt met de titel Singapore Sling, onder meer door Nikos Nikolaidis. (nl) 新加坡司令（英语：Singapore Sling）是一種雞尾酒，是由華裔原籍海南島的嚴崇文（Ngiam Tong Boon）酒保於1910年至1915年間所發明，當時他是為新加坡的萊佛士酒店工作。他應顧客要求改良琴湯尼這種調酒，調出了一種口感酸甜的酒，後來一炮而紅。不過原創的食譜已經消失，現今萊佛士酒店的新加坡司令食譜是老酒保依照記憶還原出來的。 (zh) Сингапурский слинг (англ. Singapore Sling) — алкогольный коктейль, родиной которого является Лонг бар отеля Раффлз в Сингапуре.

Коктейль считается самым оригинальным местным напитком, исторической реликвией и национальным достоянием. История создания обросла легендами и догадками. Известно только, что дата создания приходится на начало XX века. (ru) Le Singapour sling est un cocktail de type fancy drink. (fr) Il Singapore sling è un cocktail ufficiale International Bartenders Association. Venne creato nel 1915 da Ngiam Tong Boon, barman dell'hotel Raffles di Singapore.

(it) シンガポール・スリング（Singapore Sling）は、ジンベースのカクテル。 (ja) 新加坡司令（英语：Singapore Sling）是一種雞尾酒，是由華裔原籍海南島的嚴崇文（Ngiam Tong Boon）酒保於1910年至1915年間所發明，當時他是為新加坡的萊佛士酒店工作。他應顧客要求改良琴湯尼這種調酒，調出了一種口感酸甜的酒，後來一炮而紅。不過原創的食譜已經消失，現今萊佛士酒店的新加坡司令食譜是老酒保依照記憶還原出來的。 (zh) Сингапурский слинг (англ. Singapore Sling) — алкогольный коктейль, родиной которого является Лонг бар отеля Раффлз в Сингапуре. Коктейль считается самым оригинальным местным напитком, исторической реликвией и национальным достоянием.

История создания обросла легендами и догадками. Известно только, что дата создания приходится на начало XX века. (ru) Singapore Sling is een cocktail op basis van gin, kersenlikeur en limoen. De cocktail is in de jaren tien voor het eerst gemaakt door barman Ngiam Tong Boon van het Raffles Hotel in Singapore. Het recept is ergens in de jaren dertig verloren gegaan, maar bartenders van na de Tweede Wereldoorlog hebben op basis van herinneringen en oude notities, het recept opnieuw uitgevonden. Tegenwoordig is het een gewoonte voor wie op bezoek gaat in Singapore, een Singapore Sling te drinken. De cocktail wordt geschonken aan de Long bar in het Raffles hotel. (nl) Who invented the Singapore Sling? That Raffles barman, surely? | South China Morning Post South China Morning Post Who invented the Singapore Sling? That Raffles barman, surely? COCKTAILS Who invented the Singapore Sling? That Raffles barman, surely?

As city state marks 50 years, its most famous drink is officially turning 100. But some are convinced its origins date to two years earlier, at least PUBLISHED : Thursday, 06 August, 2015, 11:02pm UPDATED : Friday, 07 August, 2015, 10:32am Singapore gets ready to celebrate its 50th birthday 2 Aug 2015 Singapore is commemorating the 50th anniversary of its independence, and the city state's national drink is also toasting a significant birthday. This year marks the centenary of the Singapore Sling, the cocktail created by a Chinese bartender, at least according to one theory; the history of the tipple is somewhat disputed. Singapore institution Raffles Hotel is celebrating the pink concoction's birthday, claiming it was created at the hotel in 1915 by barman Ngiam Tong Boon, originally from Hainan. Peter Heering, the maker of Heering Cherry Liqueur - a vital ingredient of the Singapore Sling - is also commemorating the cocktail's 100th this year.

The story has been repeated in articles and books around the world and become cocktail folklore but not everyone agrees. "The precise date of creation of the world's most famous cocktail is shrouded in mystery. Some say the Singapore Sling, sometimes called the gin sling, was first mixed one hot afternoon in 1915," writes Gretchen Liu in the coffee table tome Raffles Hotel. Liu continues: "Others are equally certain that it was available to thirsty guests at least a decade earlier." The hotel's resident historian, Leslie Danker, has dispelled many myths about Raffles history. But Danker is sure that the origin of the Singapore Sling can be traced to Boon in 1915. "The management staff at the hotel prior to the restoration in 1991 carried out extensive research into the origins of the Singapore Sling," says Danker. "They went through all the hotel records they could locate and found no mention of the Singapore Sling prior to 1915. It was therefore estimated that the cocktail was created in 1915." Danker also gives an amusing reason behind the Singapore Sling's creation: "At the time, ladies were not meant to be seen drinking in public.

As the bartender created a recipe that was pink, no one knew that the ladies were drinking gin." However, Lucas Swallows, mixologist for the Marina Bay Sands in Singapore, was inspired to make the Singapore Sling 1913 based on an article he'd read by cocktail historian David Wondrich. "Wondrich found a story from the Singapore Weekly Sun in 1913 that talks about a group of gentlemen at the Singapore Cricket Club ordering red slings. At the time a sling was a derogatory term for something you drank when you had a hangover. It was usually gin with a sugary mixture to sweeten it and bitters to take the edge off," says Swallows. "The bartender refused so the gentleman ordered one shot of gin, one shot of cherry brandy, one shot of DOM Benedictine, a splash of soda water and some limes and mixed it themselves." Wondrich also found earlier references to gin slings in Singapore in 1897 plus a comment about "pink slings for pale people" in 1903.

When Swallows moved to Singapore in 2012 as bar manager of Mario Batali's Osteria Mozza, he recreated the cocktail he'd read about. "Our recipe follows the equal measure parts to bring the drink into balance. It's a very nice herbal flavour, but you can also taste the gin and the DOM. It's fruity but it finishes dry." The original recipe for Boon's Singapore Sling is long lost, but Raffles head bartender Aron Manzanillo shares the current recipe: gin (30ml), cherry brandy (15ml), Cointreau (7.5ml), DOM Benedictine (7.5ml), Angostura bitters (dash), grenadine (10ml), pineapple juice (120ml) and lime juice (15ml). Perhaps Boon added pineapple juice and coined the phrase Singapore Sling, but it's impossible to say definitively. Until the end of the year Raffles is offering a Singapore Sling masterclass where you can learn to make the famous drink in the Long Bar. There's also a Singapore Sling 100th anniversary package where an overnight stay includes a private workshop in the Long Bar.

Singapore's golden jubilee on August 9 has prompted a flurry of new sling creations from bars across the city state. This includes the Singapore Cricket Club, which is offering the SCC SG50 of gin, triple sec, grenadine syrup and fresh lime juice until the end of this month. One of the tastiest is the sweet-and-sour Straits of Sling at Potato Head Folk, available until August 31. A key ingredient is a home-brewed pandan syrup, which gives the drink a brownish rather than red tinge. This version still has cherry liqueur.

Says Potato Head Folk bar manager Mohammad Irwan: "There are a lot of new variations on the Singapore Sling, but a lot of them don't include cherry liqueur - and that's what makes it a sling." This article appeared in the South China Morning Post print edition as: Singapore Sling: a mixed history Gin cocktails: Sipsmith's recipes for success Food and drink features Gin cocktails: Sipsmith's recipes for success The three copper stills at the Sipsmith distillery are named (left to right) Prudence, Constance and Patience Credit: James Bedford Jessica Salter 14 November 2015 • 7:00am Around the long bar in Le Royal Monceau , Raffles, in Paris, at a cocktail reception, the world’s press are being presented with a 100-year-old drink. It is one of the most popular cocktails internationally – Raffles’ iconic and original hotel in Singapore sells 23,000 of them a month as travellers tick them off their bucket list. It’s tall, alarmingly red and frankly a bit sickly sweet, but the Singapore sling is instantly recognisable.

We’re celebrating the 100th birthday of this mixed drink, which was invented by the famed Raffles barman Ngiam Tong Boon as a twist on the popular gin sling, and was drunk by trendy society in 1915 Singapore. ‘It’s a simple five-part recipe that has been much celebrated over the past century,’ says Jared Brown, a mixologist and drinks historian, and the master distiller at Sipsmith . But the modern incarnation is not what the cocktail would have originally tasted like. ‘It has been endlessly modified,’ Brown says. So he spent three months perusing drinks-history books to work out the original recipe. Later in the evening, he presents me with another drink – a shorter, lighter-coloured and less sweet version of the Singapore sling. Sipsmith’s Fairfax Hall, Jared Brown and Sam Galsworthy (left to right) Credit: James Bedford It’s a much-pared-back recipe: just 50ml of gin, 15ml cherry brandy, Benedictine and freshly squeezed lemon juice, topped with soda, leaving out the grenadine, pineapple juice, Cointreau and bitters that make up today’s popular version of the drink.

At the heart of Brown’s reworked cocktail is the gin itself, a new and bespoke Sipsmith concoction called Raffles 1915, which combines Malaysian botanicals – including jasmine flowers, pomelo peel, lemongrass, Kaffir lime leaf, nutmeg and cardamom – with the classic botanicals in a Sipsmith London Dry Gin, including, of course, juniper berries. It is so smooth you can drink it neat over ice. The key to the smoothness is in its distillery, the first copper-pot distillery to open in London in nearly 200 years. It was founded by Fairfax Hall and Sam Galsworthy in 2009, who had a dream to bring back handmade gin-making to the city that became famous for it. ‘We wanted to create the best-tasting gin that we could, using old-style methods,’ Galsworthy says. "The key to the smoothness is in its distillery, the first copper-pot distillery to open in London in nearly 200 years" Credit: James Bedford The pair grew up as friends in Cornwall and both ended up working in America in the drinks industry.

‘While we were there we saw lots of micro distilleries popping up,’ Galsworthy tells me earlier in the day, over a French 75 that Brown has whipped up on the Eurostar over to Paris. ‘We thought, why isn’t this happening anywhere in London?’ They wanted to create something original, authentic, and, crucially, open to the public. ‘We’re so fascinated by the provenance of our food,’ Galsworthy says, ‘but at that time there wasn’t the same information about our drink.’ The pair found Brown, who along with his wife, Anistatia Miller, had won an award for making the world’s best white spirit (a vodka) in 2002 and was in huge demand from the drinks industry. But because of Hall and Galsworthy’s enthusiasm and their dedication to doing something original, Brown agreed to become their master distiller. The Sipsmith operation is obsessive about gin – but Brown is perhaps most so.

Dressed in a tweed suit, with bobbed grey hair and a New York drawl, he bears more than a passing resemblance to Jeff Bridges (he often gets people shouting ‘Duuuuude’ at him on the streets, in reference to Bridges’ role in the film The Big Lebowski). He has an encyclopaedic knowledge of alcohol history, gleaned from a 12,000-volume library dedicated to the subject at his home in the Cotswolds. "The Sipsmith operation is obsessive about gin" Credit: James Bedford Of particular interest is the story about how the gin craze started in 1689, when William of Orange dropped the spirit tax. While once only distillers from the distillers’ guild could produce gin, now anybody who ‘hung a sign on their door for 10 days declaring themselves a distiller’ could. Within 40 years there were stills in one in every four houses in London, gin was cheaper than beer, and the city was mad for punch. Brown wanted to go back to the 17th century for inspiration for the original, flagship Sipsmith gin.

‘I found a recipe from 1736 and I made nine different versions,’ he says. ‘I wanted to create the benchmark.’ He decided to use only botanicals that ‘would have been available to a 17th-century distiller at the market’. The result is a juniper-led gin, with nine other botanicals ranging from Belgian angelica root to Bulgarian coriander seed. But they hit a stumbling block: HMRC. The government said the quantity of gin they were producing – 300 litres from the original still – was so small it was technically classed as moonshine. After Sipsmith lobbied for two years, the law changed. Its 2009 licence hangs proudly on the wall – handwritten because there were none in existence until theirs.

"Brown decided to use only botanicals that ‘would have been available to a 17th-century distiller at the market’" Credit: James Bedford Back at Sipsmith’s HQ, on an innocuous residential street in Chiswick, the most important part of the whole operation are the three gleaming handmade copper stills: Prudence, the oldest, on the left, Constance, the largest at 1,500-litre capacity, centre stage, and Patience on the end. There is a hiss of steam, as the gin bubbles away inside. ‘They are crucial,’ Galsworthy says. (He has a reverence for the stills that borders on love; he even chose Prudence as his first child’s middle name). The distillers – Brown and his colleagues Ollie Kitson and Kit Clancy – put the botanicals in at 5.30pm, along with wheat spirit, bought from a farm in the Midlands, to macerate overnight. ‘Having rested it in that copper, you get the beautiful smoothness and delicacy in the flavours,’ Galsworthy says.

The next morning, the still is turned on and a shot of heat releases the oils in the dried juniper berries. Brown, Kitson and Clancy ‘make moment-by-moment decisions’ about how much steam to let in, which controls the boil rate. As the pressure builds, the alcohol turns to steam, then, as it hits the copper neck, starts to condense. It takes around eight hours. A tour of the distillery ends with a tutored gin-tasting session Credit: James Bedford The steam makes its way up to the angled swan’s neck, until the first drops of liquid come out of a small copper tap. The first section of liquid is called the head cut, and is undrinkable. The second is the valuable heart cut, but ‘you can tell only by continual tasting and smelling. The distiller has to watch it constantly,’ Galsworthy says. Finally, the tail cut comes through – again, waste product.

Crucial to Sipsmith’s process is that they make gin according to the one-shot method: they only mix their end product with a small amount of water, whereas the two-shot method used in more commercial distilleries sees the gin being mixed again with base spirits to keep the alcohol content high. Prudence and Patience can make 300 litres a day, Constance 1,500 litres. What Sipsmith make in a year, a medium-sized distiller could produce in a day. ‘It’s not the most economical approach,’ Brown says, ‘but we make gin the way it should be made, and the way it used to be made.’ "Crucial to Sipsmith’s process is that they make gin according to the one-shot method" Credit: James Bedford While the Sipsmith owners have one foot firmly in the past (Galsworthy’s great-great-great-uncle was Sir Stamford Raffles, no less, the founder of Singapore who gave his name to the hotel), they are intent on changing the future of gin. In their headquarters is a laboratory, furnished with reclaimed school science benches and a small still to produce tiny batches of gin.

On the wall above are tiny bottles labelled sam, fairfax and jared, and various dates, showing early experiments. One is the distilled contents of last year’s Christmas tree, which, naturally, they have considered turning into a gin. ‘We want to have a vision that means we will be still here in 100 years,’ Galsworthy says. They are now fantastically successful, with a shelf full of awards from the industry, and their drinks stocked in bars around the world, from Raffles to the Savoy and hundreds of small cocktail bars in between. In one bar we went to in Paris, the barman bashfully came up to Brown at the end of the night and told him he had read one of his cocktail books. Seven years after they started, there are now more small distilleries in the UK than ever – last year alone there were more than 20 applications for a distiller’s licence. ‘You have to be authentic to survive now,’ Galsworthy says.

‘Since we started, the market has changed dramatically.’ Brown corrects him: ‘We changed it.’ Joburg Style Issue 30 by Ballyhoo Media (page 67) - issuu issuu Issuu on Google+ Jbar 5. MANHATTAN – THE MANHATTAN CLUB IN NEW YORK Few drinks have the universal appeal of the ‘king of cocktails,’ the Manhattan. According to popular history, Dr Iain Marshall invented the drink at New York’s exclusive Manhattan Club in 1870, for a reception in honour of presidential candidate Samuel J Tilden. TIP#THE RIGHT WAY Learn to make a proper Manhattan and you'll know how to create at least one flawless thing in this world, and the person you're making it for will know, and respect you. Place the glass in the freezer for 30 minutes (old-style cocktail glass). 6.

SINGAPORE SLING – THE LONG BAR, RAFFLES HOTEL IN SINGAPORE Developed by Raffles' head barman, Ngiam Tong Boon, before 1915, the Singapore Sling has been enjoyed at the Long Bar by the likes of Rudyard Kipling, Noël Coward and Joseph Conrad. While the recipe for this classic cocktail has changed over the years, the key to a classic Singapore Sling is freshly pressed pineapple juice to create the drink’s famous foamy top. 7. PINA COLADA – CARIBE HILTON IN SAN JUAN, PUERTO RICO 8. DAIQUIRI – EL FLORIDITA IN HAVANA, CUBA The official drink of Puerto Rico since 1978, the Pina Colada was probably first mixed at the Caribe Hilton's Beachcomber Bar in San Juan, around 1954, by Ramon Marrero, the bartender charged with creating this signature drink for the hotel’s celebrity clientele. Jennings Stockton Cox invented the Daiquiri in 1898. He was in the town of Daiquirí (Cuba) overseeing the exploration for iron ore.

The miners were already receiving a monthly ration of Bacardí rum, but, after experiencing the heat firsthand, he took some and shook it with fresh lime juice, sugar and ice to cool him down each morning ahead of going into the very hot mines. TIP#JUST A DASH Add a splash of your favourite rum, we recommend Malibu for its Caribbean sweet coconut taste. 7 Ballyhoo Media Follow publisher Unfollow publisher Be the first to know about new publications.

Question: Which cocktail was devised by the barman Ngiam Tong Boon?
Answer: Singapore Sling