Singapore searches for new Sling in cocktail boom

By Neil Chatterjee

SINGAPORE (Reuters Life!) - There's a new drink in town and it's called the Tiffin Punch, The Champ or the Dark Angel -- and its out to get the Singapore Sling.

These are just some of the concoctions by bar "mixologists" looking to usurp the status of the city-state's signature gin and fruit juice cocktail.

"Cocktail lovers are increasing -- it's the image," said Mac Lee, president of the Association of Bartenders & Sommeliers Singapore and judge at a competition in the city-state this week to choose the best cocktail maker in the Asia-Pacific.

Singaporean Alex Tan won with Dark Angel, a mix including mango vodka, peach liqueur, blue curacao, apple and cranberry juice and garnished with radish, gold dust and bamboo ash.

A visit to Singapore is traditionally not complete without a trip to the iconic colonial Raffles Hotel for a Singapore Sling, made from gin, cherry brandy and pineapple juice.

But the drink is now strictly reserved for tourists, and even they do not seem very impressed.

"It's like a cherryade -- there's nothing in it," said British visitor Sarah Hanney at Raffles sipping a Sling, which she said was her favourite drink, only with more gin.

Conservative Singapore has been shaking up its bar scene in the past year by developing new entertainment areas, filling up the old shophouses of its riverside quays and a former British army camp with new restaurants, nightclubs and cocktail spots.