You’re very welcome anytime. A friend used to make it for Christmas in the UK and I loved it (maybe slightly too much 
).I’m going to give it a go - doesn’t seem that difficult 
Stupid question I know, but how do you know when they look ripe? The inside flesh of ours is a pale orange colour - are they ripe?
They should have a nice lustre to the skin, with a little bit of give. But relatively pale fleshed to strat with. So when frosted they are soft, and redder flesh. .
So much better if you can leave it for a year, so make more and only drink some of it this winter!
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Thanks for that Jane. I will try to curb my enthusiasm 
Another vote for cornus and I should warn you they will take over your whole garden. The berries will happily send up new plants and the parent will sucker all over the place. And every time you prune they send up multiple stems. I foolishly let them thrive when we first moved here as they make quite attractive small trees if carefully pruned. 18 years on and I dream of a man with a digger grubbing out the lot!
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Aldi UK sells a good sloe gin approaching Christmas. I’d suspect Lidl.de might too as their spirits collection showing online last autumn was truly magnificent and did include niche favourites I’d seen on Aldi/Lidl shelves in the UK in previous years.
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We (and our pals) are still enjoying our 1996 vintage sloe brandy and sloe gin… best chilled…
to be sipped in moderation and thoroughly enjoyed … 
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Spike the sloes with a darning needle, put them in a container with some sugar, fill up with gin, leave to mature for a few months.
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If you pop them in the freezer the skins burst so no faffing with needle needed!
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Thanks Vero!
Useful to know
Oh dear 
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The plant that gives the sloes is a Hawthorn in English, which an online search says is Aubépine in French. We have two of them but I’ve never used the sloes. The third isn’t a blackcurrant as the leaves look wrong.
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The third looks a lot more like a blueberry. We have two much smaller ones and the stalks look very similar as do the leaves. Our leaves have a very fine serration that you can’t see but can feel if you run your finger down the edge.
Edit: The fruit don’t look right though, and I’m sure we find lots of bushes with black fruit like this growing wild. I wouldn’t try them.
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I thought it was Blackthorn (or Buckthorn). Hawthorn has small red berries
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Spot on. Blackthorn gives sloes, prunellier in French
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Buckthorn is something else again, and sea buckthorn grows at the seaside.
Hawthorn is a crataegus, Blackthorn us a prunus.
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To be honest, if you have blackthorn bushes and sloes actually in your garden, I’d try to get rid of them. They spread everywhere and self seed readily. We’re forever trying to dig them out. They’re the sorts of fruit you want to pick from someone else’s plot
Mind you, boysenberries are difficult to get rid of too and as for Goji berries, well…
Blueberries are great and non-invasive but most won’t grow unless you have at least slightly acid soil.
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Sorry, no hairbear. I’m pretty certain it’s a wild cornus.
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Not touching them. Too small for either blueberries or blackcurrants