 Red Sangria
You might ask, isn't all sangria red? Aha! Here is the fascinating thing about sangria. Sangria is really a generic term in Spanish for a mixture of wine and fruit. It can certainly be a red wine - Spain is famous for its delicious red wines. However, Spain does not make only red wine and red sangria. Spain also makes delicious white wines and sparkling wines. Still, the word "sangria" technically means "bleeding" in the Spanish language, and most peoples' blood is red :) So a red sangria would be the most authentic one!
If we're going for authentic red sangria, then you want to be using a Spanish red rioja wine. You want to have oranges as your fruit - Spain is one of the top producers in the world of oranges. On the hard liquor side, Spain is probably best known for its brandy.
Ingredients
1 750ml bottle red Spanish rioja
1 orange, cut up
1/4 cup Spanish brandy
Pour the Rioja into a large pitcher or bowl. Add in orange pieces. You leave the skins on, so that way if someone wants to take out a piece of wine-soaked orange later and munch on it they have a "handle". Add in the brandy.
Mix all together and refrigerate overnight.
When serving, pour over ice and add fresh fruit for visual appeal. Orange wheels work perfectly for this situation!
This is of course a bare-bones basic recipe for red sangria. Normally you would also add in whatever you found growing in your back yard, be it berries, fruits or whatever. It's a little of this, a little of that.
To turn this into a single-glass sangria recipe, a typical assumption is that one 750ml bottle of wine yields four large glasses of wine. Divide all ingredients shown by four. If you're making just one glass worth you probably don't want to wait for the overnight soaking. If the mixture doesn't soak, you just won't get as much of the fruit / berry flavors permeating the sangria.
Do you have a favorite sangria recipe not shown on my list? Do you have a suggestion about the instructions for any sangria recipe? Please Contact Me - I'd love to hear about it!
If you're a fan of sparkling wine cocktails, come enjoy our a huge library of Champagne Cocktail Recipes!
Note: I created these sangria recipes and have had them online for years. If you find similar sangria recipes elsewhere, it's because someone copied my idea. I do appreciate it when visitors write in to warn me about the plagiarism - but usually there's not much I can do about it! What's really funny is when they copy my design right down to my sangria pitcher. That's a bit much :)
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