Brandon & Lauren's Version of Sangria

Yeah - So I call it our "version" of sangria - because we basically searched through a few recipes and came up with an amalgamation of sorts.. and I don't know if there is one "true" recipe for Sangria or not... Everyone has their own way of doing it. So here's what we came up with:

Sangria
serves way more than 2 people

Ingredients:

• 1 bottle dry spanish red wine
• 1/2c white rum
• 2c orange juice
• 8oz strawberries
• 2 Lemons
• 2 Oranges (we used one blood orange & one navel orange)
• 1/2c simple syrup (Or you could just use some granulated sugar)
• 1 bartlett pear
• Club Soda
  

Directions:

1. Chop up the pear, strawberries, one lemon, and oranges into larger bite size pieces.
2. Put chopped up fruit into a VERY LARGE Pitcher. Squeeze juice from one Lemon over fruit. Add rum, orange juice, and simple syrup. At this point you could let it soak for a few hours before adding the red wine, if you'd like. I took this opportunity to kinda mash up the fruit a little. Or "muddle" if you will.
3. Add the red wine.
4. Chill for a few hours.
5. When read to serve, pour over a tall glass of ice and add a splash of club soda.
   
6. Enjoy on a nice warm evening!
   

So the strawberries turned out to be a really nice touch - they give off a really unique flavor when allowed to soak for awhile. If the pitcher gets too full of fruit, you may want to take some out and put in a separate bowl and add back in later. Make sure you have enough room for the wine!

Posted by Lauren