Sangria: a happy 'fruit salad'

A friend and I recently had lunch at Applebee’s, where we both ordered a new sangria drink. Having noticed it was not quite noon, I joked that we shouldn’t drink in the morning.

Just then, our drinks arrived in large, wide-mouth goblets with pieces of fruit bobbing on top. “It’s a fruit salad!” my friend said, implying that the drinks were not really drinks, per se. Well, it just so happened that a spry young server was walking by and heard her. He turned on his heel, smiled and said, “A happy fruit salad.”

We got a kick out of his comment - and out of the sangria, a refreshing drink made with white wine, a melon liqueur and other ingredients. While I found the drink’s unique flavor and green color interesting, I was a bit puzzled by its name. After all, sangria is the Spanish word for bloody, and all the variations of sangria I knew of were red, like blood. But after flipping through several cookbooks and surfing the Net, I discovered that when sangria is made with white wine, it is called sangria blanc.

I also found there are far more variations of sangria than I could have ever imagined. Although wine is generally the dominant ingredient, bourbon, tequila, rum and all kinds of liqueurs are also used in addition to, or instead of, red wine.

Fruit juices, fresh fruits, brown or white sugar, simple syrup, cinnamon and other spices and even hot sauce are among the ingredients some folks use to concoct sangria variations to suit their tastes. Some people also add ice and/or club soda, ginger ale or other carbonated beverages to their sangrias.

So a sangria is basically a homemade wine cooler.

I make a very simple sangria, and it’s red, like blood. I mix equal parts of dry red wine and orange juice (or an orange juice blend) in a wine glass and add pieces of in-season fruit when I make it for myself.

When serving others, however, I give it a little more punch, as others tend to prefer it a little stronger than I do. I’ve included a recipe for the “spiked” version, which has come about by trial and error. Feel free to change it according to your own preferences.

You can make it sweeter by using sweet wine, more fruit juice, sugar or simple syrup. The recipe yields enough servings to make four people content, two people happy or one person absolutely snockered.

In moderation, however, sangria is a refreshing summertime backyard barbecue drink, or the perfect accompaniment to a great Mexican food dinner.

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SANGRIA

Ingredients:
A fifth of dry red wine
2 cups of orange/peach/mango juice
1 cup spiced rum
1 orange, cut in wedges
1 peach, pitted and cut in wedges
1 mango, pitted and cut in wedges
1 apple, cored and cut in wedges 1 pear, cored and diced
1 lime, thinly sliced

Directions:
 1. Marinate fruit pieces in juice and rum in a large glass container for an hour in the fridge. (Citrus peels become bitter if left to marinate longer, so remove peels if you intend to chill the mixture longer than an hour.) Chill red wine for one hour also.
  2. Add wine to fruit concoction just before serving. Pour wine into wide-mouth goblets and spoon in pieces of fruit.

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Nancy Gilkey can be reached at nancygilkey@q.com or 261-9144.