Wine food and words

Summer equals sangria

Summer also equals cider, chilled wine, beaches, fruit and relaxation, but forgive me because today, summer equals sangria.

There’s this food magazine here in New Zealand. It’s put out by a supermarket. That automatically means it has to be complete rubbish. But the thing is, it’s not. Well, not always at least.

It’s generally full of recipes that are achievable, for the family but still yummy. It’s a good fall back. But a few years ago, something brilliant happened.

It published a recipe for sparkling sangria.

If memory serves me right - and I’m only 26, so it should - it was a Christmas issue. Christmas here is summer (or it’s meant to be), so sparkling sangria was perfect.

I made it for Christmas Eve festivities with the boyfriend’s parents. I made a full jug, and we demolished it. Actually, that’s not true, and this blog is for truths (and kidding myself). Everyone was very polite and had one glass each. And I drunk the rest. December for me was “hey, it’s December - let’s treat ourselves”. This may or may not be directly related to the fact I’m now a fully fledged gym-goer.

Sparkling sangria

Ingredients:

Ice
1 bottle of dry sparkling wine - don’t waste the expensy stuff on this!
1 cup orange juice - with pulp. Without, and it’s not orange juice, yo.
1/2 cup lime juice
1/4 cup caster sugar
Strawberries, oranges and limes to cut up and dump in the goodness

It’s pretty self explanatory from here - cut up the fruit, put the liquids and fruit in a jug, stir (gently!) to mix, pour into your vessel of choice, consume.

I found this time around the lime juice was too tart, so should have tested before I added the whole lot…we ended up adding more sugar, and then in desperation, some sprite. It was still good, but lesson learnt!