The Super Bowl party invite said to bring a beverage to go with wood fired pizza. I took that as my cue to make sangria.
My sangria-making habit started after my semester in Spain. My friends and I used to go to this Chinese restaurant that had the best sangria in town. (Yes, Chinese food. In Spain. With amazing sangria. You with me?) We developed kind of a routine of stopping in every week or two, starting with a pitcher of sangria, improving our Chinese food in Spanish vocabulary while looking over the menu, eating a meal that tasted strikingly similar to Chinese food back home, and then my friend would finish off the fruit at the bottom of the pitcher. By the end of the semester, I was hooked on sangria and excellent at ordering Chinese in Spanish.
These days, I think of sangria as a summer drink and usually make it with more citrusy and peachy flavors. But we had a delicious apple and pear sangria when we were in Tucson last month (I’d link to a post about that, but it’s not written yet), so when we got the party invite, I was ready to try making a winter sangria.
I kept it simple with just four ingredients: apples, pears, red wine, and blood orange Italian soda (yep!). The soda had a very light flavor, so it wasn’t overpowering. It also contributed the bubbles, extra sweetness, and a nice clear glass bottle to make the sangria in, so our friends wouldn’t have to remember to return a pitcher to us later.
I poured most of the soda out of the bottle to start with, added the other ingredients, and then added some back in after tasting.
In the meantime, I started slicing apples and realized the slices were just a little too big to easily fit through the opening of the bottle, so instead I did kind of a chunky matchstick cut. “Chunky matchstick” may not be an official culinary term, but it might make a good band name and pretty much describes the way the fruit was cut in our Tucson sangria.
I slid the pieces in the bottle one at a time until it started looking like there was a whole lotta fruit in there. Then I poured in the wine through a funnel, so I wouldn’t spill it all over. But I almost did that anyway, because I was taking photos while pouring. (Blogger problems.)
I filled the bottle part way, so I’d have room to adjust my ratios after a taste test.
That’s probably about the time I realized I had all these produce stickers on my elbow. And the waistband of my hoodie. Because I am awesome.
Also probably because I stuck them all on the counter before I washed the fruit. (Am I the only one who does this?) Then I’m guessing I leaned right on them while I was taking photos of apples.
See what I go through for you guys?
Anyway, so after tasting, I added a little more of everything, then tasted and adjusted a few more times until it was just right. I had looked at a recipe, but then I didn’t really follow it. It’s more authentically Spanish if you don’t follow a recipe. Drinking wine while you make it helps too, even especially if it’s only lunchtime.
I gave it a few hours to chill in the fridge.
Finally, I covered the soda label (which I hadn’t had time to remove properly) with navy blue paper, because I wanted both Seahawks fans and Broncos fans to feel free to partake. I labeled it ¡Super Sangria! (The upside down exclamation point makes it Spanish.) Then we headed out to watch the not-so-Super Bowl. At least there was plenty of wine at the party.
