Sangria Summer Nights

It is hot and humid... Belive or not, Washington DC area is much worse than NYC. ;-(

I opened my fridge to find something cold. A half bottle of red wine was sitting in my fridge - pretty young Spanish wine (garnacha) which I opened at least two weeks ago... it must not taste that good to drink by itself by now. What else is in there? I saw oranges, apples, and cherries.

Hmm... Ok! Let's buy a lemon and a lime, and mix up some sangria.

As someone says, if you cannot avoid it, enjoy it. Enjoy your hot humid summer nights with a little bit of help from a glass of sangria!


Sangria Summer Nights

(Yield: 4 servings / Cooking time: 15 min*)
* 15 minutes do not include chilling time of +5 hours.

Ingredients:
+ about a half bottle of red wine (mine was about 400ml left)*
+ 100ml Grand Marnier (= ~2 shots)**
+ 200ml sparkling water
+ 1 apple
+ 1 orange
+ 1 lime
+ 1 lemon
+ 20-25 cherry
+ 2 tsp sugar and little bit of nutmeg (optional)



* You can use pretty much any red wine but don't need to waste really good aged red wine for sangria. A light young acid unoaked wine is perfect for sangria. The wine that I used is Spanish garnacha which tends to have less acidity... so I added more lime and lemon juice. If your wine is acid enough, please adjust the lime and lemon juice amount accordingly.

** If you don't have Grand Marnier, you can replace it with rum or brandy.

*** You can pretty much use any of your favorite fruits. Peach, strawberry, raspberry will work well, too.


Procedures:
1. Mix red wine, Grand Marnier, and sparkling water.

2. Wash all the fruits very well. Slice an apple, a half of orange and a half of lime and a half of lemon to 1/8 inch (~3mm). Juice rest of orange, lime and lemon.

3. Using a small paring knife cut around the cherry and split it in half. Pick out the pit with your fingers. If you have cherry pitter, pit cherries and slice in half.


4. Mix the fruits and juice all together and mix with sugar and nutmeg. This step is optional - If your wine is sweet enough for your taste you don't need to add sugar or spice.

5. Pour wine mixture over the sugar soaked fruits, and mix well with a wooden spoon.


6. Wrap the sangria tightly and refrigerate for at least five hours.


7. When the sangria is ready, pour into individual wine glass and serve.


Enjoy~