So we’re hosting a neighborhood block party on New Year’s Eve. An indoor one, what with it being, yanno, winter and all.
But I’m known for bringing sangria to all the outdoor parties. Simple - bottle of wine, half cup each of brandy and Cointreau and orange juice, some chopped up fruit.
But it being NYE and all, something with sparkling white wine would be a nice alternative.
Suggestions, recipes, etc.?
Well, sparkling isn’t going to hold up very long if it has to sit, so I’d be thinking “Champagne Cocktail”, not Sangria. Also, sparkling doesn’t do well with juice that has a lot of pulp - basically, the bubbles adhere to every single bit of pulp and you end up with 1/4 glass of actual liquid and 3/4 of a glass of foam. So don’t use fresh-squeezed or high-pulp OJ>
If you do want to do sparkling, I’d do something like mimosas or a blend of booze & fruit, and just pour the sparkling over it as people want it. You can make a nice Champagne Cocktail with brandy/cointreau and some fresh berries, and add in some pulp-free OJ as well. Or cranberry juice.
I do a nice one with St. Germaine, Cognac, lemon juice, and rose Champagne, but that’s kind of pricey to do for a crowd.
What about a kir or a kir royale?
For a kir, it’s one part creme de cassis and 9 parts white wine. For a kir royale, just substitute champagne or sparkling white wine instead of the white wine.
White Sangria with bubbly subbed in for the white wine maybe?
Macerate all the fruit with the schnapps and sugar beforehand so the flavors meld, then do it one pitcher at a time, 1 bottle bubbly, 1/4 of the fruit mixture etc.
My favorite Sangria recipe, in addition to the regular citrus ingredients, added Kern’s Peach and Strawberry nectars.
I’ve located several recipes for sangría de cava, which from what I see amount to pretty much the same recipe: credit to the people who posted them, translation mistakes are mine. Figured it would be more helpful than pointing you to youtube, can’t translate those links as easily 
Una receta (calls it champagne in the title, calls for cava in the recipe… snerk)
Huh - I was expecting that to be “mock sangria” or something but I guess it’s a real alcoholic beverage in a bottle?
Thanks for all the suggestions! I wound up making up 3 pitchers:
1 red sangria: 2 bottles red wine, 1 cup each brandy, Cointreau and orange jiuice, and a splash of plain cranberry juice (unsweetened) because we had it and it seemed seasonally appropriate
1 white: 2 bottles white wine, 1 cup each brandy and peach schnapps, and one 12-ounce can apricot nectar, with the suggestion that people could mix it with ginger ale (sugar-based, not corn-syrup-based) or not as they chose. This was inspired by some of the links from this thread.
1 mock: somewhat-random quantities of peach nectar, apple juice, orange juice, and plain cranberry juice. That was also served with ginger ale, and was quite a hit.
The funny story from this evening: I’d put the mock sangria in a small pitcher for the gathering. When we were putting things away last night, that was nearly empty so we dumped it out and put the rest of the red sangria in it because it fit better in the fridge than the larger pitcher.
But today I wanted to get rid of the individual bottles of peach nectar etc. so I mixed that all up in a larger pitcher, which I put in the fridge for the kids (and us) to enjoy.
Fast forward to after dinner, and I mentioned to Dweezil (19 years old) that we had the stuff so he got himself some. A few minutes later I said “oh, and there’s ginger ale to mix in it”. He said “I did, and it’s still kiind of strong”.
:eek:
“Dweezil: what pitcher did you pour that from?”.
“The small one”
“Whoops! That’s the real sangria”.
Peals of laughter from the rest of the family. “Oh, shut up!” from Dweezil.
We would not have any problem with him having real stuff - it’s home, we’re family, etc… but he was so annoyed!!
Reported