The Most Wonderful Time of the Year

Sangria is one of the most delicious drinks of the holiday season.  Use white wine for a crisp, new-years-y feel.  

White wine sangria makes a great signature drink for your holiday cocktail party: fresh, crisp, boozy, and you can make the mix the day ahead.  Added bonus: fights scurvy...

Make-Ahead White Sangria Mix for your Holiday Party

Take advantage of the peak of citrus season and use fresh-
squeezed ingredients.

Get the mix ready the day before or the morning of your party.  

1 meyer lemon, sliced
1 lime, sliced
2 clementines, sliced
4 oz brandy
juice of 1-1/2 meyer lemons, 1 lime, 3 clementines

Put the sliced fruit in a pint-sized mason jar.  Add the brandy then top with the citrus juices.  This should almost exactly fill the jar.  Make up one jar of mix for each bottle of wine you anticipate turning into sangria.

Take a moment to marvel at how beautiful those jars of citrus fruit look, then put them in the fridge until you are ready to use.  (If it's a cold enough winter, you might be able to store them in your shed or a closed in porch... if you aren't sure, don't take the chance.)

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Each pint-sized mason jar of citrus-brandy mix will do one 750 mL bottle of wine.  Use the jar to measure your sparkling lemonade, mix it all together and illico presto, you have sangria.

White Wine Sangria Instructions

Make sangria in a pitcher or punch bowl (depending on the size of your party and your aesthetic sensibility) with ice.  Since it's all pre-measured, you can start with as much as you want and easily top it up as needed. For each jar of sangria mix add:

1 bottle of crisp and bright white wine (like sauvignon blanc or pinot grigio)
2 cups* of decent sparkling lemonade**

*don't bother with a measuring cup, just fill your empty mix jar to the neck
**this saves you from having to make a syrup and figure out the right ratio of syrup to soda water, and still lets you avoid the HFCS pitfall of most soda pop 

...give it a stir and you're on! 

~~~

[Hi, Mom!  You can skip this paragraph, I won't be offended...]  A million years ago when we were undergrads living in a student apartment with a then-new-friend who is a now-old-friend, we had the occasional sangria party: everyone brought a bottle of cheap red wine and piece of fruit.  A big bucket was filled with the various wines of suspect origin, some cheap brandy or maybe whisky (or whatever was handy) was tipped in, grapefruit-ish Wink soda to dilute and sweeten, and masses of uncoordinated fruit were chopped and tossed in for good measure.  When the sangria ran out and the fruit mostly consumed, anyone left standing was likely to go out for breakfast.  This bucket-of-sangria fun, I must point out, was started by previous tenants of that apartment long before we moved in... a tradition that was inherited with the apartment.  A tradition that should undoubtedly stay with the apartment, because anyone over the age of 25 is probably not immortal enough for the consequences of such an event.

If I recall correctly, sangria parties were generally spring events, something to help shake off the long cold winter.  So for the longest time, I thought of sangria as a spring or summer drink.  Bubbles, fruit, ice... what's not summery about that? 

But, lo and behold, I was wrong.  

A few years ago, I was talking warm weather drinks with a Portuguese-immigrant friend who found it amusing that I associated sangria with summer because, so far as she is concerned, sangria is for Christmas.  What an epiphany!  Even without thinking too hard about it, I am happy to defer to the Portuguese on this.  

But think about it anyway: of course sangria is a Christmas drink.  Citrus is available year-round, but December is when it’s at its peak season.  It’s the time of year we buy crate after crate of clementines and the end of the season for boxes of mandarins wrapped in thick purple paper.  Meyer lemons and early blood oranges appear on the shelves, limes become so inexpensive you can buy them in dozens without having a panic attack at the till, and heavy boxes of grapefruit pre-ordered as fundraisers for school bands finally materialize.  It’s the most wonderful time of the year indeed.

So make sangria during the holiday season.  (In a pitcher or punch bowl.  No buckets.***)

***Unless, of course, you are a student... 

And a happy new year!

The advantage of fresh but pre-measured sangria mix could become abundantly clear as
the evening progresses... 

Three Cheers for Rhubarb!

One batch of rhubarb cordial turns into three summer drinks.  Perfect for warm evenings on the front porch.

From the Left: The Rhubarb Sangria, The Rhubarb Royale, and The Rhubarb Daiquiri.  One batch of rhubarb cordial provides the extra-special not-so-secret ingredient for all these drinks.

The Rhubarb Daiquiri

(for a pitcher)
1/2 c. freshly squeezed lime juice
1-1/2 c. rhubarb cordial (see recipe below)
1 c. amber rum

(for an abstemious single drink)
1 oz. freshly squeezed lime juice
3 oz. rhubarb cordial
2 oz. amber rum

This is not the over-sweetened slushy stuff you get at Thank God I Don't Work Here on two-for-one Tuesdays.  We have provided the measures for a single daiquiri, but make a pitcher.  Really, make a pitcher.  This is a rock star of a drink.  

Mix all the ingredients in a glass pitcher sometime in the afternoon, like just before you weed your garden or take your dogs for a long walk.  Chill in the refrigerator.  Rim serving glasses using a wedge of lime and dredging in sugar (we like a martini glass for this).  Put the glasses in the freezer.  Go do something outside for a couple of hours.  Give the daiquiri a stir before pouring into chilled glasses and enjoy.  Here's the good news: because you made a pitcher, there's another one waiting for you.


The Rhubarb Royale

(per single serving)
1 oz. rhubarb cordial (see recipe below)
3 oz. dry white cava

Pour one ounce of rhubarb cordial in the bottom of a champagne flute, top up with cava (about 3 oz.).  Garnish with a curl of fresh rhubarb (a carrot peeler works perfectly for this).  You could, of course, substitute champagne or other sparkling white wine for the cava, but why would you?  Cava is a beautiful bubbly, made in the same method as champagne and is substantially less expensive than similar-quality french champagnes.  

When we were moving from Ontario to Newfoundland, we took our time driving out.  In Nova Scotia, we spent a few days at Risser's Beach Provincial Park, taking a break from the road, picking up sand dollars in the surf, and making ridiculously pretentious meals on our campfire (like fire-roasted beetroot and goat cheese salad).  One day when we were too hot and tired for cooking, we drove down the road to MacLeod's Canteen and had fish & chips (some of the best fish & chips we ever ate, incidentally) and rhubarb fizz.  We went back the next day for more rhubarb fizz.  We are fans of fish & chips (who isn't?) but the rhubarb fizz completely stole the show, and we talk about periodically even now, 11 years later.  The Rhubarb Royale is a grown-up (that is, alcoholic) tribute to that rhubarb fizz on the beach.

Hey... where did this cat come from?

The Rhubarb Sangria

1 c. rhubarb mash (by-product of rhubarb cordial, see below)
1/2 c. brandy
1/2 c. freshly squeezed orange juice
1 bottle cheap red Spanish wine   
orange wedges for garnish
ice cubes

In a blender, puree rhubarb mash and brandy.  Pour rhubarb-brandy mixture into a glass pitcher or carafe (the container needs to be able to handle 1.5 liters of liquid).  Let the flavours mingle for a little while (long enough to fold a load of laundry or do some dinner prep work).  Add orange juice and red wine to the pitcher, stir thoroughly.  Serve over ice in red wine glasses or tumblers, garnished with a wedge of orange.

Use an inexpensive red wine for this, but not one that will leave you with a headache. So pick a red wine you might drink on it's own, but stick to the lower price range that you typically buy from (we used a temperanillo).  The rhubarb matches the wine for flavour and there's a lovely subtle burn from the brandy; altogether a beautiful way to boost your fiber intake and get a good dose of antioxidants; not to mention all that vitamin C between the rhubarb and the orange juice.  Oh yes, we're totally selling this to you as a health-food... 

How to Make a Ridiculously Easy Rhubarb Cordial

recipe adapted from Eat Like a Girl

2 lbs. rhubarb, chopped roughly (thumb-sized hunks)
1-1/2 c. water
1 c. (scant) sugar

Combine rhubarb, water and sugar in a heavy bottomed saucepan.  Bring to a boil over medium heat and cook for about 15 minutes, until rhubarb is softened and has broken down and become stringy.  The sauce should be slightly reduced and thickened.  Stay in the kitchen while the rhubarb is cooking and watch your pot -- it can boil over suddenly if you aren't paying close attention (ask me how I know).  Remove from heat and let cool about a half hour (hey, that's enough time to read a couple chapters of that book you are trying to finish!).

Left: Rhubarb chopped into thumb-sized pieces.  Right:  The thick stringy stew ready for straining.

Strain the liquid into a jar or other suitable glass container:  this is the cordial, congratulations, it really is that easy.  The cordial will keep refrigerated for about a week.  If you want to save some for later, freeze in ice cube trays or other appropriate-sized containers then transfer the frozen blocks to freezer bags to make your freezer space more flexible.  Reserve the rhubarb mash for sangria (above) or to use in smoothies in the next couple of days.  

Most cordial instructions tell you to use a jelly bag for straining.  We bought a jelly bag a few years ago and used it exactly once:  for some reason, jelly bags are cat hair magnets, so it didn't last long in our house.  We use a drip coffee system for straining cordials, jellies and such the like, and have found it has a couple of advantages.  Firstly, the gold mesh filter does not seem to capture cat hair.  Secondly, there is not need for creating a complex string and weights hanging system; you just set the filter on top of your jar and don't worry about it.  Plastic drip holders and filters come in a couple of sizes (mug sized and coffee pot sized), are pretty inexpensive and a lot less messy than mucking around with muslin or jelly bags.  

The Dandelion Martini

2 oz. dandelion-infused vodka (below), straight from the freezer
3 dandelion capers, it has to be 3, because 3 is sexy

Pour vodka into martini glass, garnish with capers.
Best served in the middle of your dandelion-infested lawn.  Drink and think about the diaspora of dandelion through the known universe.

The dandelion infused vodka was adapted from Dazed and Infused's recipe.

Pour an inch of vodka in the bottom of a clean, dry, mason jar.  Use good vodka for this. Cheap vodka is for Ceasars and teenagers.  If it comes with a free hat, it's cheap.

Pick two really big handfuls of dandelion flowers, carefully avoiding bugs, then chop the green end off, pull the yellow fluffy part out.  The yellow fluffy part goes in the jar with the vodka; keep adding yellow fluff until the jar is about 2/3 full.

Top up with vodka.  Leave on the counter near a window for 2 days (if you live in a warm sunny climate) or 3 days (if you live in Newfoundland).  Put it in the fridge to make it a week. On day 7, strain into a new clean jar and store in the freezer.

Once it's good and cold, go ahead and make that martini.

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Since Dazed and Infused doesn't have tasting notes for this, here's what we thought of it:  totally drinkable.  Fefe thought it had a sweet note... she described it as floral-y and nectar-y.  caribougrrl thought the taste was reminiscent of very very ripe cantaloupe   Fefe continues to drink dandelion martinis, caribougrrl is happy to leave it in the freezer.