Red Wine Sangria Recipe

The Mission: to find a good sangria recipe to bring to bunco night. After some diligent searching, I found the Cook's Illustrated recipe for what they deem as The Best Red Wine Sangria. Since I really trust their methods of extensive testing and written details, I decided to give this one a try. This is all I needed:

I've never actually made red wine sangria. White is my preference. Many times red wine sangria is much too sweet tasting with loads of added sugar and fruit juices. This recipe is more minimal and simplistic.
The fruit is sliced up and placed into a pitcher. I doubled the recipe, so I used a large glass container.

The sugar is poured on top of the fruit. I like to use superfine sugar (easier to dissolve).

Crush the fruit a bit with a wooden spoon to incorporate the sugar and release some of the juices. Pour in orange juice and triple sec.

Cook's Illustrated recommends that you use cheap red wine for the recipe. They noted that more expensive bottles were tested alongside the cheaper ones and the less expensive versions actually tested as having had better flavor. I used a Spanish wine (about $8/bottle).

Here's the finished product. Pretty easy, eh? The whole tub 'o sangria was placed into the fridge for several hours to meld the flavors and chill it well.

One recipe serves "4," and I doubled it... wish I had tripled it for 10 gals. It was easy to drink. All of us enjoyed it. Everyone asked for the recipe! It was a hit at bunco night. I was delighted that this didn't turn out to be the god-awful sweet version that I've had so many times. After we plowed through all of the sangria, we munched on the wine-soaked orange slices. Whooo - eeeee! yum. This recipe for The Best Red Wine Sangria is a definite keeper. Truth be told, we never got around to playing bunco (but the sangria was good!)

This recipe can be found HERE.

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