A few years ago I had the fortune to live in Spain for a while and learn from my boss and bartender how to make a proper Sangria.
The idea is simple; red wine, oranges; spirits and gaseosa combined in various proportions. The key spirit being Brandy de Jerez to give it the particular flavour.
The recipe I use is tweaked a little since Brandy de Jerez is too hard to come by here in Helsinki and instead I use Jaloviina, i.e. local cheapish brandy. Gaseosa is another unknown component and all sweetened fizzy waters are also flavoured, Sprite just doesn't cut it for this so I use normal fizzy water and homemade sugar syrup.
To make the sugar syrup; simply heat up sugar with splash of water to dissolve, and when heated adding just enough water for the liquid to go from milky to clear - 500g sugar makes about 1 liter of syrup. Handy to keep around in a capped bottle for mixing drinks or topping up sangria through the night.
The success was granted as I saw bowl after bowl empty at the housewarming party last week. I kept filling up with white wine (keeping the white sofas safe instead of with red) from the box roughly 1 -1,5 liter at a time, about 1/3 liter of orange juice and the same amount of sugar syrup I prepared earlier, plenty of ice, sliced fresh lemon and oranges, the juice of 1 fresh lemon, about 1/3 bottle of Jaloviina (1/6 l) and some sweet peach liqueur (instead of the standard Cointreau that I think works better with red wine). Top the bowl off with about 1/5 l of fizzy (unsweetened) water.
