Sangria as a craft cocktail?

Can Sangria, long reviled as a way for unsophisticated drinkers to mask cheap wine with sugar and fruit, make a comeback as a craft cocktail?

Photo by Tamorlan (Own work) [CC-BY-3.0], via Wikimedia Commons

For our recent fiesta paella, I used the red wine sangria from Claudia Roden's The Food of Spain, and I was very happy with the result. She says she got it from a bar in Seville, so that it is Andalusian.

Virtually any fruit can be used. Apples are the standby, but I used peaches from the farmer's market, plus a couple of nice little apricots we had left over from making the fruit salad. Peel, pit and dice the fruit and put it in a pitcher with 3 to 4 tablespoons of sugar, juice of 4 oranges, a strip of lemon peel, juice of 1 lemon, 1/2 cup brandy or Cognac, and 1/2 cup of rum and let the fruit macerate for an hour or so. When ready to serve, pour in a bottle of chilled Rioja wine and 2 to 3 cups of chilled club soda. Serve into glasses filled with ice.

This was surprisingly tasty and refreshing, and not too sweet. Chilling the wine and soda obviates the need for ice in the pitcher, so the sangria remains undiluted. The orange juice disappears and combines with the fruit and the lemon to give the drink a buoyant, fresh taste and feel. I used a relatively cheap Rioja, but it was not a cheap wine.

My introduction to sangria was in Las Cuevas, the little pubs trailing off the Plaza Mayor in Madrid, so it has always had positive recollections for me. But a few weeks ago, I told a friend I had made some sangrita to go with tequila and he was confused, wondering why a sophisticated drinker like myself would want to make a drink using cheap wine.

But now both The Modern Mixologist and The Craft of Cocktails include recipes for sangria, though the former has one calling for a stunning 12 ounces of Cointreau. I found Roden's recipe simpler and more authentic, and was very pleased with the result.