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.

Italian stout, Spanish vermouth

One of the best treats I ever had was a Guinness tapped in the way only the Irish can do it at a pub in Galway served with oysters on the half shell from that rugged Atlantic coast. Oysters and stout are a match made in heaven, as the heavy, malty beer washes down the briny fresh molluscs. So it makes sense that someone is brewing an oyster stout.

From Birra del Borgo website

The Del Borgo craft brewery in Borgorose, Italy, mixes in 33 lbs of Brittany fines de claires oysters with 500 liters of must during the brewing process to give a briny edge to the dark, foamy stout. As part of its effort to expand its beer list, 2Amys has added this "Pearls to swine" stout to its drinks menu and I sampled it on our visit there this week. The stout itself was a good, solid dark brew. The head in the 12-oz serving could have been a little bigger, but the beer was fresh and there was definitely something fishy about it. I paired it with a mozzarella and sausage pizza, which may not have been the happiest combination, but it worked fine because the hearty beer was a match for the rich sausage flavor.

Surprisingly enough, 2Amys has a full bar but they focus on beer and wine as if they didn't. The effort to increase the beer offering is typical as restaurants even with a restricted license try to keep up with the craft trend in drinks.

Little Serow, which we visited recently, has only beer and wine so they add a dash of trendiness by offering vermouths. I ordered the Perucchi Gran Reserva from Spain, a spicy, clovey concoction which claims to have 40 different ingredients. While Spanish vermouths may be new for us, Perucchi has been making them since 1876, and the tradition shows in the finished, mature taste of this aperitif. It was an excellent accompaniment to the spicy starters at the Thai restaurant, and helped whet the appetite appropriately for what was to come.

It is still a novelty in this country to drink vermouth straight, but it's one of the first things I learned in Europe. My first summer there, in 1970, I met a friend in Geneva who encourage me to order a "rouge et blanc" at the sidewalk cafe right on the lake. This was a mix of red and white vermouths, served on ice with a twist of lemon, and perfectly matched the sunny day, cooled by the breeze off the lake, with the mountain peaks in the distance. So Little Serow and others without a full license are making a virtue out of necessity by offering these herb-infused wines.

200+ Margaritas

Maria's New Mexican Kitchen in Santa Fe offers a fabulous menu of more than 200 Margaritas, using their large collection of 100% agave tequilas with other slight variations on the basic recipe. Some have triple sec, some Cointreau, some Grand Marnier, some a combination. Most have the lime, lemon, and sugar mixer but some have other citrus fruits.

The heart of the list, though, is the wide selection of tequilas -- blanco, reposado, anejo. The Margaritas start at $6.50 with the house special and go up to $42 for the 24-karat Gold Reserve, made with very special hand-crafted Jose Cuervo, special Grand Marnier, etc. The drinks arrive well-shaken, ice cold and served in pear-shaped Margarita glasses.

Someone had a good time making up the names and writing the descriptions. Here are the ones we tried:

The Merry Margarita - Featured in the 2008 Christmas edition of The New Mexico Magazine, it is made with Corazon 100% agave Silver tequila, Cointreau and Blood Orange Juice served in a glass rimmed with green sugar (though in requesting no salt we lost out on the sugar).

The Grand Old Soul -- Alma 100% anejo tequila and Grand Marnier. A great addition to our list!

The Elizabeth-Two -- El Tesoro 100% agave plata tequila, a 1/2-shot of Cointreau and a 1/2-shot of Grand Marnier.

Moon Over Santa Fe -- Dos Lunas 100% agave silver tequila with Cointreau - Romance on the Rocks!

I'm not sure there is a greater selection of Margaritas anywhere, and in any case this has become one of the obligatory stops in our visits to Santa Fe. The food, btw, is supposed to be good, but the green chile meatballs we ordered as an alibi to sit at a table were fairly bland.

More modern mixology

I'm enjoying Tony Abou-Ganim's The Modern Mixologist. I like his emphasis on fresh juices and bitters -- two hallmarks, I gather, of the craft cocktail movement -- and find his drinks to be nicely balanced and refreshing. He prompted me to refurbish my bar tools and I've found the hand squeezer for citrus juices and the new jigger really very helpful. Not only do I enjoy making his drinks, but have more confidence in general in tackling other recipes.

The Luce del Sole remains the only home run and definite keeper. But I have also enjoyed the Bluegrass Cobbler (bourbon, maraschino, sour with pineapple and cherries), the Clermont Smash (bourbon, falernum, mint, sour, peach bitters), and, less so, the Jamaican Sunset (Sailor Jerry, orange juice, pineapple juice, sour, pomegranate -- I used grenadine -- and Myer's). John D. Taylor's Velvet Falernum, in particular, was worth seeking out for the sweetness and balance it gave to the Clermont Smash.

With my new-found confidence, I was also able to successfully replicate the two cocktails I liked at Fiola -- the Deshler and the Negroni Classico. I found I liked the latter -- using Gran Classico and Dolin rouge -- even better at home. In both cases, the bitter -- Peychaud's in the Deshler and Gran Classico in the Negroni -- add a nice touch of smokey flavor, almost like incense.

By contrast, I found my recently purchased The Craft of the Cocktail by David DeGoff a bit off-putting. The pretentious cover, with the bartender in fancy dress, sporting a gold ring, had a whiff of snobbiness and stuffiness I don't think is characteristic of craft cocktails. The recipes, as far as I can tell, don't really add anything to my A to Z book. But we'll see.

Fiola drinks

This marvelous restaurant, which is unfussy about its food, does make a little bit too much of its bar and the craft cocktails by mixologist Jeff Faile. The drinks were fine, but not fabulous and when you've got wonderful food and wine why make a big deal about the cocktails?

Mine was actually the best of the three I tasted. It was called the Deshler and contained Templeton rye, Cocchi americano rosa, Cointreau and Peychaud's bitter. It was served neat in a rocks glass like a Sazerac and was a very nice Manhattan-like drink with great balance and flavor.

Andrea's drink -- cryptically and pretentiously called It's Expected, I'm Gone -- was not good at all. It contained Green Hat gin, grapefruit juice, honey syrup and Burlesque bitters. There was an odd taste either from the gin or the bitters and the citrus was too sour.

Another drink, misleadingly called a Negroni classico, was quite nice, but the classico refers not to it being the classic Negroni mix of gin, Campari and vermouth, but to containing a bitter called Gran Classico, which I gathered from an explanation by the manager was one of the original products from Campari in an earlier incarnation. Whatever, it was sweeter than the "classic" Negroni, and clearer than with regular Campari, though a third ingredient was listed as Dolin rouge, but an altogether pleasant drink.

Negroni, it seems, has become so trendy that a full page of the bar menu was devoted to various bastardized forms of Negroni, so that it is the new Martini. However, just as a Martini is just gin and vermouth, so a Negroni is really just the three original ingredients and they should just find other names for the variations.

I think it's great that there is a resurgence in cocktails, and craft cocktails are fine, but let's rein it in a bit on the hype.

Italian wines

As my map clearly shows, I've been assiduous in exploring Italian wines. I don't feel like I've made a breakthrough, yet, in finding the wines or regions I really like. From what I've been able to sample so far, it seems clear that it is the high-priced wines from Piedmont and Tuscany that are the best, Nebbiolo and Sangiovese. Whatever progress is being made in other regions with other varietals, it hasn't yet resulted in affordable good wines that I've been able to find.

In other words, I still feel most comfortable with French wines, which is no surprise after 11 years in France when I drank them almost exclusively. I instinctively know what to expect from each region; the names and labels are familiar to me. I suspect, too, that the lower-price wines are simply better.

But I will soldier on. This initial impression may represent ignorance rather than anything else. I would like to find more wines from Campania, especially Aglionico, because I quite liked the one I tried. I've signed up for an AIWF tasting of Alto Adige wines next week, which is promising, because the Pinot Grigio from Bolzano that I had this week was quite good. More to come!

Aperol and modern mixology

If every cocktail in Tony Abou-Ganim's The Modern Mixologist is as good as the Luce del Sole, the book was a great investment. The drink caught my eye because Aperol Apertivo was one of the ingredients. I had noticed the Aperol bottle at Magruders and the other night at Dino spotted the Aperol Spritz on the menu.

Abou-Ganim says Aperol has flavors of bitter orange, rhubarb and gentian and I gather it has become a trendy drink in Italy. The Luce del Sol calls for 1-1/2 oz Finlandia grapefruit vodka, 3/4 oz Aperol, 1/2 oz honey syrup, 1 oz fresh-squeezed lemon juice, and 1 oz fresh-squeezed orange juice. Shake and strain into an ice-filled old-fashioned glass. Garnish is an orange spiral and lemon slices.The result is a wonderfully balanced, refreshing drink sparkling with citrus flavors.

This was a departure for me in many ways. I've always been skeptical of flavored vodkas, and suspicious of craft cocktails. Much of the "movement" seems to me to be a marketing push by the spirit producers. But so what, really. The whole concept of cocktails is to add an element of play, to make happy hour even happier and if that has led to a resurgence of the cocktail, who am I to complain?

I like Finlandia but I didn't find their grapefruit vodka. Circle Liquor, however, had a sale on Absolut vodkas, including their Ruby Red, and it served just as well. I'd never heard of honey syrup, but I used some simple syrup and a dash of honey, though most of that stuck to the side of the shaker.

Abou-Ganim has sections on basic tools and drinks, which was helpful. I went to Sur la Table and filled the gaps that I have. I got a new jigger, the standard one that looks like two joined triangles, to replace the awkward one with a handle that I had. I also got the "channel knife" to cut citrus strips, and a hand squeezer for limes and other citrus fruits. As with anything when you have the right tools, it makes life so much easier.

So Abou-Ganim's recipes are bit complicated and often call for specific ingredients, but I'll keep trying them as long as they are as satisfying as this one.

I did also try (on a different evening!) the Aperol Spritz as described on the Dino menu -- Aperol (I used 1 oz), white wine and soda. Apparently the classic is Aperol, prosecco and soda. I will try that, too, but I'm much likelier to have an open bottle of white wine than of prosecco. It, too, was refreshing and a great summer drink.