Ghettogria!

So one of my friends and her husband just bought their first home, and were having their house warming that was BYOB.  One of my favorite things to take is sangria, but it's so expensive to buy all the fruit for it, so I had this idea to use a fruit smoothie like Odwalla or Naked instead of fresh fruit.

Unfortunately when I looked at the ingredient label I discovered that they use emulsifiers in them and I didn't want that in the gria so I ended up hitting the organic juice section to get what I wanted.  I also picted up a pint of fresh mixed berries so there'd still be a bit of fruit floating about, and a decent bottle of locally produced red wine.


Now for the mixing!  When I got home I put all the ingredients together and this is what I had.



From the Left: Santa Cruz Berry Nectar, Cayalla 2005, from the Edgefield Distillery Brandy, Pear Brandy, and Longshot Brandy, and down in front a pint of mixed berries.

I used 2 c. of the juice, all the wine, a 1/2 c. of all three brandies mixed together in fairly close to equal parts, and the whole container of berries sliced up.  Mix it all up taste it to see if it needs more juice or brandy, let it sit in the fridge overnight to mellow out, and Voila you have nice strong sangria that only cost you about $6 in fruit & juice instead of closer to $30 (yes I have spent that much before and it was some darn fine gria).