Whipping up a saucepan full of sangria isn’t my usual camping weekend activity, but recently I found myself winning my friends over with a slightly off-piste version of the Spanish classic. We might not have been sat in a bar on a Spanish Costa but basking in the sun on the north coast of Cornwall felt a bit like it at times.
As I say, sangria isn’t the usual drink of choice on our annual trip down south with our friends and family. It’s more likely to be G&T, vino or good old cider, but I’d recently missed out on a chance to join some fellow bloggers at an evening of Spanish fun at Amantia in Birmingham, hosted by Monarch and Talented Talkers.
There they spent the evening enjoying Amantia’s fabulous food (I know this, I’ve tried it), drinking sangria, learning a bit of Spanish and trying out flamenco for size. I couldn’t make it, but the lovely peeps at Monarch & TT sent me everything I’d need to recreate my own little Spanish Fiesta.
In my lovely hamper of goodies was everything I’d need for Monarch’s ‘Secret Sangria’ recipe (not to be secret in a minute, once I tell you what I put in), plus a handy little Spanish phrasebook and a voucher for my own takeaway supermarket tapas feast. Clearly not quite Amantia-style, but hey, who’s complaining?
I thought about hosting my own little Spanish-themed party, but with only a few days to go until the big Cornish getaway I decided to pack up my sangria and take it down south. And so that’s how we found ourselves mixing up a batch of sunny sangria on a campsite in Tintagel, with only a saucepan to mix it in.
I don’t know about you, but I thought sangria was just red wine and lemonade or tonic. Not so when you’re making this version. Like I said, I’m not sure how secret the secret sangria recipe is meant to be but I’m going to put paid to that by sharing it here:-
Ingredients
- Red wine
- Orange juice
- A dash of Martini Rosso (I used Bianco though)
- A dash of banana syrup
- A dash of sugar syrup
- Lemonade
- Citrus fruit of your choice
Method
- Mix red wine and orange juice together (you can pick how much).
- Add Martini, banana syrup and sugar syrup
- Top with lemonade and plenty of ice
- Add slices of citrus fruit to the jug (or saucepan in my case) and serve
Yes, I know, a saucepan is not the ideal way to show off sangria but it’s in keeping with the camping lifestyle of the weekend. The sangria itself was fab. We played around with different proportions of wine and juice, and varying the size of ‘dashes’ of martini and syrups, but the consensus was that it was fab.
The plan was to enjoy our Spanish treat with a platter of cheese and meats like Chorizo and Manchego, but we’d actually eaten it all the night before. Instead, we supped it with a barbecue treat cooked in our little camp as the sun went down. It might not have been Spain, but it was out own little Spanish Fiesta.
I was sent a hamper full of the ingredients for secret sangria, plus a £10 voucher for tapas bits and bobs and a Spanish phrase book by Monarch and Talented Talkers as I couldn’t attend the #MonarchFiesta event at Amantia.
