The Hoppy Okapi

Strawberry Blood Orange Sangria

Along with my Sangria book drink through, one of the goals from my 101 Things list is to create a signature sangria of my own. A few weeks ago, San Diego enjoyed a mid-winter heat wave, and I went to the Little Italy Mercato in search of the perfect sangria ingredients. I came away with some of my favorite winter fruit – blood oranges – as well as some big, juicy strawberries grown in Oceanside.  Feeling very fortunate to have locally grown blood oranges and strawberries in January, I combined them with one of my new favorite wines – the Black Muscat from Filsinger Winery in Temecula – and added some Drambuie to round out the flavor.

Sangria Ingredients

This was a fun sangria to make, since I got to slice the strawberries with the egg slicer (we bought a heavy-duty one after I destroyed our original egg slicer with strawberries and mushrooms).

Slicing a Strawberry

I also had fun zesting the orange with our microplane grater, but then I realized it was utterly silly to have done so, since I would have put the whole orange slices in the sangria anyway, and zesting it just created little gritty bits that made the sangria look cloudier. If you make this sangria, don’t zest the oranges!

zest!

slices of blood oranges - oh so pretty!

combining the fruits

fruit, drambuie, and wine

This was a sangria I would definitely make again! The strawberries and rose wine make it good for warm weather drinking, or they can help you feel summery even in the middle of winter! Black muscat wine might be a bit tricky to find if you don’t have a convenient local source, but it’s well worth the challenge.

Sangria