This fall-flavored sangria was originally intended to go with our Thanksgiving dinner, but we were cooking so much that day and refrigerator space was at a premium, so we waited until the Sunday after to make sangria. We were still eating Thanksgiving leftovers for dinner anyway, so it all worked out in the end.
Sparkling Apple Cider Sangria recipe
This sangria features several layers of apple flavor: raw apple slices, apple brandy, and sparkling cider. We jumped on this oppurtunity to try an apple brandy, and purchaed one made by Clear Creek Distillery in Portland, OR. Trying the apple brandy was fun, and Clear Creek makes a lot of interesting “pure fruit spirits” that I want to try – especially the eau de vie of Douglas Fir!
I sliced the apple the easy way, and tried to make my inelegant orange and lemon peels look pretty:
Adding the cinnamon to the non-wine ingredients made me feel like I was making an apple pie.
combined ingredients, pre-wine
I added the wine…
Drunken Apples
And then waited for a while! Just before dinner I added the apple cider and poured the sangria into our butterfly glasses:
Ready to Drink!
I think the wine I used here was a little bit darker than what the book called for (or else the glasses in their pictures were just narrower and on a lighter background!), but the flavor of the sangria was good nonetheless. I think the darker wine stood up well to the sweetness added by the sparkling cider, and there was just a hint of cinamon in the finish. It’s the closest to a classic sangria that I’ve done so far in the drink through – classic with an apply twist. For warmer weather, I might lighten it up by chosing tarter apples and using half cider and half sparkling water, but this is a good treat for fall.
