Berry Lemon Sangria

Sangria happens to be one of my favorite things that I don’t get to drink very often, mostly because I didn’t have a recipe.  My favorite part of Sangria: eating the fruit in the drink as I chug along.  Yum.  I hope you can make this festive little drink for one of your celebrations this weekend!

Berry Lemon Sangria

By: Cristen    www.foodandswine.com

Ingredients:

Lemon Simple Syrup

3/4 C sugar

Zest of lemon

Juice of lemon

1 1/4 C water

Rub sugar with zest of lemon to release oils.  Add to small saucepan with juice of lemon and water.  Heat over medium until sugar dissolves.  Do not boil.  Remove from heat.  Cool.

To make Sangria:

To a large beverage container add:

Lemon Simple Syrup (entire recipe)

1 Old Orchard “Berry Blend” frozen juice concentrate 12 oz. can (still frozen)

2 C Chambord or other premium raspberry, blackberry etc. liquor

2-3 bottles of red or white wine *see note below (sweet or dry, to your personal taste)

2 bottle of sparkling water or 2 cans of Sprite/7 Up (for fizz factor)

1 small bag of frozen blueberries (2 lbs.)

1 small bag of frozen raspberries or tart cherries (2 lbs.)

2 lemons sliced, for garnish

Granulated sugar for rimming glasses, if you’d like.

Stir well and serve over ice and additional frozen berries or cherries if desired.  To rim glasses with sugar, sprinkle 1 C sugar on a plate evenly, rub lemon slice around rim of glass, press into sugar.  Pour beverage after rimming the glass.  To see more about using sugar to decorate glasses, click here.  You can be so creative, using larger sparkling sugar in a Red White and Blue motif or any color you wish!

Makes 16-20 servings, depending on how much everyone pours!

*Note: To make this stronger and more berry-licioius… reduce bottles of wine used to 2 only.

Have a great weekend!